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
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.
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.
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.
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Ruevenator - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I store a lot of music on my phone. I have 16 GB internal and 64 GB external. Needless to say if I purchased a phone with 80 GB, I'd have to take out a car loan to pay for it. It's stupid to pay for internal OEM storage when you can buy if cheaper. As for "ruining the user's experience with external storage", I believe Apple is just greedy, refusing to give buyers a choice in fear that they might go somewhere else for memory. That is just one of the reasons not to buy an iPhone.ELPCU - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Dude, ur argument is SO WRONG. first, slow speed of microSD card does not matter that much, because OS has to be installed on Internal flash. Except OS, there is not much real advantage of using fast speed memory. Why? Note there is thing called RAM, and ur data transfer RAM first, and data will be used after that. Unless bottleneck is happening during tranfer from storage to RAM(which does not happen most case except loading OS and large size app loading), u will not suffer from lack of speed. So what is happening? most of time, you do not benefit from those read/write speed. Oh, also, you know what? Apple's lightning cable is USB 2.0. NOT 3.0. There is huge data tranfer speed cap difference btwn 2.0 and 3.0. 160MB/s is not even useful for data tranfer from PC to iPad, because it will have a bottleneck at 35MB/s(max of USB 2.0)And also, most popular microSD card in market today is probably that of Sandisk, and they give 18MB/s for reading, and 12MB/s for writing. which is OK enough.
BACK TO MAIN ARGUMENT, the advantage of having microSD comes from the fact that phone manufacturer does not give enough storage with REASONABLE PRICE. Most people, who are interested in microSD slot, wants microSD slot because their phone does not have enough storage or manufacturer charge ur money SOO MUCH, and guess what? Apple charge u 100 bucks for every storage upgrade. Because Apple do not have microSD card slot, customers are FORCED to buy those expensive extra storage. It is clear Apple will NEVER add microSD card slot no matter what kind of performance microSD card give. Do you know how much money Apple make out from that?
There is homepage called iSuppli. Go and look their data. They show u number called Bill of Material(BOM), and BOM difference btwn iphone 5s 16GB->32GB is 9.4 dollars. and 32GB -> 64GB difference is 10.2 dollars(not even close to twice of 9,4 dollar). Although BOM does not include AS cost, marketing cost, cost from transfering, licensing, etc, iSuppli generally call zero margin if BOM is about 66% of market price. In other words, if Apple cost u 15 bucks for increasing each level of storage, they will not lose any money. Considering they have HUGE margin rate, thanks to deceptive number of 2-year contract phone, upgrading phone storage without losing money is NOT a super-generous thing. BUT INSTEAD, they charge u 100 bucks. wow. they are making 85 bucks margin with 15bucks cost if u just see storage. this is TERRIBLY RIDICULUS. If u do not know this BOM number, 100buck looks ridiculus, but if u see BOM number, it looks TERRIBLY RIDICULUS. more than 550% margin rate? wow. With this level of ridiculus price, there is no way reasonable customer even try to UNDERSTAND storage policy of apple.
u said u can understand apple? I can not understand u dude.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Ok, first of all, it's "you" not "u".Second, most of your argument is wrong.
"Why? Note there is thing called RAM, and ur data transfer RAM first, and data will be used after that. Unless bottleneck is happening during tranfer from storage to RAM(which does not happen most case except loading OS and large size app loading), u will not suffer from lack of speed"
What do you think the SD card is going to be used for? movies and music eat up more space than most apps, making your point completely rubbish. The whole argument was that cheap SD cards are slow to load data, then you say that it is not a problem, by stating that unless you are loading lots of data, there is not going to be an issue. The whole point is that SD cards are slow.
Third, the BOM argument makes no sense. If it only costs $15 to go from 16-32 GB, then why do they charge $100 for the upgrade? why not $25 or $30 or something like that? They would still make money. Or are you suggesting that most consumers are too stupid to figure out that apple is ripping them off?
Fourth, and finally: work on your English. You cannot make a long, legitimate argument if you type the same way that Peggy speaks in those credit card commercials.
flyingpants1 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Wow, what an asinine comment. What he said is completely accurate. All you could manage was this gem:" Third, the BOM argument makes no sense. If it only costs $15 to go from 16-32 GB, then why do they charge $100 for the upgrade? why not $25 or $30 or something like that? They would still make money. Or are you suggesting that most consumers are too stupid to figure out that apple is ripping them off?"
Seriously.
Homeles - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
"It will be nice once they go out of business to be able to stop hearing from that tiresome segment of pretend geeks who treat their cellphones like how divas treat their purses - as fashion accessories."Textbook "No True Scottsman" fallacy right there.
Dentons - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
You're absolutely right about Anand and Brian sometimes being "pretend geeks". If you think they're bad in these written reviews, you should listen to them on their podcast, or not.In far too many Anandtech podcasts, Brian and Anand banter for ages, (and in dreary detail) about their preferred metal skinned devices.
They could just as easily be hosting a podcast on the virtues of exquisite jewelery. It's terribly odd for writers who are so well versed in the underlying technology to morph into a fashionistas the moment smart phones are mentioned.
The shame of it is that Anand and Brian really, REALLY know their technology. Yet for whatever reason, they don't realize their metal skin fetishism is not a priority for most technology centered folks. One suspects that most of the readers on a site like Anandtech are far more interested in the underlying capabilities of a device than the exquisite luster of the diffused, metallic outer casement.
Diminish the fashion guys, get back to the tech.
cbrownx88 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Can yall get off the fashion rant? Perhaps the metal preference is for a more ridged chassis/device or to achieve a desired weight/feel?Personally that's one of the reasons I love Macbooks - I hail from windows camp but after you see a MBP tumble down a flight of concrete stairs and not be absolutely shredded afterwards... you start to desire more designs that share those aluminum/steels/magnesium attributes.
superflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I'll venture a guess you own a plastic phone manufactured by a SK giant?Validation is a bitch, especially when your cheap ass phone is the kickball.
I'll venture another guess when Samsung intros a metal phone, you'll shut the fuck up and quit whining like a bitch.
Richard Paguirigan - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Lol,Samsung's flimsy, cheap-looking plastic phones are some of the ugliest phones around, they have that bluish tinted amoled screen and still manage to stutter although they have the latest chips. Their build quality is mediocre and their speakers suck, suck SUCK! I could care less about sd cards or removable batteries which ARE going by way of the dodo. get with the times...cryptech - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I spend most of my day in a cli and have 7.8GB available out of 16 on my mobile device. Go ahead and call me a pretend geek but I find it hysterical that just because you carry your video collection around on your phone you think you know a damn thing about the IT industry.