HTC One max Review - It's Huge
by Brian Klug on October 28, 2013 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Mobile
- One
- Snapdragon 600
- Android 4.3
- One max
Battery life remains a huge concern for savvy smartphone shoppers. Opportunistically charging a phone and worrying about making it through an entire day with just a single charge cycle is a common complaint as well. The HTC One max addresses some of the complaints myself and others had with charging on the HTC One which charged at only 1 amp, instead the One max charges at up to 1.5 amps. Although I wasn’t sampled it, the One max box will also include a 1.5 amp charger from HTC that’s slightly taller than the previous generation. This definitely helps offset the increase in charge time that would’ve resulted given the 43 percent larger 3300 mAh 3.8V (12.54 watt hour) battery.
The HTC One charges a bit faster with the latest updates, however the linear region of the charge curve is entirely dominated by that 1 A charging maximum. With the 1.5 A charging in the One max we actually see considerably faster charge times in spite of the larger battery. HTC continues to use BC 1.2 to the best of my knowledge for signaling.
To assess battery life, I ran the One max through our battery life test suite. Our battery life test is unchanged, we calibrate the display to exactly 200 nits and run it through a controlled workload consisting of a dozen or so popular pages and articles with pauses in between continually, until the device dies. This is repeated on cellular and WiFi, in this case since we have an international model of the One max that lacks the LTE bands used in the USA, that’s 3G WCDMA on AT&T’s Band 2 network. The talk time call test is self explanatory and also unchanged.
The results speak for themselves, the One max lasts quite a long time on battery, even with a large display. I expected the One max to lose to the Note 3 on the cellular test initially, but it posts an impressive result. I suspect display power might be the reason here between AMOLED and the more pragmatic LCD in the One max. I measured the One max with the flip case on as well, and it adds about 20 percent more battery time to the device. I'm curious to see how the USA-bound variants with LTE fare, but the One does impress with excellent battery life.
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Tegeril - Friday, November 1, 2013 - link
I love the way that his opinion (that's a component of reviews) that build quality suffers when SD cards are involved (particularly in the context of *this* device) is not valid but yours is?Spunjji - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
The point is that neither is more valid, but Brian's claiming his is. Ta-daaa!bairlangga - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Dear Brian,Other manufacturer had the solution towards the door and build quality tradeoffs, it is called sd card slot with flap. Pretty please do a review on Xperias line.
chizow - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I've read most of them and still find them off-base. Your arguments about a small demographic are based on what? The entire smartphone market? Honestly, this means about as much as Nokia claiming they held the majority of the cell phone market up until a few years ago, it means very little out of context. It's all about what part of the market you are targeting, for flagship phones and high-end power users, features like microSD and changeable batteries make all the difference that can be a deciding factor in which phone to purchase.Similarly, people who care about aluminum unibody construction are a vast minority, imo, when all I see are people obscuring these case materials in protective cases made of polycarbonate or rubber.
In any case, it is good to see phone makers like HTC One are not taking your opinion as gospel, and instead, listening to their customers in deciding their hardware approaches. It is clear to me that HTC saw how the One was losing to the S4, despite positive reviews declaring the One superior in many categories only to lose in sales due to features like microSD, removable battery, 802.11AC. Coincidentally, I just named the 3 big reasons I bought an S4 instead of the One a few months ago. I fully expect the next iteration to follow the One Max and offer a microSD and removable battery, but we shall see.
rituraj - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
May be HTC were stupid that they had to open the entire phone's back to put that microsd card. What about a slot from the sides. I believe a phone this big has quite a long side. I guess quantum geometry supports me. But yeah, that 1cm slot will destroy the build quality too just like the sim card does.Samwise - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Anandtech, please include the Droid MAXX in you battery life comparisons. Thank you.tuxRoller - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Why don't you have the iDevices storage benched?VengenceIsMineX - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Pretty disappointing product really. No OIS, lesser SOC, and nothing really innovative or even a great price. I'm in the market to optimize down to 1 device from a phone & small tablet to just a phablet but I don't think I'll bother considering the HTC compared to either the Sony or the Lumia 1520.sherlockwing - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
The lack of S800 and OIS are very disappointing, to add the SD slot but not the S800 SOC to enable UHS-I speed for SD card is pretty silly.mregan - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Brian,Did you notice the problem that Zoes included in a highlight video now only show 1 second of motion and then freeze? I've seen that on my One when I upgraded to 4.3 and others have reported the same issue. It really seems like a bug. The highlights become much more static. All the other highlight changes are great but this is a step backward.
Mike R