Doesn't seem to be doing well in its category (phablets that is) - considering devices already on the market and those soon to be launched, I'd guess the main selling point for this device will be brand loyalty. And people complained the note was too big...
The BoomSound speakers are much better than what the Note 3 puts out but you pay the price for them in extra height and possibly thickness. Also, HTC is pretty good at making the most of the battery capacity in which many of their phones have great standby times and good usage life.
The price may make a difference. I was planning on buying a note 3, but went for the LG Optimus Pro G because it was $200 cheaper at $99, and almost the same size screen. If the HTC One Max is $199, it might sway some buyers. I probably would have bought it just for the speakers.
If you're talking about this line: "The battery isn’t huge, at 1210 mAh and 3.75V (4.53 watt-hours), but it does give a boost as I’ll show in the battery section." he's referring to a battery + flip cover case.
I was surprised at the thickness/weight as well, the larger Z Ultra comes in a lot thinner and a bit lighter despite the fact it has a larger 6.44in screen and fully weather sealed:
Both the Note 3 and the Z Ultra are dead flat though, while the One Max has a nice curvature on the back. Its surely a question of personal reference which you prefer, personally I like the curved body better than something thin and flat.
The note 3 is not really flat, the camera bulges a little bit, but yes, the overall shape of the back cover is flat. It is modular and replaceable though which does open a bit of customization option.
Well the One and One Mini were already pretty oversized too in comparison to other models with the same screen size so nothing new (and IMHO bad). I like the design but the screen is too small or the chassis too big.
The BoomSound speakers and the different shell thickness/ weight compared to the Samsung. Samsung uses thinner shells in order to achieve their svelt bodies and lighter weight. Also depends on the display technology used. LCDs are heavier than OLEDs.
I'd also love to see a modern windows phone review. The 1520, personally. I mean, we got a Z10 review didn't we?
If nothing else, id love to see a dive into Nokia's imaging on the 1020 and 1520, which is some engineering that I think everyone should be capable of appreciating, no matter how much you dislike the OS.
Yeah, I'd also like to see a proper 1520 review. I'm not surprised nobody at Anandtech got an invite to Nokia's event. Keep tossing their review phones in a closet (trash can?)... I'd quit sending you anything, if it was up to me. Waste of time and money.
On the other hand, since he hates WP, it might just end up being a big ol' take a dump on the WP device article.
"I’ve said my part already on microSD cards and the fact that they’re going the way of the dodo in smartphones, I just don’t need one anymore, and definitely not at the expense of build quality. It is convenient not having to use a SIM ejector tool though, even if I carry one around all the time anyways. For the incredibly small percentage of users that clamors for an SD card every single smartphone launch, it’s at least one point which won’t be belabored so tiresomely this time."
That's funny. Seems to me if there's one thing that seems to be going the way of the dodo, it's Android manufacturers like HTC who think prettiness and premium feel are more important than functionality. 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.
Meanwhile, Samsung will continue laughing by being both the only player that focuses on functionality, and the only player that makes money in the Android world.
Apple charges $100 for 16GB memory and you can find 32GB micro SD at around $15. I wonder why most reviewers conveniently ignore this fact and just compare the baseline price of the products. I can do the math and I won't buy any device without expandability.
I'm not sure that expandibility is the biggest selling point for galaxy phones outside of tech enthusiasts. Most people are not movie hogs etc and find 32GB reasonable. Business users and media enthusiasts on the other hand, would. But they don't represent everyone. Especially with streaming.
I think its more brand name appeal and how much more recognizable they are. After all, apple does even better, and its not like they've ever offered MicroSD support.
personally I just think 16GB needs to die, and 32 should be standard up to 128GB in $50 increments max using high quality flash.
Agreed about 16GB needing to die. But why would it when plenty of companies still make an extra $100 per sale by forcing people to upgrade to the minimum serviceable level? At least the Micro SD slot, with all its failings, allows some sort of other option. "pay as you grow" instead of throwing the whole shebang away when your storage needs outpace the crappy little chip soldered into your device.
