HTC One Max review: Expensively large

HTC, one of the known leaders in smartphone handset manufacturing, has a series of smartphones under its belt. Its premium offering is presently the flagship model, HTC One Max. The phone boasts of the best hardware within, including a larger display, a fingerprint scanner, 4G, and a lot more. Let’s check out the phone in a little detail.

The HTC One Max is a phone too large; well, at least for those who have average-sized fingers. The phone has a large form-factor which is difficult to operate complete with a single hand. The large display is great for games, videos, surfing the internet and typing messages and alike. However, the large form-factor can be cumbersome for storing away. Imagine tucking it into your shirt or trouser pocket.

Moving on, towards the top of the front panel, you will find the front-facing camera and the light and proximity sensors. The bottom of the display features two soft buttons for home and back. On the rear panel is the main camera with the flash on its left. Below the main camera is a black square box which is the fingerprint scanner. The rear panel has a physical latch or locking pin located on the left side of the handset. Pulling down the pin opens up the rear panel door. Below this door, you will find the non-removable battery, the SIM card slot and the microSD card slot.

The power and volume rocker buttons take their place on the right side of the handset while the headphone jack and the micro USB PC interface and charging port take up the top and bottom places. An IR blaster window can also be witnessed on the top.

Overall, the build quality of the HTC One Max is pretty good. The chassis is constructed of plastic, but the rear panel is made of brushed aluminum, which also doubles up as an antenna. The front panel sports the large 5.9-inch display, which has a set of large stereo speakers towards the top and bottom, facing the front. Thanks to the large front-facing speakers, the audio is directed forwards (contrary to most other handsets from other manufacturers who have a single rear facing speaker). The forward facing speakers make audio listening and enjoying videos a pleasure with minimal loss in sound quality. The speakers are also protected by a metal mesh or grille.

The 82.5 mm wide, 164.5 mm tall and 10.3 mm thick handset weighs a good 217 grams which may not be light enough. However, considering its massive form-factor, it is not overweight.

The HTC One Max has a powerful set of hardware beneath its hood. The handset is powered using a Qualcomm APQ8064 Snapdragon 600 chipset which features a Quad-core 1.7 GHz Krait 300 processor coupled with 2 GB of RAM. The graphics processor enrolled for additional performance is the Adreno 320. The display is a larger than normal, 5.9-incher sporting a full-HD resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. The Super LCD3 is equipped with a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 layer, protecting it from scuffs and scratches.

The camera on the rear is a 4 megapixel. Don’t go by the number since the camera here has a 1/3-inch sensor with a 2µm pixel size and is known as the UltraPixel camera. It can capture pictures at a resolution of 2688 x 1520 pixels and videos 1080p (@30fps), 720p (@60fps) with HDR. The front camera (aka secondary camera) is a 2.1 megapixel which is also capable of capturing full-HD videos with HDR.

The operating system onboard the HTC One Max is Android’s Jelly Bean v4.3 and the user interface installed is HTC’s own and latest edition of Sense, HTC Sense 5.5. The internal storage comprises of 16 GB to 32 GB (depends on the model variant) and can be expanded up to 64 GB using a microSD card.

On the connectivity front, the HTC One Max features Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac. Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth v4.0 with A2DP, NFC, Infrared and microUSB with MHL. Additional features include sensors for accelerometer, gyro, proximity and compass, stereo FM radio, GPS, GLONASS and fingerprint sensor. The handset is powered using a 3300 mAh Li-Po battery which is capable of giving you a maximum talk time of up to 25 hours. However, the battery life is completely dependent on the network, usage and different other factors.

On the performance front, we did a few tests to check the capabilities of the internal hardware. We ran a few benchmark tests, including Quadrant and AnTuTu Benchmark, which resulted in the following scores.

The large 5.9-inch Super LCD 3 display is crisp and sharp and does not have any viewing angle errors. Colour reproduction is good, crisp and vibrant. Watching high-definition videos, clubbed with a great sound quality from the onboard stereo pictures, is a great experience. You will truly enjoy this handset when entertaining yourself with videos and games.

The One Max runs on HTC’s own Sense UI 5.5. it is pretty smooth and has minimal apps The user interface is pretty smooth; it does not seem to have any glitches or slowdowns, whatsoever. However, the entire user interface speed will depend upon the apps running in the background and the number of apps you actually install.

Moving ahead, the home launcher is straight-forward. Running important services (phone, message, camera, browser, etc.) to find an installed application is fast. Some may find the display too large to reach out to the topmost app on the screen, but since this device is a phablet, it is best advisable to use it in portrait mode (like a tablet). This way, one can comfortably reach to extreme ends with either hand with ease. The heavy handset does make it a bit cumbersome to use with a single hand. The home page, by default, has been customised with a lot of widgets and apps. Getting accustomed to the layout will take a while getting used to, unless you are seasoned with an Android platform and would like to replace the home launcher with your personal preferred one.

The camera application is simple, but has a load of features under its belt. Playing around with the camera whilst shooting and reviewing the images will give you an insider of what it contains and one could master the controls in a few hours. The camera features a lot of customisation possibilities to capture pictures in different types. Options such as Zoe (animated pictures with sound), night, HDR, sweep panorama, dual capture (use both cameras together) and anti-shake are a few startup options available at hand. Scene modes can capture normal to slow motion video, fast HD (@60 fps) and HDR videos in full HD too. Other tweaks available are ISO (ISO100 – ISO1600) and white balance (auto, incandescent, fluorescent, daylight and cloudy) are also present.

The camera captures decent images when outdoors. The resolution isn’t as high as one would expect it to be, which limits the usage to casual photography and social media sharing. Images in broad sunlight tend to wash out white subjects and also spotted purple fringes in a few. Photos captured in the shade turned out better, and indoor shots are just about decent.

As for the camera’s performance, here are a few sample shots for your disposal.

The HTC One Max is not a phone for every hand. Priced at a whopping MRP of Rs 56,490 (available for Rs 52,000 online) we feel that the device is a bit too expensive. If you are looking for a large-screen phone and don’t want to carry around a tablet as well, one could consider the handset. However, the weight and large size could be quite uncomfortable to carry around easily.