Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/7455/htc-one-max-review-its-huge



Big phones are all the rage right now. Although tablets promised the kind of extra screen real estate that would increase productivity while still retaining portability, there’s ultimately nothing more likely to be on your person than a phone. I wager that at least some of the success of the supersized smartphone form factor is still that a phone is ultimately always on your person, while a tablet still isn’t.

Today we’re looking at HTC’s newest member of its flagship One series, and its largest, the aptly named One max. Although HTC has been no stranger to larger display form factors (remember how big the HD2 seemed back in 2009?), the One max is to my knowledge the largest smartphone HTC has ever made, eclipsed only by the short lived HTC Flyer and Jetstream tablets. In the HTC phone portfolio, it’s easily the largest smartphone they’ve ever made, and that’s noteworthy.

The strategy for HTC’s One lineup seems to have been a simple one, differentiated by display size and form factor. We saw the flagship, dare I say midsized HTC One come first, then the smaller, lower end HTC One mini, and finally the huge HTC One max.

At a high level this strategy is pretty basic - offer three form factor options that yield almost the same experience. All three are predominately metal and share roughly the same industrial design notes, featuring an aluminum backside with top and bottom notches for antennas, center mounted camera, and LED flash. On the front, big stereo speaker grilles at the top and bottom, and the same button arrangement, just back and home.

I never had a problem locating the power button on the One, but then again I apparently have longer fingers than most. The power button moves down below the volume rocker on the One max, which does make sense since using your thumb to actuate power naturally positions your index finger right next to the fingerprint scanner.

I have no complaints about the buttons on the One max, they seem different somehow but still are communicative and don’t rattle around.

Up top there’s the headphone jack and IR port, which is slightly recessed. It isn’t the power button this time, just an IR window.

  HTC One mini HTC One HTC One max
Height 132 mm 137 mm 164.5 mm
Width 63.2 mm 68 mm 82.5 mm
Thickness 9.25 mm 9.3 mm 10.29 mm
Mass 122 grams 143 grams 217 grams
Display Size 4.3-inch 4.7-inch 5.9-inch
Display Resolution 1280 x 720 1920 x 1080 1920 x 1080
SoC 1.4 GHz Snapdragon 400
(4x Krait 200)
1.7 GHz Snapdragon 600
(4x Krait 300)
1.7 GHz Snapdragon 600
(4x Krait 300)
Camera 4 MP F/2.0 Ultrapixel with LED 4 MP F/2.0 Ultrapixel with OIS and LED 4 MP F/2.0 Ultrapixel with LED
Battery 1800 mAh, 3.8V, 6.84 Whr 2300 mAh, 3.8V, 8.74 Whr 3300 mAh, 3.8V, 12.54 Whr
WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
Storage 16 GB NAND 32 GB NAND 32 GB NAND + microSD

If the dynamic range in size between the One mini and One is a 2 on an arbitrary scale of 1–10, the dynamic range between the One and One max is at least a 9. While the One mini really isn’t that much smaller than the normal One, the One max lives up to its namesake in a dramatic fashion. It’s positively huge, it literally is the One design taken to the max. The One max makes the Note 3 feel almost normal by comparison, and the entire normal sized 5-inch smartphone demographic feel downright small.

The One max is definitely a two-hand device, one handing it is difficult if not impossible, although I doubt that was anyone’s goal for this thing. It’s big in 2D dimensions, and it’s also somewhat heavy, at 217 grams, but I guess that’s expected given the material choices.

What’s interesting about the One max is that the truth is that its design is a lot more like a vastly larger One mini than it is the original One. We saw the mini come after the One and bring a plastic lip rather than the gorgeous diamond-machined edge that the One had, partly for cost reasons, partly for survivability when dropped on a hard surface. Truth be told, I can understand the rationale for having a plastic ring around the device and it making drops and blemishes a bit less destructive. I filed my HTC One down after a drop to my tile floor dented the chamfered edge a bit. The tradeoff however is that you’re now touching more plastic than metal.