My decision on a phone is 1. Screen size and resolution 2. MicroSD slot
I use my phone more as a e-reader and media device than a phone. That's not to say I don't use it as a phone normall, I do but it's not all that it does. Duh? Having the MicroSD slot for expansion is Godsend. All my books and technical PDF's are there. All my music, videos and photos are there (just the favorite ones), and so forth.
Why wouldn't you want to have all of those on your phone? It is convenience for me. One device to do what I like to use it for.
One thing people always brag about on Android is consumer choice. If Samsung more fits your needs, more power to you. But I fail to see how removing one of the top tier Android phone manufacturers is a good thing. I don't want any one company to be massively ahead of the rest in market share, because I believe some competition is a good thing and prevents companies from resting on their previous success and putting out crap new products.
Say what you will about mircoSD slots. Personally, I don't store much on my phone anyway, so it's not a big deal to me. But please don't espouse the absurd opinion that removing players from the Android space will in any way improve it.
HTC one is a nice device but it has too many deal breakers for me and more (no micro sd, sealed battery, almost non-repairable, terrible QC, low-resolution camera)
They basically shot their own feet, trying the apple way, while being no apple.
Clearly you missed my point. I'm not interested in arguing the merits of a removable battery or microSD card slot. All I'm saying is that dude needs to chill out. If the Android space is truly about choice, what do you care what HTC does as long as SOMEONE makes the phone you want. In this case, HTC's phones this year clearly don't meet your needs/requirements, and that's fine. Saying they shot themselves in the foot is a bit harsh, though. I know several people who bought HTC Ones over SGS4's simply because of how the thing felt when they held the device. Say what you will about specs, features, etc., but not everyone values the same things you do. Hard to accept, I know. But my good lord. Are you really so shortsighted as to believe that the general population gives a rat's ass about removable batteries, SD card slots, phone repairability (wtf?), anecdotal evidence of bad QC, and a camera that makes heavy tradeoffs (in this case, IQ for low-light performance)?
Not everyone has exactly the same desires or needs as you. Which is the beauty of the Android space: people have the luxury of choice, which you only get with multiple manufacturers competing in the same space.
So the device w/o micro sd slot is effectively $100-200 more expensive than device with one.
iPhone 5s 64GB: $399 w/contract, total storage 64GB S4 16GB + 64GB sdxc : around $200 w/contract, total storage 80GB
I know companies prefer to removing the slot to sell the high capacity devices with greater margin (BOM difference of 16GB and 64GB devices is almost negligible) but why we consumers blindly follow what they are doing?
I can understand Apple there. Adding an SD card slot would be adding a means for the user to completely ruin the experience. Internal flash of my Ipad 4 reads/writes about 160MB/s, don't know about the newer models. A cheap SD card reads about 4 MB/s, writes even worse. So imagine running apps off it or using it as data storage. Would be painful.
Simple solution: Refuse to support cheap-ass storage. Validate some cards and support those, refuse app installation to SD. My 64GB Micro SDXC benches faster than most phone NAND... it cost me £40.
I haven't been able to find any actual data on the storage performance of the iPad 4 (or any iPad for that matter), but I find your 160MB/s number rather unlikely. The storage used in iPads is the same used in iPhones, to the best of my knowledge, which isn't very fast.
Actually it is that fast. You can find benchmarking tools in the app store and even measure it by hand - open a say 5 gig video in one app and then choose open in another, then count the seconds it takes to copy it over (the delay after issuing the command) and calculate. The flash in iphone 5 is about the same speed.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Brian, we know you hate SD cards and removable batteries. We also know that you are far more impressed by a phone that shows a bit of metal skin than by a phone that has actual features like removable batteries and microSD expansion.
Your statement that "SD cards are going the way of the dodo" is laughably out of touch. Despite your personal wishes, the best selling smart phones on the planet, in nearly every size category, still have both microSD expansion and removable batteries.
