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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
197 Comments
View All Comments
steven75 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
You realize that Google itself dropped SD support from Android, right? Something Brian has mentioned numerous times, yet here you are again making the claim that "Apple is perfection" like a true troll.PC Perv - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
And you have no issue with OEMs charging extra $100 per each incremental storage size? Sure you get free phones and lots other perks so perhaps that is why you are so understanding of the OEMs. But have you thought about this nonsense from consumers' point of view?I am guessing no. Every other pages are filled with the author's worry and concern about OEM's margins or market share. Why do you care? Why should I care about their cost savings? This has been the trend of this site for a long time. Unbelievable amount of corporate favoritism plus unapologetic ignorance on users.
rabidkevin - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I'm sorry, but you make zero sense.sherlockwing - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
You can purchase 13000 mAh External battery packs for $37 weighing 0.9lbs, a far better option than a extra battery for GS4.Dentons - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
And I can purchase 4, 3100 mAh Galaxy Note II batteries for about half that. All 4 together weigh just .47 pounds (54 grams each, 0.11 lbs each)All together, the four of them take up less space than any external battery pack I've ever seen. If I'm only going to be gone overnight, I need only take 1 spare. With all 4 and the battery in the phone, I can usually operate for a solid week without recharging once.
A user replaceable battery is also a hedge against the planned obsolescence of built-in batteries. Batteries wear out, the have a very finite number of cycles. A battery that will no longer hold a charge is one of the leading reasons consumers buy new phones.
User replaceable batteries and micorSD are as much about reducing consumer costs as anything else. It isn't difficult to see why reviewers awash in a torrent of new, free, phones aren't particularly enamored in these features. They don't use phones for 2+ years. They don't pay for the larger memory models. They don't wear out batteries.
chizow - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Agree with pretty much everything you've written in all of your replies. The fact that this comment section is dominated by comments disagreeing with Brian's position on microSD should say something, but I doubt it will have any lasting impact on his opinion of the matter.It's a good thing device makers seem to be going in the opposite direction, all I see now are devices adding the functionality.
superflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Alinsky tactics.Attack the messenger when the message is not what you want to hear.
Grow up.
Gadgety - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
It's funny - when reading negative comments on HTC phones these days I can't help but think it's Samsung sponsored comments (BTW I have a Samsung phone).ddriver - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I wish samsung paid me :) Dunno about paid comments, but there sure are a lot of paid reviews, and I don't mean paid by samsung,I think negative comments towards this device are well justified, it goes beyond the reasonable size and hardware is ... previous gen at best. Given all this space to cram components in, this phone should have been much, much better. Alas, htc is no samsung that produces everything and no apple to exploit fanatical brand loyalty, so the only way to keep profit margins decent while keeping the price "reasonable" is to offer cheaper and slightly out-of-date hardware.
Sm0kes - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
He's not talking about the validity of the criticism, but instead the relentless "shill" type comments that constantly bring up Samsung in every discussion.FYI - Samsung was being investigated by the Taiwan's FTC back in April for paying student "shills" to slam HTC and advocate for Samsung on tech review sites. Google for the link. It's pretty clear Samsung's marketing is pretty scummy.