I was initially turned off by the glossy plastic ring around the One mini, but if that was what had to take a hit to make the One mini the right price point for HTC to sell into operators and still make money, I was willing to deal with it. I’ll leave discussion of the faux-metal plastic speaker grille on the One mini for another day, which thankfully the One max doesn’t have.

Anyhow the One max inherits the same plastic ring around the edge design that the One mini debuted with. The polymer has been changed slightly, it’s a more matte, grittier finish that makes it a bit grippier and less chintzy feeling than the One mini’s slippery, glossy finish. The One max also includes aluminum speaker grilles, not the faux-metal plastic cutouts that adorn the One mini.


Now you also won't be able to unsee it (lines added to show asymmetry)

Let’s talk about the speaker grilles for a moment. What I loved about the original One design was how balanced everything felt. The polymer strips required for the antenna array carried over to the front and felt logical, it seemed like each cut had a purpose. On the One max however, I can’t get over how the speaker grille dots aren’t lined up and symmetrical at top. Something bugged me about the One max’s appearance for a few days until I noticed exactly what didn’t seem balanced anymore, so there’s that. I hesitate to make a big deal about it, but it might be a microcosm of what’s really weird about the One max.

The One max also takes a nod from a few of the Asian variants of HTC One which featured a removable back to accommodate two SIMs (when necessary) and a microSD card slot. The One max makes the removable back and microSD card slot standard, in addition to eschewing a SIM tray and enabling design commonality when dual SIM is necessary. What it doesn’t add is a removable battery, since HTC continues its use of a pyramid-like stack of display, battery, and PCB. Peel up the label and you’ll find out you’re looking at the top of some EMI cans and shielding rather than a battery, validating that. At the bottom of the HTC One max there’s no longer a Beats Audio silkscreen (since that partnership is over), instead just blank empty space. The nice thing about having the removable door is that the regulatory markings are on the inside, there’s no laser etched part and model text on the bottom third of the One max.

There’s a small slider on the left side of the One max which pops the removable door open, it then hinges and comes off completely.

There’s definitely a tradeoff associated with this approach though. For starters, although there isn’t much flex or play in the door after it’s attached, it requires a lot of effort to make sure the door is completely seated when re-attached. In addition there’s definitely a gap at top and bottom, which is unfortunate given HTC’s narrative about zerogap construction for the original One.

The only caveat is that the One max myself and a few others were sampled was in fact a PVT (Production Validation Test) as marked, so it’s possible the door is being slightly tweaked, but I doubt it’ll change much. I’ve said my part already on microSD cards and the fact that they’re going the way of the dodo in smartphones, I just don’t need one anymore, and definitely not at the expense of build quality. It is convenient not having to use a SIM ejector tool though, even if I carry one around all the time anyways. 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.

In a lot of ways the construction of the One max is more like the One mini, and I fear that comes hand in hand with making what was an expensive design (the One) profitable, something HTC does need. It still is premium and combines metal and plastic in a pleasing way, but there clearly were tradeoffs on the road to the One max.

The One max isn’t so much a phablet as it is a huge phone. I don’t know if the supersized phone market is quite mature enough to really tell what the defining properties for a phablet are yet, but the scaled up One design makes the One max feel like a huge phone. HTC doesn’t go for an active digitizer and slide-out stylus with the One max, there’s an optional capacitive stylus that’s a standalone accessory, and the scribble application I’ll get to in a bit. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that approach quite honestly (I wager not many Note users actually use the stylus), it’s just something to note.

HTC Power Flip Case

HTC also sampled their new battery case, which is like the flip case we saw for the One but includes a battery in the screen cover portion. Think the Surface’s new Power Cover, but for the HTC One max. The power flip case uses three pogo pins to connect the battery directly to the One max, it’s what the pogo pads on the back of the phone are for. The case snaps on around the perimeter of the One max, and the front portion folds over the display, just like the flip case. The units we were sampled weren’t final however, and had some issues with proper fit, although fit should be rectified in the final version.

