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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RYF - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
The problem with the relentless rant of commenters with regard of the requirement of the SD card is that they have, in fact, ignored the reality that all will want to stuff their phones with media.My anecdotal observations in my social circle show that they do not need 16GB/32GB+64Gb of storage. It is good to have but they do not need it. And I have received complaints from SGS3 user that the 16GB built in memory has caused a great deal of problems in game app installtion as these apps are not transferrable to SD card.
The demands for SD card slot is okay. There are many phones out there to choose from. But to condemn Brian for expressing his thoughts and to criticitizing the every device manufacturers out there not to have the SD card slot is definitely irrational. We have choices here. And we should respect the different choices.
Sm0kes - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Agreed. Expandability is a feature that many value. I personally don't. To each their own.willis936 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Love the review. I hadn't even heard of this phone coming out.I know it's a bit much to ask this but could you start doing a more intensive audio benchmark suite on phones and tablets? It's very often overlooked but a lot of people will use the devices they keep on them as sources (usually pull down from the cloud) and THD+N and response numbers and graphs would be very helpful in making decisions.
cheinonen - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
We have something in the works for this. Hopefully it happens soon, because it will be awesome when it does.synaesthetic - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Output impedance PLEASE.Impulses - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
+1000ZeDestructor - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Still no review of any Sony gear....Any news on that Brian?
Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I'll review it when they send it, still got nothing.-Brian
Myrandex - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Too bad that statement doesn't apply to new Nokia phones :/superflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
The phone for the 1%.Yeah, everybody's dying to hear about another Windows fail phone