The Feel

The device fits in my hand comfortably, although not easily to use one handed as I mentioned above. I've been using it in the silicone case, and I have no issues with that - it gives the edges a curve meaning I'm not subject to something sharper such as the Galaxy S6 Edge or One M9. Actually more often than not I'm playing with the case when bored, flicking it off at the edge and reattaching it, in some weird sense of being therapeutic. People who are used to small or light phones are going to notice a difference here as it certainly isn't either of those, but neither are excessive. There's a reason the 7 inch P8 max smartphone sells well in China, for example.

Audio quality is satisfactory on the H1 - my use case for this as of late has involved taking it into the bathroom and leaving it on the side playing music while I shower. This way if I know how long the track is, I can ensure I don't spend too in there if I'm in a hurry. I place the single speaker facing a wall to act as an odd form of amplification, and it only needs to be at around 90% volume to be over the sound of the water. That being said, there is a jump up in the last 5%, causing some minor distortion. As anecdotal as that seems, if you're playing something to a group of people in a noisy environment, it is worth noting. I've mainly been playing melodic or 8-bit speed metal and the clarity at reasonable volume levels are not degraded by a fast paced tune.

Phone call connection quality is also good, despite the fact that I live in an area that seems to have lead paint in the walls. Using it both for audio calls through the air or Skype video calls over Wi-Fi while on business trips came through without issue.

The Camera

On the camera side, of course we weren't expecting anything great and my own results confirm that. Based on my broken DSLR, I was left with the H1 as my photography device for the recent SuperComputing 15 conference. In the interests of taking pictures to as reference material it was good, as long as I was sitting in the first few rows. In the varied light of the show floor, bad light photos were pretty junk even after post processing in Windows but in light photographs were satisfactory for publication.

For home use, in natural light, the camera provided a much nicer response, giving shots suitable for family albums assuming the subject was still. Cue pictures of cats, food, the theatre and a bookshop (click through for full resolution):


Cat One: Summer


Home-made Marshmallows


London Coliseum, before The Nutcracker


Carturesti Carusel, A Bookshop in Bucharest, Romania


Cat Two: Cici

The camera software is the standard android app, and with the H1 it is noticeably slow when taking an image. Focusing is noticably longer than a high end device but if you need to capture one photo in an ongoing scene, it is best to hold down and take up to 40 continuous photographs and then delete most of them. The camera does come with a form of EIS which is great, but the stability range is limited, making a burst capture of at least 2 or 3 required to get the best shot. There are motion capture modes, as well as beautify and panorama also. With Lightroom now free for Android, at least basic photo editing can be done almost immediately.

For an image comparison, I took photographs of three scenes using the devices at my disposal (caution, large images). It is worth noting that the HTC One Max I have suffers from the purple effect, due to the image low-light amplifiers burning out on some early models.

The Competition Other Devices to Hand




The Competition Other Devices to Hand





The Competition Other Devices to Hand




A quick note on the rest of the software - despite the origins of the phone, mine came with an English based kernel / OS. I changed the default home screen to Google Now (because I'm using it a fair bit these days) and all of my usual software and games (Kairosoft, naturally) including Fallout Shelter seem to work and can be switched between easily using the long press on the home button. I have noticed in the past month two apps that seem to close without an error message - it happened once after a crop in Lightroom that involved rotation, and any time I want to start TrickShot. I'm not sure if this is a compatibility issue based on the OS, the platform or the chipset, but I was expecting the H1 to handle it properly.

The Video

At this point the 16GB storage on the device hasn't become a burden, perhaps due to the microSD. Pictures come out at ~2MB each and videos at just over 1MB a second using the fine detail settings (720p) saved in 3gp format. From what I have read, the video mode on the H1 gets a lot of criticism due to the low quality or the EIS being very basic. It's true it's not the best to capture long lasting memories on, because at distance there is not much detail and requires a good light source, but it's more of an add on than a focal point.

For video comparisons, the garden and night-time road scenes were used for motion and static video:

The Competition Other Devices to Hand





The Competition Other Devices to Hand




Visual Inspection Benchmarks
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  • shabby - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    Perhaps we should stop calling these phones since only one sentence is used to describe its calling ability.
  • Mushkins - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    To be fair, what else do you need in a review of a voice call? Either it sounds like you're talking through a tube full of muddy squirrels or it sounds like a cell phone quality voice call (aka tolerable but not great). Getting into technical metrics of sound quality for a voice call is overkill for a consumer-focused review of a smartphone.
  • aggiechase37 - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    See I have to disagree here. If I want drive by, non specific reviews I would go to something like PCmag, where everything is, "seemed fine to me." Drivel. I come to Anandtech because I want in depth reviews. I do wish the call quality portion of the review was more in depth. I use my phone for a lot of business as well, and having the other person perceive my call quality as being crapola is a very important consideration for me. Dear Anandtech, please spend more time on call quality in your reviews. Please!?!?
  • raja_jagadeesan - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    I might agree with aggiechase. I actually find anandtech's cell phone reviews pretty outstanding. But adding more technical metrics or objective measures of call quality would really add value, I think. Partly because it is so hard to find elsewhere. My wife complains about her call quality and I sometimes wonder how to differentiate whether we need a new service or a new phone or if it is the Wi-Fi calling that is at issue, etc. More technical analysis of actual call quality and calling experience would be very useful.
  • Ian Cutress - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    Hi aggiechase37,

    I'm not the typical smartphone reviewer, as you might imagine from this review. It was originally going to be a hands on piece, like my previous One max piece (link below), but 750 words quickly became 3000 as I explored more aspects of the phone. It wasn't intended to be a full blown expose such as what we normally do, especially given the scale of the device, partly because I don't have the tools but also it's more an experiential test than anything else.

    -Ian

    My previous One max road test: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7551/a-month-with-th...
  • jjj - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    The most important metric would be signal strength and nobody can be bothered to test that since blaming the carrier for dropped calls instead of the phone maker is easier.. The most reliable public info is this (in danish) http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/penge/kontant/saa-daarlig... or in English try this http://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_6s_reception_...
  • saratoga4 - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    That would be an extraordinarily difficult test to perform accurately and in a way that was fair to devices with different types of radios. Even simple antenna testing (disconnected from a radio) is complex, testing an antenna, a radio, and firmware is probably beyond the means review sites.
  • jjj - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    Yes and no, you can try to do your best and achieve reasonable results with limited resources.
    A little data is a lot better than no data at all.
  • jjj - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link

    Nowadays it helps that you can buy very cheap Chinese tools from places like Aliexpress. Sure a 100$ tool is not as good as a 5k$ tool but can be decent in many cases.
  • Notmyusualid - Sunday, December 27, 2015 - link

    It would still be very useful information!

    Keep it simple, test each phone in a number of fixed locations, at a specific time of day for each handset (to keep the network load 'fixed'), and run your call / data tests.

    Repeat all the above on a 2.5hr+ train journey (similar to how the Japanese test theirs) to monitor call hand-off etc too...

    A pattern will nevertheless emerge of who makes the most sensitive receivers, and as you allude to - how the total package ends up working.

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