The battery isn’t huge, at 1210 mAh and 3.75V (4.53 watt-hours), but it does give a boost as I’ll show in the battery section. It also does add weight what is already an unmistakably heavy phone, and makes using the fingerprint scanner a bit more awkward.

When the power flip case is attached you get a small plus sign on the battery symbol in the status bar. I’m not sure how this actually works in practice, as the One max seems to draw from both the internal battery and the external battery at the same time, rather than using the external battery to charge the internal one. It does boost battery life however.



The One max joins a small but growing list of phones that include a fingerprint scanner for unlocking the device. I’ll leave the discussion about whether fingerprints are fundamentally usernames or passwords for another day, but fingerprint scanners seem to be in vogue right now for mobile phones. You could make the case that the perceived increase in security that comes with fingerprint scanners is both an enterprise or consumer play, again I’ll leave that philosophical discussion for another day. I remember the Motorola Atrix and its fingerprint scanner being a big deal a while ago, since then we’ve had the iPhone 5s dramatically reintroduce the fingerprint scanner and now the One max follow suit.

The One max fingerprint sensor is a swipe type, meaning there’s some kind of strip sensor inside that you swipe your finger across. Sliding your finger over this strip allows the module to scan a 2D region and extract features that are then used to identify a fingerprint. The One max hides this scanner inside a black square that’s slightly recessed on the back of the device, just beneath the camera. I’m reminded somewhat of the LG G2 and its rear-mounted power and volume buttons which also sit just beneath the rear-facing camera. Perhaps that’s a missed opportunity for LG, which could have also gone with a swipe type sensor in its power button. On the One max anyhow there’s no button, just the sensor. Although the fingerprint sensor is recessed slightly, it’s somewhat difficult to locate with just one’s index finger, something that results in inadvertent smudging of the rear-facing camera cover glass, something that didn’t happen as much with the G2 because there’s a larger lip and easily locatable bump.

The placement of the fingerprint sensor makes sense given that of the power button. As stated earlier for right handed users this means your index finger sits naturally near the sensor if your thumb is on the power button. Since the fingerprint button still requires activation to unlock the One max, you still need to press power to turn it on before you can swipe your finger and finally unlock it. I find myself wishing the fingerprint sensor was itself a button, something like the iPhone 5s, so unlocking could be as simple as pressing and swiping with the same finger. On the iPhone 5s the best activation pattern is pressing the home button and leaving the finger in contact with the button.

 

Setup requires you to set a passcode, after which a few training swipes trains the sensor for the finger you’ve chosen. Although the animation that plays shows the finger aligned along the long axis of the phone, for greater accuracy I trained the One max with my finger at the angle it would naturally be given my thumb on the power button. The only requirement given the swipe sensor is that the slide motion is straight down and not skewed.

 

The One max fingerprint sensor allows for up to 3 fingers to be paired, each able to either unlock or have the option of both unlocking and launching an application. I like the idea of fingerprints as shortcuts, something the iPhone 5s implementation lacks, but three fingers seems like a curiously low number given the ten digits humans have to work with. On the other hand, the placement of the button really limits you to middle and index fingers being viable options. In terms of functionality, although Apple doesn’t yet use fingerprints as shortcuts, Apple does use the fingerprint scanner to authenticate iTunes, iBooks, and App Store purchases, something HTC can’t quite do with the One max for Google Play purchases, at least until Google makes an API for it.

I initially trained the fingerprint sensor with my index finger being swiped straight down, and had some issues with unlocks requiring multiple swipes. Doing finger enrollment and training at an angle closer to how I actually swipe it naturally (at an angle) made the accuracy better, but the reality is that unlocking the One max still requires multiple tries more often than not. There isn’t much processing latency after a scan, but I had hoped the One max sensor would be tap and hold rather than swipe given its shape. I’m not clear what suppliers are involved for the sensor, but I’m told the One max also securely stores just the extracted features and not the fingerprint images (which is a no brainer). I haven’t delved much into the infrastructure used to secure the fingerprint features yet either. I’m also not sure whether the One max learns additional parts of the finger which wasn’t part of initial training the same way Apple’s does.

