HTC ONE MAX

So now, HTC has gone back to doing what everyone else is doing, which is where the One Max comes in. It's a huge phone, because everyone else is making huge phones. It's made of plastic, because, well, that's what everyone else is doing. And it has a fingerprint scanner because, err, that's what at least one competitor is doing and it might have seemed like a good idea to just toss one in just in case.

LOOK & FEEL

Although it has a strong family resemblance to the One, this phone is constructed out of plastic like the One Mini. The front face is nearly identical to that of the One, but you'll immediately notice an unsightly white plastic band around it. Even on the back, it's clear that the metal pieces are only for decoration.

The large aluminium backplate pops off when you press down on a tiny tab that's located, oddly enough, on the phone's upper left edge where control buttons usually reside. You'll notice that the backplate doesn't really sit well in its plastic frame, and the sharp corner nearest to the clasp stays raised enough to be annoying when you hold the phone in your hands. You only ever need to take the panel off to access the SIM and microSD card slots, which seems like a shocking waste. Since the battery isn't accessible anyway.

The One Max is pretty bulky, at 217g and over 10mm thick, but its curved back and slim proportions help mask that fact well. You'll find a prominent camera cutout and sensors along the top of the front panel, and there's a battery status and notification LED hidden in the speaker grille as well. The power button and volume rocker sit on the right side, with a microUSB data and charging port on the bottom. There's no camera button. The left side has only the aforementioned clasp, while the top hosts a standard 3.5mm headset jack as well as an infrared emitter used by some of the bundled apps. Most interesting is the back panel, where is the camera and flash below it is  a large square fingerprint reader. Lower down, a set of three electrical contact points, designed for docking with accessories.

Specifications

The SoC is a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600.There's 2GB of RAM, which is perfectly fine.

The screen is sharp and bright, and has no problems even in sunlight. 1920x1080 is the resolution it has. Videos are generally smooth, and viewing angles are as good as anything ever seen. The screen is protected by toughened Gorilla Glass 3.

More noteworthy are the twin front-facing stereo speakers, a feature that the company calls BoomSound. The One Max's audio output is deep, rich, and clearly audible from several feet away.

As far as connectivity is concerned, the One Max checks most of the right boxes. The latest Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac is supported, as is Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX audio support. Wireless video streaming is supported using Miracast, and you can use the device as a Wi-Fi hotspot to share your 3G data connection. 4G LTE is supported, though not on the 2.3GHz band that has been adopted in India. The One Max is the sole member of its family to support expandable storage, and you can add up to 64GB using standard microSD cards.

Camera

HTC has continued the practice of rating its high-end cameras in Ultrapixels. While it's still technically a 4-UltraPixel unit, HTC equates the amount of data recorded to competing 13-megapixel models.Larger images tend to look sharper because they're scaled down on screen, but the One Max had no such headroom to take advantage of. Photos are still fine for sharing on social media and via email, but this isn't the type of device that will make you feel like you never need a dedicated camera again. Low-light scenes were indeed well lit, but we feel that this alone is not worth the overall compromise.The HD test videos we shot with the One Max had an artificial quality about them, and artefacts were visible on the large screen when playing back segments in which we tried to focus on fast-moving foreground objects.

If you like adjusting settings manually, the One Max's camera app menu offers options for tweaking the exposure, saturation, sharpness, contrast, ISO and white balance. Preset scenes include HDR, panorama and "dual-capture". In video mode, you can choose "Fast HD" for 60fps recording, slow motion, and video HDR.

One of HTC's other headlining features is Zoe, which captures short video clips instead of still photos. This results in short moving pictures that can capture moments more fully, such as spontaneously funny moments. Zoe files aren't easily sharable to other people and devices, so HTC has included an option to convert them into GIFs.

Software

The One Max runs Android 4.3, though I expect the company to push out an update to 4.4 in a month or two. HTC's Sense UI 5.5 customization lives on top of the operating system. Its most notable feature is Blinkfeed, a visual that displays news and social network updates in a tiled format.In addition to Facebook and Twitter, you can now sign in to Instagram and Google+ to see even more social updates. There's an improved mechanism for sorting through available news sources and choose topic areas you're interested in.

Also in the Gallery app, HTC has provided a number of editing options. You can doodle on top of photos, rotate, crop and flip them. There are also a number of creative filters and frames, plus tools to remove red eye, brighten faces, and reduce glare. If a video is selected, you'll be able to extract a still from it at any point, as well as trim the beginning and end, but that's it for editing options.

The One Max is otherwise mostly unremarkable in terms of software.

Fingerprint sensor

First of all, HTC has placed the touch sensor in a really awkward place. It seems that no one wanted to disturb the One Max's looks, and there just isn't any room on the phone's front face, considering the display is already so large. With the sensor on the back, you have to use it without looking. There's nothing to guide your finger to it and we often found ourselves swiping the camera lens, which actually feels exactly the same. Furthermore, once you enrol your fingerprints, the One Max insists you first try to use the sensor to unlock the phone, and it takes an additional tap to show the keypad for passcode entry instead. You can store up to three fingers' prints, and assign each of them to a different app, so for example, swiping with your middle finger can take you straight to the camera, but swiping with your ring finger will open the Web browser.As far as accuracy goes, I had the best luck with my index fingers. It wasn't perfect all the time, but it didn't take more than three swipes at worst. Finally, it's worth noting that you can't use the fingerprint sensor to wake the phone from standby; you have to first hit the power button and then unlock the phone using the sensor. Once the phone is unlocked, the sensor does absolutely nothing -- you can't even use it to launch your associated apps, which would seem like an obvious thing.

Performance and Battery Life

I saw scores of 12,188 in Quadrant and 6,903 in a 3DMark HD graphics test run. I also ran a few CPU-intensive JavaScript tests such as Sunspider and Browsermark, which returned decent scores.The One Max handles 1080p HD video without breaking a sweat, and it's only a handful of today's games that could really stress it out.Audio performance remains the One Max's standout feature, and call quality is no exception. Voices are loud and clear over the phone's speaker.As far as battery life goes, we put the One Max through its paces with our video loop test, and it lasted for 10 hours, 40 minutes.

PRICE

It costs around £600.0.