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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chizow - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Couldn't have written it better myself, I'll be honest and say I haven't read through an entire one of Brian Klug's reviews but if they were all filled with this kind of distorted reality transposed to the general populous, I probably wasn't missing much.Simply put, microSD opens up uses that base model 16GB phone users could never dream of using for their phones. For example, I recently had 2 large family events during the same weekend, took multiple movies at full 1080p on my SGS4 with a UHS-I microSD and captured around 25GB of footage. Never could I have done this with my 16GB Apple 4S, nor would I even attempted to do it.
And what would the other option be? Pay 2x as much for 16GB more? No thanks, not when I can just move my microSD card from one phone to the next and not get fleeced on extra storage every time I buy a new device, with my own money (seems to be a key point lost upon Brian, anyways).
seapeople - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
So let's see... I'm a budget conscious consumer who is shopping for a smartphone that I'm going to keep for 4 years because I'm too cheap to upgrade sooner. My options are 16GB phone + microSD card for a total four year price of $3600, or a 64GB phone with faster native storage for a total four year price of $3760.Can't you see why it's absolutely ridiculous how you microSD shills freak out over such a pointless little feature? Just buy the overpriced flash storage and forget about it, it's barely a bump in the road for someone who's paying for a smart phone data plan anyway.
Spunjji - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
Nice work, that straw man was totally asking for it and boy did you give it to him. You're such a big man.tipoo - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I do like the cheating table of shame there, but I also worry that this would just make the cheating more sophisticated, with phones being able to detect apps even with renames and hide their clock speeds etc.FalcomPSX - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
just how big are phones going to get before people realize how absolute ridiculous it looks holding a tablet sized device up to your ear? Something the size of the original htc one is just about right.AssBall - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Its more ridiculous watching someone hold a tiny phone 8 inches from their face so they can see what it says and push the tiny buttons. I'll take a larger phone any day. Easier to use, harder to lose, good battery, nice screen size.MikePCUser - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Comparison videos between the One Max and the One on YouTube also show the MICROPHONE is decidedly inferior on the One Max. I wish you had tested that as well!chizow - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Brian, while you are certainly entitled to your opinion of every aspect of the smartphone market, I think you need to take a step back and realize not everyone is in your situation and receives free phones for review or a product budget for AT to buy review samples.I think your comments with regard to SD cards in particular are off target, as it is an important feature for many users who do not want to pay exorbitant amounts for miniscule increments of storage. 128GB models if some popular phones like the iPhone 5S literally double the on-contract price vs a 64GB SD card that sells for 50 bucks.
Contrary to what you have said, the fact the One Max's inclusion of an SD slot along with myriad other Android and Windows tabs and phones illustrates SD slots are NOT going the way of the dodo. Hopefully companies do not take your opinions on the matter as fact.
Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Please read my above comments about SD cards, the reality is that the demographic that uses them is a lot smaller than you'd think.Also there's no 128 GB iPhone 5S, just 64 GB.
The context everyone is missing is that I would not trade an SD card slot for the removable door and build quality tradeoffs it brings.
-Brian
10101010 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
What you present regarding SD cards and build quality tradeoffs is largely a false dichotomy based on your own biases regarding particular aspects of "build quality".Take for example, the Sony Xperia Z Ultra. It's about the same size as the One Max and offers SD card expansion. Many reviewers have positively commented on the build quality of this device, even noted that it offers water and dust resistance. A more insightful reviewer would realize that it isn't the SD card that is responsible the particular issues you have with build quality, it is the fact that the phone wasn't designed well to begin with.
Of course, you would probably still disparage all the purchasers of this device for wanting flexible affordable local storage and find some way to disparage the device for poor build quality anyway. After all, biasing people away from flexible and cheap local storage and towards expensive and easily data-mined in-cloud storage is what your corporate masters want, isn't it?
If we look at your shallow view of "build quality", then it becomes even more obvious that there is a false dichotomy. You don't spend much time balancing how easy it is to repair a device vs. how it is built. You don't balance the fact that many phones with removable back covers have replaceable batteries. Nor do you balance the additional radiation going into someone's head because a phone is made of metal. Essentially, you are looking at a few aspects of something that resonate with your biases and proclaiming some judgment that SD cards are bad for phones and that the people who want SD cards are some sort of small, unimportant, and obnoxious minority.
Even if you continue to push your biases in your "reviews", maybe it's time for a bit more honesty? You can still write a good review if you say "I just don't like SD cards because it's hard for me to manage removable local storage".