Although I don’t think anyone has totally nailed the fingerprint sensor yet on a device, the One max implementation definitely is further from perfection than Apple’s. Although it does work reasonably well, it still isn’t the transparent kind of convenience that I feel will compel users who ordinarily wouldn’t have to used a passcode to go and use the fingerprint scanner. I’ve continued using the fingerprint scanner on the One max, however.



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.



The performance section is probably a good place to talk about one of the elephants in the room, and that’s the SoC inside the One max. The One max includes a Snapdragon 600 APQ8064T SoC, which consists of 4 Krait 300 cores running at up to 1.7 GHz, and Adreno 320 GPU, all built on TSMC’s 28nm LP process. This is the same SoC that shipped in the original HTC One, and the same 1.7 GHz bin as well. There have been three major variants or families of APQ8064(T) to date. There first was the option for the earliest 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro version (AA suffix), the 1.7 GHz “8064T/Pro” variant in the HTC One and One max (AB suffix) which began the Snapdragon 600 branding, and finally the 1.9 GHz CPU and 450 MHz GPU variant we first saw in the SGS4 (AC suffix). Qualcomm usually has a number of revisions of its silicon, and with APQ8064 we saw quite a few. As an aside, expect similar with 8974 or Snapdragon 800.

 

There’s nothing wrong with the 1.7 GHz Snapdragon 600 variant, it was and still is a great performer, but the reality is that HTC falls behind on its hardware platform with the One max by not going to Snapdragon 800 (MSM8974) like the rest of the competition (Note 3, ASUS Padfone Infinity 2014, LG G2, Nexus 5, and so on). So much of the SoC performance and power story right now is gated by process, and 8974 moves to TSMC’s high-k metal gate 28nm HPM process which affords some clock headroom (up to 2.3 GHz) and lower power consumption at lower performance states for Krait 400 (which is essentially 300 implemented on that new process). 8974 also brings a beefier Adreno 330 GPU with more ALUs and higher clocks, in addition to the new modem IP block, but I won’t go over all of that.

It’s pretty obvious to me that the One max stays with the same SoC used in the original One for a few reasons which ultimately boil down to cost and margin. It obviously means HTC can share the same SoC between the One and One max, and since it’s later in APQ8064’s lifespan I would suspect HTC was able to secure good pricing for it. Having closer shared hardware platform means about the same software stack on top of it, and the same source tree from Qualcomm (BSP) for building and testing ROMs. This makes the software maintenance and update costs lower for the One max. I won’t speculate too much beyond that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the One max started out an 8974 device but later became an 8064 device, given its timing.

I Can't Believe I Have to Regularly Update This Table
Device SoC Cheats In
    3DM AnTuTu AndEBench Basemark X Geekbench 3 GFXB 2.7 Vellamo
ASUS Padfone Infinity Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 N Y N N N N Y
HTC One Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 Y Y N N N Y Y
HTC One mini Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 Y Y N N N Y Y
HTC One max Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 Y Y N N N Y Y
LG G2 Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 N Y N N N N Y
Moto RAZR i Intel Atom Z2460 N N N N N N N
Moto X Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro N N N N N N N
Nexus 4 Qualcomm APQ8064 N N N N N N N
Nexus 7 Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 N N N N N N N
Samsung Galaxy S 4 Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 N Y Y N N N Y
Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Y Y Y Y Y N Y
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 Intel Atom Z2560 N Y Y N N N N
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) Samsung Exynos 5420 Y(1.4) Y(1.4) Y(1.4) Y(1.4) Y(1.4) N Y(1.9)
NVIDIA Shield Tegra 4 N N N N N N N

The HTC One max, like a ton of other devices, continues to employ a CPU optimization “boost” feature which plugs in all the CPU cores and increases clocks to their maximum upon detection of certain benchmarks. It’s sad that this needs to be a regular disclosure for each handset release, since the narrative will likely be the same for the near future, but yes the One max does this. 

