HTC One Max review

When designing their latest phone/tablet hybrids, phablets, or simply huge smartphones – whatever you want to call them – manufacturers seem to take a number of different approaches. With its Samsung Galaxy Mega, for example, Samsung created a 6.3-inch monster with a lower-resolution screen than the 5-inch Galaxy S4, but at a lower price. Sony went the other way with its 6.4in Z Ultra, which kept the 1080p screen of the Xperia Z1 for a reasonable premium. And then of course there’s the latest version of the original phablet, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which is different again thanks to its stylus. With the HTC One Max, HTC seems to have simply taken an HTC One and made it bigger and more expensive.

It’s quite remarkable how similar the One Max looks to the smaller model. Both have all-metal bodies, with a white strip around the edge and various white strips on the rear. On the front, both phones have silver speaker grilles top and bottom and a front-facing camera at the top-right. Nestled under the camera at the rear is a fingerprint reader. This works differently to the reader build into the iPhone 5S , which can unlock the phone and authorise purchases from the App Store. The One Max’s reader, on the other hand, can learn up to three different fingerprints, which can either just unlock the phone, or unlock it and launch an app. We found the position on the back of the phone wasn’t as convenient as having it at the bottom ready for your thumb, as on the iPhone 5S, but it’s certainly a more secure way of unlocking a phone than using a passcode or unlock pattern.

The One and One Max have the same major internal components, with quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processors running at 1.7GHz and 2GB RAM. This leads to performance which, while strong for early 2013, now looks decidedly mid-range. The One Max completed the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark in 1,182ms, which compares poorly to the Snapdragon 800-equipped Xperia Ultra’s 860ms, and the 706ms of the up-to-the-minute Google Nexus 5.

The One Max shipped with Android 4.3 and HTC is now pushing an update to Android 4.4 KitKat. It isn’t able to run Android with the same effortless smoothness as we’ve seen on Snapdragon 800 smartphones; the animation when opening up the app tray is slightly jerky, for example. We also found there was a slight hesitation between flicking our finger to move around a web page and the page starting to move, but this didn’t really affect how much we enjoyed surfing the web.

In the 3DMark benchmark, the One managed 6,928 in the Extreme test, which is looking a bit weedy considering the phone’s price; the Xperia Ultra walks all over it with 17,899. The One Max is still significantly quicker than the cheaper Galaxy Mega, which saw just 2,782 in the same test. We noticed the slower 3D performance when playing games; Real Racing 3 was noticeably less smooth than it was on a Google Nexus 5, for example.

The update to Android 4.4 KitKat does give the One Max some much needed new features. Compared to Android 4.3 the latest version of the operating system is slicker and runs faster. There’s also full support for Google Now. This lets you control the phone using your voice for things like making calls, sending messages and searching the web.

We’re fans of the HTC One Max’s Full HD LCD display. The resolution works well on such a big screen, meaning it’s easy to read headlines, standfirsts and image captions on web pages when fully zoomed out; this is also possible on 5in 1080p displays, and even on the 1,280×720 display of the Galaxy Mega, but it’s not as easy as on the One Max. We liked the display’s colour balance best when it was at maximum brightness, as it was slightly too cool at lower brightness levels. When compared to the Google Nexus 5’s LCD display, the One Max’s screen showed itself to have purer whites, with none of the Nexus 5’s slight yellow tinge.

The large display is great for watching films, and the built-in stereo speakers are loud enough and of good enough quality that you don’t necessarily have to use headphones. We certainly enjoyed watching YouTube clips of stand-up comedy shows, but the lack of any bass and thin mid-range means the speakers still murder music tracks.

While the HTC One is a unibody design which you can’t open, the One Max has a removable aluminium rear cover. Strangely, this doesn’t mean you can replace the battery; the cover just gives you access to the microSD card and SIM slots. This means that you lose the neatness of a unibody design without gaining the flexibility of being able to replace the battery, which is a shame. You shouldn’t need to carry a spare battery, as the One Max lasted for a huge 15h 45m in our video battery rundown test, but it will limit the overall useful lifespan of the handset.

The HTC One Max has a 4-megapixel camera. This is far fewer pixels than the 8- or 12-megapixel models we’re used to seeing from modern smartphones. When it launched the One, HTC claimed that the sensor used what it called Ultrapixels, which are bigger than normal smartphone sensor pixels. These bigger pixels can capture more light, so can help the camera perform better in low light.

The Ultrapixel camera fares well in low light

The One Max certainly takes impressive low-light photos, with more detail and less noise than we’re used to. However, we were very unimpressed with its daylight images. These were well exposed, but had blurry details, leaving them looking like the images were smeared with Vaseline. They’re certainly far below the standard we expect from even a budget smartphone – the One Max is certainly a phone to avoid if you’re even vaguely serious about photo quality.

But daylight photos lack detail and have a smeary quality

Whether or not you want a phone this big is a matter of personal taste. If you have a 6in smartphone you really don’t need a tablet, as a phone this size is perfectly big enough for casual web surfing. However, it does poke out the top of a jeans pocket, and you’ll find you often can’t sit comfortably without taking the phone out and putting it on a table. It’s also not particularly comfortable to hold for long phone calls, and it’s not really practical to use the touchscreen one-handed.

If you’ve made your mind up and really want a super-sized smartphone, the HTC One Max is a reasonably impressive example. We like the design, the screen and the battery life, but the phone’s performance is only middling considering its premium price, and the camera is substandard.

The HTC One Max has come down in price since we first reviewed it last November, dropping around £60 in the intervening five months to £504 (available from Handtec) from £564. This moves it further away from the superior Samsung Galaxy Note 3, our current reigning phablet champion, which has remained nearer the £550-600 end of the scale if you’re looking to buy it SIM free.

This makes the HTC One Max a slightly better buy now than it was at launch. But when a phone costs this much upfront, most people will want to get it on a contract so they can spread the total cost of ownership over a longer period of time. Unfortunately, the One Max doesn’t fare particularly well when it comes to contracts, as these are all still rather expensive.

One of the cheapest contracts currently available is a £28 per month deal from Phones4U . This will get you 1,000 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of data, but increasing this to £35 per month will raise your data allowance to 1GB – an important thing to consider if you’re going to be using the One Max as your main media consumption device.

The Note 3, however, is available from the Carphone Warehouse on a £33 per month contract that nets you unlimited texts and minutes and 1GB of data. This is much better value, as the Note 3 is not only quicker and has better battery life than the One Max, but it also has a much more capable 13-megapixel camera. The One Max, on the other hand, only has a 4-megapixel sensor.

So if you’re looking for the best Android phablet around, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is still the phone to buy.