You don't want these features, we get it. For whatever reason, you embrace the removal of these usable features. You clearly don't appreciate the convenience of being able to carry large volumes of media files at an economical price. Just as clearly, you don't mind having to search for chargers in every airport. Some of us aren't like you, many of us in fact.
It does seem odd that an in-depth technology site like Anandtech puts far more emphasis on the material making up the thin outer skin of a device, than the actual hardware features of that device. Each of Brian's reviews features a long discussion either lauding a metal skin or deriding a plastic one, while almost nothing on SD or batteries.
Is it too much to ask for a little less focus on your metal skin fetish and more focus on a device's actual features.
Good point. Whenever you go to airport, you'll see lots of iPhones getting charged at power outlets. It's beyond me how people can expose their $$$$$ phone that way.
keep dissing your base and you´ll be lost Mr. Klug. I am on my third battery and on a SD that holds all of western Europe Garmin quarterly up-dated maps and 45 GB of music on a Garmin-Asus A50 that I love cause it works and works.
It's because apple products don't have mSD slots ;) I bet the moment they start including those (by some miracle of nature I suppose :D ) the extra slot will be the best thing since sliced bread around AT :D
The SD cards I agree with, but removable batteries not so much. Manufacturers can include much larger custom batteries into a phone if it doesn't need to be a square battery that pops out the back. Plus, you can easily find microUSB battery extenders, which are FAR more convenient than swapping a battery because you don't need to reboot to do it.
SD cards though - I don't think they need to go away until manufacturers (cough APPLE cough) stop gouging customers on increased storage.
SD cards, far and away, are going the way of the dodo. They're effectively already deprecated by the base Android platform (requiring OEMs to manually backport the ability to move APKs and OBB files over), and 3rd party SD support is pretty much in decline. The handful of applications that I'd expect to natively use the SD card either have it as a hidden feature, or have removed it entirely (I'm looking at you, Spotify).
That pretty much leaves them only for use as dumb, manually managed storage. Like it or not, that's the reality.
The context (that you left out) is that I wouldn't trade build quality for an SD card, it makes almost no sense to have a huge removable door on the One max just for the sake of an SD card. The tradeoff is huge here.
Also the other reality regarding removable batteries is you do lose volume that way that could've been dedicated to more battery had it been sealed internally. That's fact.
The data I've seen from OEMs and operators shows that microSD cards get changed by a tiny demographic of users, or even used, if not installed - yes, OEMs had to start manually installing SD cards since users can't be bothered to install them. Continue to cling to 'em, but normal consumers don't care, and the rest of the world has pretty much moved on.
heck yeah, I like to dumb manually manage my movies and music files without cluttering my apps space. Why is that so retarded? I have 80 gb in my S3, and I only have 10 free. Am I stupid for using a flagship device as a poweruser would? Should I pay $400 for a phone and use it only as an internet connected device? I think that reporters have way to much easy access to new devices and internet everywhere. Why would I stream movies or music if I can have them on my phone, and play them even on the subway or during a weekend on the mountain? There is zero reason not to want expandable space on a phone, other than being able to say "Yes, but this is unibody aluminium". And most reporters are doing half of Apple's job in convincing people that they really do not need a micro-sd card. "Why do you need it, when you can simply pay $10/month for Spotify, and then $40/month for an unlimited data contract to use Spotify?" Well, of course, you are swimming in money, you do not need a micro-sd card. But that is like convincing everybody to ditch their cars and simply call a cab whenever they need it.
Agreed, I'm still using my Galaxy S 8GB + 32GB, on my third battery and would have been forced into a new phone I have no need for if it wasn't for these features. Data here is very expensive so any cloud/streaming solution is impractical. I agree though in a world were the cost of the phone is not important, you update your phone faster than it takes for a battery to die and where you have unlimited data great.
Couldn't agree more.. I just finally paid off my galaxy s2 after 2 years. The comments this reviewer makes are insane! He has no idea what he is talking about.
Thankfully you're almost completely wrong on all counts there but it's a surprisingly ignorant post coming from someone who is generally knowledgeable when it comes to technology.