Given product development cycles and how long it takes software in the Android landscape to make it through the chain from internal OEM testing to operator test approval and finally hitting devices, I expect we’ll see a pipeline of devices with this “feature” enabled for a while before it changes, even if we could change every OEM’s mind about it right now. I’m starting to understand more about the origin of these optimizations, the list of APKs they detect and boost for, and what party is ultimately responsible, but that’s a story for another day.

CPU

AndEBench - Java

AndEBench - Native

Google Octane Benchmark v1

Mozilla Kraken Benchmark - 1.1

SunSpider Javascript Benchmark 1.0 - Stock Browser

Browsermark 2.0

Vellamo Benchmark - 2.0

Vellamo Benchmark - 2.0

3DMark Unlimited - Physics

3DMark Unlimited - Physics Test

3DMark - Physics Extreme

3DMark - Physics Test (Extreme)

GPU

 

3DMark Unlimited - Graphics

3DMark Unlimited - Graphics Test 1

3DMark Unlimited - Graphics Test 2

3DMark Unlimited - Ice Storm

3DMark - Ice Storm Extreme

3DMark - Graphics Extreme

3DMark - Graphics Test 1 (Extreme)

3DMark - Graphics Test 2 (Extreme)

Basemark X - Off Screen

Basemark X - On Screen

Epic Citadel - Ultra High Quality, 100% Resolution

GLBenchmark 2.7 - Egypt HD

GLBenchmark 2.7 - Egypt HD (Offscreen 1080p)

GLBenchmark 2.7 - Fill Test

GLBenchmark 2.7 - Fill Test (Offscreen 1080p)

GLBenchmark 2.7 - T-Rex HD

GLBenchmark 2.7 - T-Rex HD (Offscreen 1080p)

GLBenchmark 2.7 - Triangle Throughput

GLBenchmark 2.7 - Triangle Throughput (Offscreen 1080p)

GLBenchmark 2.7 - Triangle Throughput, Fragment Lit

GLBenchmark 2.7 - Triangle Throughput, Fragment Lit (Offscreen 1080p)

GLBenchmark 2.7 - Triangle Throughput, Vertex LitGLBenchmark 2.7 - Triangle Throughput, Vertex Lit (Offscreen 1080p)

Storage

 

Random Read (4KB) PerformanceRandom Write (4KB) PerformanceSequential Read (256KB) PerformanceSequential Write (256KB) Performance

I’m not going to go through all the benchmark results on the One max since again it’s the 1.7 GHz Snapdragon 600 SoC we’re very familiar with at this point. The only oddity is storage performance, where the One max trails in random writes and reads, I'd attribute this to a different eMMC being used. The rest of the results are essentially within the margin of error. I initially suspected that the One max might have a bit more thermal headroom than the One, but this doesn't really seem to play itself out in the results, possibly due to the removable back door. 



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.

Device Charge Time - 0 to 100 Percent

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.

AT Smartphone Bench 2013: Web Browsing Battery Life (3G/2G)

AT Smartphone Bench 2013: Web Browsing Battery Life (WiFi)

Cellular Talk Time

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. 



Obviously the highlight of the One max is its huge 5.9-inch 1080p display. After all, the huge display is literally the reason for the max moniker and its gargantuan size. It’s still an IPS LCD, and like the One, resolution is 1920x1080. Using the same resolution at larger size means lower PPI, but the One max is still high enough (373.4 PPI) that individual pixels shouldn’t be visible at all.



One interesting thing to note about the One max however is that the android display density is still set to 480 PPI, putting it in the same DENSITY_XXHIGH category as the One. This means that applications will look like scaled copies of what you’d expect them to look like on the One. There’s an interesting ongoing debate about what users really expect from these larger-sized smartphones and the demographic that’s buying them. Do users want scaled, larger applications which are easier to read, or the ability to display more content. HTC oddly enough seems to have scaled parts of their own UI, for example the widget panels are five row instead of four on the One max, and the launcher defaults to the 4x5 size instead of 3x4 which would look downright silly, further the status bar is also smaller.

