HTC One Max review: by Khaled Akbik
Building on the success of its flagship device, the HTC One, HTC is reaching out to those with variable preferences in terms of size and form factor.
They started off with the One, which at 4.7” screen is moderately and nicely sized to fit most people’s needs. Then they released the One Mini, which caters to those who are not so interested in screen real estate and powerful hardware and are looking for something affordable and that fits easily in one’s hand.
Then came the One Max. Built with similar quality and style to the One and One Mini, the Max sports a 5.9” screen, which puts it right there in between the Galaxy Note 3 (5.7”) and Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra (6.4”). But has the same screen resolution (1080 x 1920) as the One and less pixel density (373 ppi vs. the One’s 469).
First Impression:
The One Max is massive. It’s very big and definitely won’t fit easily in your hand, no matter the size of your hand. It’s not so light either, weighing 217g.
For some reason, HTC decided to use the exact specs of the HTC One on the Max, making it less of an upgrade in terms of hardware and simply an upgrade in terms of size only.
Yes, it does come with Sense 5.5 and Android 4.3, which are yet to come to the One, but they will eventually, making the software and feature set on both the One and the Max identical. This makes the Max’s size the only thing going for it. That and the fingerprint scanner!
The Fingerprint Scanner (aka Elephant in the Room):
We were hoping to manage to go through this review without having to mention the fingerprint scanner, but alas, with a phone this big and a scanner this obvious, resistance was futile.
The scanner sits on the backside of the phone, right under the camera. It’s big and you have to slide your finger vertically across it to scan it. Now how practical is that in real life? Not so practical at all, and here’s why:
- You can barely grasp the phone with one hand, let alone fiddle around with your primary weight bearer, your index finger on the bag.
- Our index finger usually sits on the backside of the phone at an angle. Now try adjusting this angle to be able scan your fingerprint vertically across that scanner, while ensuring you don’t drop the phone of course. You’ll find it a difficult task to perform, let alone multiple times a day.
- We mentioned this in passing in point 2. You HAVE to scan your finger vertically. A small deviation for that path will render your fingerprint unreadable.
- People nowadays check notifications on their phone every few minutes. Going through all the trouble to unlock it using this scanner just to check if you received a Whatsapp or the lives scores of a match you’re missing because you have to do some work function is hardly practical. In fact, it’s not practical at all.
Needless to say, we disabled the fingerprint scanner about 10 minutes after activating it. LG G2’s unlock mechanism so much more ergonomic and the iPhone 5s’ fingerprint scanner is so much more practical than this.
Sense 5.5:
Sense 5.5 gives us a few welcomed upgrades to the previous version:
- Blinkfeed is now more customizable and removable (Yes! Those who disliked this feature can now finally completely disable it).
- The camera has a few new tricks up its sleeves now, including Slow Motion filming and Dual Capture.
- Do Not Disturb option and a few minor tweaks here and there.
Let’s go through the good and bad of the phone:
The Good:
- While low on megapixles, the camera shows its true power when shooting at night. The HTC One range takes the best night shots after Nokia’s Lumia family.
- HTC Sense 5.5 is elegant, sexy and sleek. We love it and we can’t get enough of it.
- We didn’t think that would be possible, BoomSound is now even better, thanks to the bigger speakers and grill.
- BlinkFeed has new options, bringing it closer to Feedly and Flipboard. We found ourselves spending more time scrolling through it than we thought we would. The option to disable it is also welcome.
- Even though HTC didn’t upgrade the hardware from the One in the Max. The phone’s flow and functionality is still smooth and flawless. We experienced no lag or stuttering and no crashes throughout our testing period.
- The option to add a SD Card is a welcomed upgrade.
- At 5.9”, the screen is beautiful for media consumption, reading news, articles and books and playing games. Bigger is always better when it comes to these functions.
Here are some shots taken with the HTC One max
The Bad:
- Size is a double-edged sword. It is very big and chunky for most people. We like bigger screens, we loved the Note family and all that. But this size is just not comfortable to hold in the hand. The awkward feeling of placing it on your ear isn’t very helpful either.
- The fingerprint scanner is a disaster in every sense of the word. It should not have been there.
- We can remove the back cover to add the SIM and SD Card, but we can’t change the battery. A changeable battery is always a welcome option.
- HTC One Max is the first high end HTC device that doesn’t have Beats Audio support. This will be missed.
- While we loved HTC One’s hardware and software specs, we felt the One Max could have been slightly upgraded in terms of hardware to be in line or close to the competition, namely the Note 3 and G2. We were somewhat disappointed here.
The Verdict:
As its smaller siblings, this phone is built with quality and beauty in mind. The aluminum casing gives it that sexy and sturdy feeling you’d want in a device like this. The software matches the phone’s physical elegance and compliments it effortlessly.
The phone’s size and useless fingerprint scanner may turn many heads away from it though. Couple that with more powerful hardware on the similarly priced competitors’ offering, makes anyone look at the HTC One Max with hesitation. A hesitation now and in today’s market that HTC simply cannot afford.