Firstly, micro SD cards are not going the way of the dodo - they were in decline but there's been a noticeable turn around in devices supporting the technology. The microSD support in the HTC phone in this review is a turnaround from HTC's previous position and Nokia have brought microSD expansion to their 1520 which is also a change as previously their top end phones (1020, 925, 920 etc.) did not have sd expansion.
As for support in Android, the fact that it's not used in Nexus devices or part of the base system is completely irrelevant as Android builds are usually heavily customised in many areas. Samsung are one of the main Android handset manufacturers and they support microSD across their range, quite seemlessly as well plus Sony although not nearly as big are also sticking with micro SD support. The fact that the micro SD can only be used as 'dumb' data doesn't matter as that's what it is great for, many people criticise SD storage when it was incorrectly used in place of onboard storage (when it was a stupidly small amount). Micro SD expansion is ideal for larger amounts of video such as HD films and music, leaving the onboard memory for applications.
As for a supposed tradeoff, that's a completely nonsense excuse and a really poor one at that - it's easily possible to produce micro SD slots without compromising the build quality, Sony are currently able to produce weather sealed phones with micro SD slots.
And if nothing else, you should at the very least appreciate what SD expansion offers cost wise - the amount of money charged for onboard memory is completely ridiculous, it's far, far more than high speed micro SD cards cost.
I don't believe the data you've seen from OEM's as it doesn't make any sense at all - if such a small amount of people are using them, why do companies keep on putting them there? Why are companies adding micro SD slots to phones? I can't claim my experience to be in any way representative but looking at large deal sites when someone posts a good deal on a micro SD card, the deal usually gets very popular and most people are buying the cards for their mobile phones.
As for batteries being bigger if they're sealed in, that is absolutely not 'fact' and it certainly doesn't always apply in practice. The HTC One is a similar physical size to the Samsung Galaxy S4 (despite the larger difference the screen sizes suggest) yet the removable battery in the S4 is larger than that in the One. Either way, the differences are very small particularly compared with the full capacity of a battery which can be immediately achieved when swapping it out but not on a device with a sealed battery. Given current smartphones can quickly burn through batteries, it make a lot of sense to be able to switch over the battery and be back up to full almost immediately yet frustratingly few companies are now offering user accessible batteries as standard.
Furthermore, the battery is unlikely to last the full two years a phone should and certainly won't while keeping performance. On a device with a removable battery that's not an issue as it's a matter of seconds to swap over but for devices with a sealed in battery it's a much more time consuming and expensive repair.
I don't know how you can be objectively "wrong" about whether or not you think the tradeoffs are worth it, but whatever. I'll address the rest of your points:
>As for support in Android, the fact that it's not used in Nexus devices or part of the base system is completely irrelevant as Android builds are usually heavily customised in many areas.
The base platform has deprecated SD card support, plain and simple. You saw the SGS4 launch initially with SD card support that essentially only worked for music and as a storage intent for the camera. Later they added the ability to move application data over by backporting it. Ironically enough today you see NVIDIA doing the same thing with Shield and their own BSP.
>it's easily possible to produce micro SD slots without compromising the build quality,
The context here is the One max, it isn't worth the tradeoff in build quality.
>I don't believe the data you've seen from OEM's as it doesn't make any sense at all - if such a small amount of people are using them, why do companies keep on putting them there? Why are companies adding micro SD slots to phones? I can't claim my experience to be in any way representative but looking at large deal sites when someone posts a good deal on a micro SD card, the deal usually gets very popular and most people are buying the cards for their mobile phones.
Take it or leave it I suppose, but that's the reality. Samsung continues to do it as a differentiation point, as do a few others. I would say however the trend against microSD by OEMs like Google and obviously HTC backs up this claim, rather than your other one.
The anecdote I heard that really made me think about this was that one of the major operators in the USA added a requirement that OEMs preinstall SD cards since users weren't even doing so with the pack-ins. Says something interesting about what demographic even knows about removable storage.
