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
The software side of the One max also changes slightly from the original HTC One. The One max launches running Android 4.3, which as of this writing is the newest version of Android available, although 4.4 KitKat is right on the horizon. In addition the version of HTC’s skin and software suite, Sense, is bumped up to 5.5. The biggest changes in Sense 5.5 are to Blinkfeed, HTC’s newsfeed and home screen replacement, and the computationally generated highlights reel videos. First off, blinkfeed gets improvements that now allow custom topics, RSS, and more control over what items appear. In addition there’s now support for both Instagram and Google+ accounts to surface stories in Blinkfeed.
There’s also a read later feature in the highlights feed. Finally there’s also a way to disable Blinkfeed entirely, previously you could change the primary home screen to a widget panel, in Sense 5.5 this menu has been changed around to allow Blinkfeed to be disabled entirely.
A bunch of features that people originally wanted for the automatically generated highlights reel videos are now incorporated into Sense 5.5 as well. The gallery application it lives inside has been reorganized and is more intuitive now, albums and events views are now a pivot rather than drop down option, likewise the individual views beneath the are pivots. Video highlights now lives in its own pivot as well, and now has a simple picker for choosing what videos, Zoes, or photos the algorithm can select from. There are also more themes, which are entirely new, as well as the ability to select your own music. I’m told the highlights reel engine has been completely rewritten with better textures, film treatments, overlays, and dynamic editing. Subjectively I find the results of the new engine to be much better, where the previous highlights videos would always follow basically the same schedule, the new ones seem much more dynamic and won’t get tiresome nearly as fast.
Animated GIFs are all the rage right now, and HTC has chosen to capitalize on some of that with a GIF creator inside Sense 5.5. From the gallery’s edit menu animated GIFs can be created from continual shooting shots or Zoes.
The notification shade also gets a tweak, and the quick settings inside can now be customized. These settings tiles can now either be rearranged or disabled and swapped out for other ones. There is a simple picker for choosing the 12 you want to appear on the shade.
A new addition among these is a do not disturb function mode which can be toggled either here or from the sound menu. This does what you’d expect and silences incoming calls or notifications and prevents them from making sounds, vibrations, or activating the LED. Selected contacts can still cause a ring, and there’s also a timeout duration option.
A smaller but noteworthy change is that HTC no longer preinstalls Dropbox and gives free storage along with it. Instead of Dropbox, HTC has partnered with Google and gives 50 GB of bonus space with the One max.
There are a few other changes in the Sense 5.5 UI but I’ll get to those in the respective sections. The reality is that UI skins aren’t going away, but after spending a lot of time with Sense 5 I honestly never felt like it was distracting. I was able to live comfortably on the HTC One and One mini with Sense 5 just fine, 5.5 is a good refinement that continues to arguably look very good in a world of increasingly flat UI.
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GruntboyX - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I love how the dimensions are reported in mm. However the screen size is in inches.MercuryStar - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
As an Australian, this is absolutely normal here - we use mm for dimensions of all things except for diagonal screen size which is pretty much always quoted in inches - for everything from laptops to TVs to smartphones.nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I always liked Brian's review for the most part for this time it's getting ridiculous.iPhone 5GS 64GB: $399 w/contract
Galaxy 4S 80GB (16GB+64GB sdXC): $199 w/ contract
Isn't it obvious to see the advantage? If you always have a bunch of 64GB devices around to review (and unlimited LTE) for free you may not know but to us mortals the saving of $200 far exceeds any inconveniences (if all) of managing them.
It's like arguing having only a single SSD storage for laptop is better than SSD+HDD hybrid because the former is faster, lighter and more failproof. Problem is not everyone can purchase 1TB of PCIe SSD, and some people prefer 128 SSD + 1TB HDD setup at a fraction of the cost.
MercuryStar - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I don't think the author is claiming that SD cards slots are bad, just that very few people use them, or would use the added capacity they would provide, thus making them a lower relative priority compared to other things like, in the case of this phone, added thickness and weight of the removable back.Someone else was saying in another comment that carriers who bundled phones with a free SD card in the box found that the majority of people still didn't use the SD card.
chizow - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I guess it never occurred to them that the bundled SD card is basically useless due to it's capacity and not it's utility? I don't use them either but with 2GB storage I can't even use to load a Windows ISO. I leave them in the box too, but replace them with my own 32 or 64GB card.....chizow - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Exactly, it's like all the reviewers out there getting free 128GB iPads to review and totally understanding Apple's position about not including a microSD slot. Yet they don't realize, most people don't want to pay $800-$900 for 128GB of storage and Cellular over the base $500 model....Mr Majestyk - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Why is the Sony Z Ultra missing, much more compelling device to me than One Max? Also why use 4 decimal places on the max brightness? Really, we don't even need a single decimal place for this measure, just round it to nearest integer. Human eye can't tell minute changes in brightness at the bright end, like it can at the dark end.piroroadkill - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Sony are killing it at the moment, in my opinion.By FAR the best mid-range handset for the money is the Xperia SP. At the high end you have the Xperia Z1, then for people who have gorilla hands, the Z Ultra.
All better phones than their counterparts by other manufacturers like HTC or Samsung. Yet, where are the reviews?
synaesthetic - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
The amount of logical fallacies being committed in this comments section is staggering.Personally I'd prefer sdcard slots in my phones, but the reality is most people don't care or don't know or aren't familiar with their use. They're going away, slowly but surely. Samsung and Sony are really the only holdouts, with the exception of bargain-basement budget devices that cut internal eMMC down to 4GB or smaller to keep BOM cost as low as possible.
Those of us who want our phones to be purely functional powerhouses of mobile computing are sadly in the minority, and the market is absolutely a tyranny of the majority.
bairlangga - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Agree. Just snapped a 64gb sdxc uhs1 on my xperia yesterday. Couldn't be much happier ;-)