 
HTC One (Left), HTC One max (Right) – Note the grid and icon size changes

I’m not complaining, it’s just interesting to see 480 in Android but the HTC apps scaled down to give more real-estate, which is what I’d prefer since I have good vision.

 

One improvement I’m really happy about in Sense 5.5 is a change to the auto brightness function. Rather than just have a checkbox, the One max will allow you to set an upper bound for the auto brightness algorithm. Ideally I would like a higher or upper bound, or a bias function (+/- some delta), but this is a step in the right direction.

Brightness (White)

Brightness (Black)

Contrast Ratio

The One max display goes very bright, up to 506 nits, higher than the One or One mini. White point is also a bit more controlled than the One, at 7301 K average. My biggest complaint about the One max is that like the One it has a dynamic brightness/contrast function that adjusts screen brightness as a function of the content being displayed. That alone isn’t a huge problem, it’s just that there’s no way to disable it in the UI, which would be great, since it’s distracting watching screen brightness change as you move around the UI. I would love to see HTC go the Google approach and restrict these functions to full screen video playback, and give the option to turn it off entirely.

CalMAN Display Performance - White Point Average



 

CalMAN Display Performance - Grayscale Average dE 2000

CalMAN Display Performance - Saturations Average dE 2000



 

CalMAN Display Performance - Gretag Macbeth Average dE 2000



 

Running it through our display tests, it’s clear that the One max also has a bit of the saturation boost we’ve seen popping up on other phones as well. The saturation curves are great until the second to last point, which is almost set to maximum saturation. I’d love to see even more emphasis on color accuracy for the next generation of phones, the One max seems to be in the general ballpark of the One, but slightly worse.



On the camera side we see HTC’s continued use of the 4 MP UltraPixel camera sensor on the back, with 2.0 micron pixels and 1/3" size. It’s the same CMOS sensor from ST (VD6869), and the same optics on top, with 3.8mm focal length and F/2.0 aperture. What’s different is that the One max doesn’t have OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), just like the One mini. That’s a bit unfortunate since OIS was one of the real highlights of the One, and we’ve seen another OEM follow suit with the inclusion of OIS to good success (LG’s G2) and will likely see Samsung do the same. On the front facing camera we have an Aptina AS0260 CMOS sensor with 2.1 MP resolution and 1.4µm pixels.

HTC One Camera Specifications
Device HTC One HTC One max/mini
Sensor Size and Type 1/3" BSI CMOS 1/3" BSI CMOS
Resolution 4.0 MP 16:9 Aspect Ratio (2688 x 1520) 4.0 MP 16:9 Aspect Ratio (2688 x 1520)
Focal Length 3.82mm 3.82 mm
F/# F/2.0 F/2.0
Optical System 5P 5P
OIS 2-axis +/- 1 degree, 2 kHz sampling No OIS

My thoughts about the HTC One camera system have definitely evolved over time, though I’m still glad HTC took a big risk and went this way, I’d like to see resolution traded off a bit less in the next generation. Good imaging often takes a balanced approach, I’d love to see larger pixels somewhere around 1.65 µm and as many as possible while still being pragmatic about sensor size. I hate to bring up the iPhone 5s as a comparison point, but something without as far of a tradeoff would be great. I’m still a fan of the HTC One camera indoors where other cameras struggle, but outdoors the resolution tradeoff is definitely there. Losing OIS means losing one of the things about the One system that made it special and standout in my mind. I could understand it being gone in the One mini for cost reasons, but the One max really should’ve had it considering its mission – everything about the One, taken to the max.

There’s a couple new features in the camera as a part of Sense 5.5 as well. Dual capture has been added to the camera as a shooting mode. We’ve seen this from other OEMs – it allows the front facing camera to be superimposed on the rear facing camera, or vice versus.

It’s a great feature for taking a selfie in front of something while traveling, which is ultimately its primary use case, I guess. There’s also an ‘anti shake’ mode which seems to be an EIS enhanced mode, but again this doesn’t preclude getting blurry pictures when the One max takes longer exposures, from what I’ve found.