>As for batteries being bigger if they're sealed in, that is absolutely not 'fact' and it certainly doesn't always apply in practice.
Sorry, you are completely wrong here.
Removable batteries need to have a dedicated protection circuit for CE compliance and this adds to volume. In addition they need to be structurally sound, this translates to a plastic frame around the battery itself, and around the volume the battery occupies in the phone. That's the point almost everyone always misses when they start arguing about removable battery volumes versus internal battery volumes, and you can ask any OEM about it, its 100% fact that internally sealed affords bigger volumes in addition to geometries that wouldn't work with a removable battery. Also every OEM shoots for at least a two year longevity. Both LG (and Motorola) have talked a lot about how long they tested their 3.8V chemistry before accepting it.
What you are missing is that OEM's want internal only storage to CONTROL THE MARKET! Charging premiums on space for outrageous amounts. It has nothing to do with user demand. Why would anyone turn down 32gb of extra space for 30 bucks?
I still have a galaxy s2 that I just FINALLY paid off after 2 years. I'm not ready to make payments for 2 more years when I have a perfectly good working phone in my hand.
The vast majority of users don't want expandable storage, because the vast majority of users aren't using all of the storage in their (overwhelmingly base-model-storage) phones as it is. Why is this? Well, because the vast majority of users aren't carrying 1,000+ hours of music around with them at all times. Hell, I'd be shocked if the majority of users even HAVE 16GB of music in the first place!
Us geeks aren't the whole smartphone market. Pre-iPhone, we absolutely were. Now? To say we even account for 5% of the overall market would be overly generous, probably by a factor of 10. We're a tiny, TINY fraction of the market, and even then, only *some* of us care about removable storage.
The OEMs might enjoy milking people by charging them $100 for each $20 increment of flash, but relatively few people are bothering to pony up for 32 or 64GB even where it is an option. If you combined all the people who actually use expandable SD *and* all the people who upgrade from base 16GB devices with no expansion, I doubt you'd reach even 10% of the market. Or 5%, for that matter.
Brian, some people want removeable SD cards, and what's more the ability to use them is, objectively-speaking, a useful feature with almost no down-side (if we ignore business decisions to economise by reducing internal storage on phones with this feature, and what Google sees as the inability of users to deal with more than one storage location). If the HTC One has a particular design that would be compromised by allowing SD cards, that may be so, but there are other possible designs, and I doubt you could argue that they would be systematically inferior.
"Being deprecated by a platform" is not a good reason not to support them. Google obviously has a vested interest in tieing people to the Cloud, so we shouldn't care what Google thinks about this.
You have argued, persuasively, that removeable batteries do involve more of a trade-off, but again some people are more than willing to accept that trade-off because of how they wish to use their device, and because they may wish to make use of the device for longer than the expected service life of the battery.
Oh, and I'm calling flamebait on the "going the way of the dodo" comment.
I take issue with the comment on internal batteries being bigger when sealed in versus removable. In terms of energy I have yet to see this to be true. All the galaxy phones have continued to have removable batteries yet remain in an incredibly small form factor. My Note II has nearly the same energy capacity (~3100 mAh, Note 3 ~3200 mAh), in a smaller and thinner form factor than the 3300 mAh of the HTC One max. I personally believe most of the reason for an internal battery is simply laziness in design. It simply takes a lot more engineering and design work to include a removable battery versus not. I completely believe its possible to cram a removable version of the same 3300 mAh battery in the phone with the volume they had available in this phone. I bet they could have increase the battery volume even further if they put more effort into it.
My primary point is that, while going internal does offer some volumetric benefits, majority of the manufacturers do not exploit it for the simple reason that it costs more.
I'm not even going to touch the microSD comment (even while quite possibly true, many geeks and their gf's still demand it).
So what is wrong having "dumb manually managed storage?"
It sounds to me like a feature, and a feature I would happily want to have in its usefulness in being partitioned off from the rest of the phone.
