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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PC Perv - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Hah. At least you are being honest here. Of course you won't review anything unless you get it for free. (and then some)Black Obsidian - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
This isn't the glory days of the dot-com boom. Few (if any) sites have the kind of budget that allows them to go out and buy whatever random devices their readership expects them to review.I'm sure that Brian would consider reviewing your favored device if you wanted to send him one, though.
JMFL - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Mostly decent review, except in my opinion Brian's equivocation regarding the finger print sensor in comparison to Apple's. To be fair Brian stated that the One Max sensor is "further from perfection than Apple's", however from reading the rest of the text, one could come to the conclusion that in the grand scheme of things the HTC's and Apple's sensors are more similar than not.I would hazard to guess that in 6 months time, most Iphone 5S users will be using the fingerprint scanner. I don't think the same will be said for the HTC Once Max sensor.
ddriver - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
It doesn't really matter what apple does, everything apple does is amazing because it is done by apple by default. IIRC the review at engadget: "note 3 - cheap plastic - product sucks" and then "iphone 5c - amazing plastic - product rocks".Things have come to a point you cannot really expect honesty from review sites, no matter how "trusted" they themselves claim to be.
Fingerprint readers are a government sponsored scam to build fingerprint databases for god knows what ill purposes, glad I got the note 3 as it looks like the note 4 will have a fingerprint sensor as well. Fingerprints are considered lower security level than even passwords, a password is in the brain, a fingerprint can be extracted from everything you touch.
blacks329 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
People perceive (whether correctly or incorrectly) that rigidity in their phone means it is a more durable device and that the rigidity give a better in hand feel.The iPhone 5C feels really solid, like the Lumia's, there's no flex. So I can understand the merits of claiming "cheap" plastic.
steven75 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
It doesn't matter how many times you tell this to ddriver. He has made up his mind that material usage is a binary thing.Spunjji - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
"For the incredibly small percentage of users that clamors for an SD card every single smartphone launch, it’s at least one point which won’t be belabored so tiresomely this time."Gee, thanks for making me feel like a dick for not wanting to pony up £80 for £10 worth of low performing NAND.
We get it, you don't think these things are worthwhile. That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. That doesn't justify a paragraph of text dedicated to mocking and marginalising a chunk of your readership. It devalues your opinion.
themossie - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Agreed. Brian, you write superb reviews but that has no place here.kmmatney - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I agree. I've been an iPhone user for 4 years, but switched to the Optimus G Pro (also a huge 5.5" phone) and one of the draws was expanding the storage. It's a big enough phone to be able to read work instructions quite easily, so I have a lot of PDFs and documents on it, as well as 20GB of music. More storage never hurts. I didn't have too much trouble filling up my 32GB iPhone. I can live without it, but if choosing between 2 phones, and one has it and noe doesn't, you might as well buy the phone with more options.Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
See my above comment, the reality is that it is a very tiny part of the market, and an exceptionally loud one.-Brian