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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
197 Comments
View All Comments
whatsa - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Yes I have to admit brian has some odd perspectives at times.I find it easier when I remind myself that
" Es not the Messiah! - Es just a naughty naughty BOY!"
Impulses - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
I could see something like Meenova's reader coming a mile away once USB OTG support became common place... I'm just surprised it took a Kickstarter campaign to make it a reality, and that it isn't more popular given this apparent need for removable storage amongst enthusiasts.I also thought we'd see USB OTG flash drives before we saw a USB OTG reader.... Though I guess it wouldn't be much smaller since you can't hide the flash memory inside the male connector itself like some of the full size USB microSD readers do.
UltraTech79 - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link
Stupidly large.jshsimpson1 - Friday, November 15, 2013 - link
most note users do use their pens. I have the note 2 and the spend in one of the reasons I bought it among it being awesome. I love snote and I use it alot. I have a flip case which turns into a stand so that is useful for writing.fokka - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
in the chart comparing the one/mini/max on the first page the mini is stated to have 4x krait 200 cores. as i understand, the mini is dualcore only and looking at the info on this page http://www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon/processors/400i believe it uses krait 300 cores because it's clocked at 1,4ghz.
hangfirew8 - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
As always I really appreciate the depth and clarity of Brian's reviews. I've noticed one thing really missing from all, and perhaps that is because review hardware simply doesn't come with this accessory- car docks are not mentioned. After struggling with a poorly implemented car mode on the HTC Thunderbolt, I am very curious how well it works with the HTC dock. After all, one really good reason to buy a phablet over a normal size phone is that a phablet is the ideal form factor for a satnav app running docked. (Another good reason is to ditch a separate e-reader and just carry one device, not really a flaw in the review but this isn't really mentioned. I'm sure many buyers have this in mind when they buy that really, really big phone.acruhl - Saturday, April 12, 2014 - link
Sorry, I haven't read all posts. I liked the review for the most part. And I see someone was in Tucson to take the video, cool. I'm in Tucson.The HTC one max is my first smart phone (!) and I've been around since the early 70's. I got away with a pay as you go phone and an ipod up until now.
I wanted a bigger phone that could be used more like a laptop in a pinch for a new job I'm getting. I might need a keyboard for cli stuff, and using something like VNC is easier on a bigger, higher resolution screen is better.
For me, lots of this nitpicky stuff doesn't matter. I wanted a high quality, large screen and something I could hold onto reasonably well. The Mega doesn't have the screen quality. The Note is built around the stylus which I won't use. The SD card slot helps because I want to store all 30+ gigs of my music plus a few more gigs of videos (work related) on the phone. Not possible with the internal storage and software build.
Can someone explain to me why CPU speed is so important on a phone? For my laptop/home computer, the only thing I need CPU for is games or if I need a virtual machine to get a certain type of job done. Otherwise, I can wait, it's not a big deal. Even the virtual machine using my CPU isn't a huge problem, I'm patient :)
Tech for tech's sake is not productive. I haven't needed a faster CPU in my laptop or home computer for years. Memory, sure :)
The deal breaker for me on this HTC is the rattling vibration feedback. Holy cow, what were they thinking? But I don't like the other big phones so I have to decide if I can live with it.