And build quality? Really? The way you talk about build quality sounds more like you are interested in how pretty it looks to you and other people? Your hand is supposed to be around the phone when you use it in the first place, so most of this phones plastic surround will be invisible to you and others, so why are so fussy on wanting a pretty phone, over a feature packed phone? Would better build quality translate into better drop-ability? Not at all! That would be an absurd conclusion to blindly believe.
But Brian, you don't focus on build quality, not really. Your critique suggests an overwhelming devotion to the fashion of these devices. You're actually neglecting the underlying technology in many cases to focus instead on things one suspects most Anandtech readers could care less about. Honestly? How much time did you devote to the Gold iPhone in a recent podcast? Yes, it's gold, we get it.
Carhartt jeans, Toyota Camry's, and Samsung phones all have good build quality. Louis Vuitton, Rolls Royce, and metal skinned phones are almost entirely about fashion. Not the phone's electronics of course, but the metal casing, yes, fashion. You're ignoring the actual technology in favor of focusing, and focusing, and focusing on the minutia of the exquisite metalized skins of these devices.
Metal may often be studier, but that doesn't devolve everything else to crap. That is often the conclusion to be drawn from your criticism. In point of fact, there are plastics with far better strength to weight ratios than any metal. As a technology person, I really don't care if the case is metal or plastic, so long as it's functional. Your endless rants about the greasy Samsung casings truly baffles me. One wonders if you have some sort of unusual oil factories in the palms of your hands?=.
Or just maybe, you go through so many phones that are all so similar, the small differences start to become big differences. In that light, I recommend the following XKCD comic strip: http://xkcd.com/915/ - "Connoisseur"
I'm talking about the fact that you rarely, or barely give any kudos to devices with microSD and user swappable batteries. Those features aren't listed as benefits, they're hardly mentioned at all. Anandtech tests everything else, but I cannot recall the last time Anandtech tested the speed of a microSD port.
Your recent review of the Note 3 was a case in point. You barely mentioned either of those features. They are real, actual hardware differentiators. For many of us, not only are they important differentiators, the absence of them is a deal breaker.
A cost conscious consumer can honestly want a device to be future proofed for a few years. We don't get new, free, phones a few times each month. Our batteries wear out. Media sizes are ever increasing. Not all of us want to rely, nor can we rely on the cloud for all our media needs. It is a waste for us to spend an extra $200 for a phone with 64GB when we're far better served with $30 in cheap SD storage. As you point out, we cannot use it for apps, it's for video and music. For those use cases, the highest quality NAND is generally wasted.
Even though you don't use those features, the best selling smart phone models in the world still have them. You spend orders of magnitude more time discussing the casings, finishes, and lustrousness of phones than either of those. So yes, in this case, you definitely are neglecting the underlying technology in favor of fashion.
On this topic, in both in your reviews and on the podcast, your attitude is one of "I know what you need better than you know what you need". That's what you're telling us. That you're the expert, and that you know best.
How would you respond to a reviewer repeatedly telling you that you really didn't need the features you used every single day? That's what you're doing. It's annoying, and insulting.
You make a relevant point, and allude to another equally important point.
As you point out, by not giving kudos to phone makers who include microSD and removable batteries, they don't have to list the absence of those features as cons to the Apple and Nexus products the staff here tend to glow over.
Which leads into another key point. We all know what would happen were Brian's to neglect to mention a key, unique, hardware differentiator in the review of an Apple product. Apple or their marketing agency would contact him. They'd bitch, they'd moan, they'd complain, they may even threaten future review status.
Many reviewers know not to neglect a focus on Apple's little differentiators, but they have little compunction in reviewing 'lesser' devices with a completely different set of rules.
You realize that Google itself dropped SD support from Android, right? Something Brian has mentioned numerous times, yet here you are again making the claim that "Apple is perfection" like a true troll.
And you have no issue with OEMs charging extra $100 per each incremental storage size? Sure you get free phones and lots other perks so perhaps that is why you are so understanding of the OEMs. But have you thought about this nonsense from consumers' point of view?