With the exception the performance tradeoff that comes from lacking OIS (higher chance of getting blurry photos from hand shake), imaging performance on the One max is really unchanged versus the One or One mini. I’m not going to go into super great detail here, but again I’d love to see the future One series a bit more resolution without trading off too much sensitivity.

Video

The One max has the same set of video modes as the other One, normal 1080p30, slow motion video, fast HD (720p60) and Video HDR (1080p30). In addition the shot in shot mode also works in video, so you can have yourself superimposed over video of whatever you’re shooting as well.

Video is recorded at a maximum of 1080p30 H.264 high profile with a 21 Mbps bitrate, and stereo audio. 1080p30 is great, but it’d be awesome to see 4K UHD video record which I was spoiled by on the Note 3, that’s another thing that’s a matter of SoC and CMOS needing a bit more.


I took videos on the One max at the standard bench location (MP4) and also compared to the One with OIS to illustrate the tradeoff in stabilized video that comes with its removal. I think it’s fairly easy to make the case that it should’ve been there. I also swear I wiped down the One max front facing glass to prevent glare, but the One max video shows some haze from light leakage. I’d love to see more OEMs move to coated sapphire cover glass on the camera, something I don’t believe HTC has.



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.

WiFi Performance - iPerf

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.

Speakerphone Volume - 3 inches Away

Speakerphone Volume - 3 Inches Above

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.



Concluding the One max review is difficult. I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about the larger sized smartphones and the state of that market, which seems to serve two purposes independently. For users who either don’t want or can’t budget for a tablet, the larger sized phones seem to bridge a functional gap between smartphone and tablet. Simultaneously, there are users who want the larger screen just to have it, and maybe there’s the perception that the larger phones still have some elevated status that comes with it. There’s a regional bias at play here too, and the One max seems to be a product designed to cater maybe more to some regions where supersized smartphones make up a bigger part of the market than others.

For me, the One max is probably a new upper bound in terms of size. It’s a very large phone, and although it fits in the front pockets of my jeans and shorts, it’s sometimes a stretch to sit down comfortably with the One max in a pocket. In terms of ergonomics, the One max is very much a dual-hand device. 

The One max is really a product designed to fill out a hole in HTC’s One series portfolio than anything else, and doesn’t really change up the formula too much. It’s literally a scaled up version of the HTC One with few changes – OIS is unfortunately gone, the screen is obviously huge, there’s now a microSD card slot, and of course the new fingerprint sensor. Other than that though, the One max really is the One scaled up to gigantic size, with parts of the One mini tossed in for good measure.

I’ve said my part on the fingerprint sensor on the One max already. It works but isn’t the best or most intuitive implementation to date, although I think it’s fairly easy to make the case that nobody, not even Apple, has nailed a fingerprint sensor yet. The fingerprint scanner’s location on the back makes sense when you’re holding the One max in one hand, but becomes a problem when you’re using the phone on a flat surface. The use of a swipe sensor as well makes positioning on the back somewhat problematic unless you enroll fingers at a natural angle.

There’s also that elephant in the room about platform, specifically HTC’s inclusion of Snapdragon 600 APQ8064T instead of the faster Snapdragon 800 MSM8974 we’re seeing devices start shipping with right now. Although 8064 is still plenty fast and no slouch, there’s still a perceptible performance delta between an 8064 device and the newer 8974 phones I have on my desk now. I worry a lot about whether HTC will fall behind on platform, especially since it used to be the one OEM always shipping new Qualcomm silicon first. I have a feeling the One max saw platform change at the last minute, delaying its launch, but that's almost entirely speculation.

If you want a larger-screened smartphone and liked the One but have been waiting for a long time for the One max, by all means, get it. If you want a larger screened smartphone however, I think it’s easy to make the case that there are better devices out there right now. Had the One max arrived a month or two after the launch of the original One, this conclusion would've likely been a very different one. 

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