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
Cellular
Cellular on the One max is pretty much the same story as the One, and another shared bullet point. The top and bottom metal cutouts are still the radiative surfaces of the antenna, and there’s still transmit and receive diversity as well to mitigate any unwarranted antenna detuning from holding the device. The unit I was sampled has LTE banding for EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), but there’s appropriate banding for Asia, Sprint (a tri-mode device with 800/1900 MHz and TDD-LTE on 2600 MHz) and Verizon (700 MHz and AWS), according to the HTC specs page.
The baseband inside the One max is again shared with the One (Qualcomm’s 2nd generation multimode LTE MDM9x15 family), although the One max does have a bit more band support for the USA LTE on Sprint and Verizon, so the front ends are different.
WiFi
Interestingly enough with the One max we see HTC going to Qualcomm Atheros for the WLAN and BT combo, best I can tell this is the WCN3680 which is probably a bit cheaper to include than the BCM4335 we saw in the One. It’s still a single spatial stream 802.11ac capable part, meaning a PHY rate of up to 433 Mbps if you’re in the right channel conditions with 80 MHz channels on 5 GHz. The WCN3680 combo is the 802.11ac successor to WCN3660 which we saw in a number of phones last generation, and is accelerated by the SoC. WCN3680 also does BT 4.0, and FM Rx/Tx if applicable.
To test throughput on the One max I used iPerf the same way I have for a while now. Subjectively there are no complaints from me about WLAN connectivity on the One max, no random dropouts or issues, and Sense 5.5 thankfully still includes the WiFi frequency band manual selection option.
I saw the WCN3680 solution inside Moto X already, it’s interesting to see it in the One max. I believe the One mini uses its 802.11n cousin, WCN3660 as well, probably again for cost reasons.
Speakerphone
Although Beats is gone since that partnership has ended as of the One max, the device still seems to retain everything that made it sound great. There are still the larger-than-typical speaker chambers, big speaker grilles on the top and bottom, stereo sound, and importantly the TFA9887 speaker amplifier and protection part from NXP. In addition there’s still the TPA6185 headphone amplifier as well.
Beats always seemed to be an audio compressor that ran on the DSP, ostensibly through the Hexagon DSP access program or something, and that’s what’s absent on the One max. There’s no toggle under settings for enabling or disabling it, nor the Beats branding, but to be honest I almost always disabled Beats on the One anyways since it was a fair amount louder with it disabled. What made the One great was all the hardware behind the speakers, not so much the software compressor.
The One max goes plenty loud just like the original One. I went ahead and added the One mini and 5s to the chart too, just to check whether things have changed much, in addition to the Galaxy S 4 and Note 3. The One max basically performs like the One with Beats turned off, which isn’t a surprise since it isn’t there anymore. There’s also no detectable saturation, and the One line remains the only device that doesn’t sound tinny or rattly with overemphasized highs and lacking mids. I suspect the A weighting I selected a while ago for measuring might be a contributing factor as well. Either way you’re not going to be wanting for more loudness on the One max, and the inclusion of front firing stereo speakers makes for a completely different listening experience.
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smartypnt4 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
One thing people always brag about on Android is consumer choice. If Samsung more fits your needs, more power to you. But I fail to see how removing one of the top tier Android phone manufacturers is a good thing. I don't want any one company to be massively ahead of the rest in market share, because I believe some competition is a good thing and prevents companies from resting on their previous success and putting out crap new products.Say what you will about mircoSD slots. Personally, I don't store much on my phone anyway, so it's not a big deal to me. But please don't espouse the absurd opinion that removing players from the Android space will in any way improve it.
smartypnt4 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Shit. On my phone. Did not mean to reply to you, but rather the guy you commented on. My bad.JeffFlanagan - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
>Shit. On my phone.OK, but you're going to need a new phone.
nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
HTC one is a nice device but it has too many deal breakers for me and more (no micro sd, sealed battery, almost non-repairable, terrible QC, low-resolution camera)They basically shot their own feet, trying the apple way, while being no apple.
smartypnt4 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Clearly you missed my point. I'm not interested in arguing the merits of a removable battery or microSD card slot. All I'm saying is that dude needs to chill out. If the Android space is truly about choice, what do you care what HTC does as long as SOMEONE makes the phone you want. In this case, HTC's phones this year clearly don't meet your needs/requirements, and that's fine. Saying they shot themselves in the foot is a bit harsh, though. I know several people who bought HTC Ones over SGS4's simply because of how the thing felt when they held the device. Say what you will about specs, features, etc., but not everyone values the same things you do. Hard to accept, I know. But my good lord. Are you really so shortsighted as to believe that the general population gives a rat's ass about removable batteries, SD card slots, phone repairability (wtf?), anecdotal evidence of bad QC, and a camera that makes heavy tradeoffs (in this case, IQ for low-light performance)?Not everyone has exactly the same desires or needs as you. Which is the beauty of the Android space: people have the luxury of choice, which you only get with multiple manufacturers competing in the same space.
/endrant
nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
So the device w/o micro sd slot is effectively $100-200 more expensive than device with one.iPhone 5s 64GB: $399 w/contract, total storage 64GB
S4 16GB + 64GB sdxc : around $200 w/contract, total storage 80GB
I know companies prefer to removing the slot to sell the high capacity devices with greater margin (BOM difference of 16GB and 64GB devices is almost negligible) but why we consumers blindly follow what they are doing?
MKy - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I can understand Apple there. Adding an SD card slot would be adding a means for the user to completely ruin the experience. Internal flash of my Ipad 4 reads/writes about 160MB/s, don't know about the newer models. A cheap SD card reads about 4 MB/s, writes even worse. So imagine running apps off it or using it as data storage. Would be painful.Spunjji - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Simple solution: Refuse to support cheap-ass storage. Validate some cards and support those, refuse app installation to SD. My 64GB Micro SDXC benches faster than most phone NAND... it cost me £40.kyuu - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I haven't been able to find any actual data on the storage performance of the iPad 4 (or any iPad for that matter), but I find your 160MB/s number rather unlikely. The storage used in iPads is the same used in iPhones, to the best of my knowledge, which isn't very fast.MKy - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Actually it is that fast. You can find benchmarking tools in the app store and even measure it by hand - open a say 5 gig video in one app and then choose open in another, then count the seconds it takes to copy it over (the delay after issuing the command) and calculate. The flash in iphone 5 is about the same speed.