I am guessing no. Every other pages are filled with the author's worry and concern about OEM's margins or market share. Why do you care? Why should I care about their cost savings? This has been the trend of this site for a long time. Unbelievable amount of corporate favoritism plus unapologetic ignorance on users.
And I can purchase 4, 3100 mAh Galaxy Note II batteries for about half that. All 4 together weigh just .47 pounds (54 grams each, 0.11 lbs each)
All together, the four of them take up less space than any external battery pack I've ever seen. If I'm only going to be gone overnight, I need only take 1 spare. With all 4 and the battery in the phone, I can usually operate for a solid week without recharging once.
A user replaceable battery is also a hedge against the planned obsolescence of built-in batteries. Batteries wear out, the have a very finite number of cycles. A battery that will no longer hold a charge is one of the leading reasons consumers buy new phones.
User replaceable batteries and micorSD are as much about reducing consumer costs as anything else. It isn't difficult to see why reviewers awash in a torrent of new, free, phones aren't particularly enamored in these features. They don't use phones for 2+ years. They don't pay for the larger memory models. They don't wear out batteries.
Agree with pretty much everything you've written in all of your replies. The fact that this comment section is dominated by comments disagreeing with Brian's position on microSD should say something, but I doubt it will have any lasting impact on his opinion of the matter.
It's a good thing device makers seem to be going in the opposite direction, all I see now are devices adding the functionality.
It's funny - when reading negative comments on HTC phones these days I can't help but think it's Samsung sponsored comments (BTW I have a Samsung phone).
I wish samsung paid me :) Dunno about paid comments, but there sure are a lot of paid reviews, and I don't mean paid by samsung,
I think negative comments towards this device are well justified, it goes beyond the reasonable size and hardware is ... previous gen at best. Given all this space to cram components in, this phone should have been much, much better. Alas, htc is no samsung that produces everything and no apple to exploit fanatical brand loyalty, so the only way to keep profit margins decent while keeping the price "reasonable" is to offer cheaper and slightly out-of-date hardware.
He's not talking about the validity of the criticism, but instead the relentless "shill" type comments that constantly bring up Samsung in every discussion.
FYI - Samsung was being investigated by the Taiwan's FTC back in April for paying student "shills" to slam HTC and advocate for Samsung on tech review sites. Google for the link. It's pretty clear Samsung's marketing is pretty scummy.
The problem with the relentless rant of commenters with regard of the requirement of the SD card is that they have, in fact, ignored the reality that all will want to stuff their phones with media.
My anecdotal observations in my social circle show that they do not need 16GB/32GB+64Gb of storage. It is good to have but they do not need it. And I have received complaints from SGS3 user that the 16GB built in memory has caused a great deal of problems in game app installtion as these apps are not transferrable to SD card.
The demands for SD card slot is okay. There are many phones out there to choose from. But to condemn Brian for expressing his thoughts and to criticitizing the every device manufacturers out there not to have the SD card slot is definitely irrational. We have choices here. And we should respect the different choices.
Love the review. I hadn't even heard of this phone coming out.
I know it's a bit much to ask this but could you start doing a more intensive audio benchmark suite on phones and tablets? It's very often overlooked but a lot of people will use the devices they keep on them as sources (usually pull down from the cloud) and THD+N and response numbers and graphs would be very helpful in making decisions.
This isn't the glory days of the dot-com boom. Few (if any) sites have the kind of budget that allows them to go out and buy whatever random devices their readership expects them to review.
I'm sure that Brian would consider reviewing your favored device if you wanted to send him one, though.
Mostly decent review, except in my opinion Brian's equivocation regarding the finger print sensor in comparison to Apple's. To be fair Brian stated that the One Max sensor is "further from perfection than Apple's", however from reading the rest of the text, one could come to the conclusion that in the grand scheme of things the HTC's and Apple's sensors are more similar than not. I would hazard to guess that in 6 months time, most Iphone 5S users will be using the fingerprint scanner. I don't think the same will be said for the HTC Once Max sensor.
It doesn't really matter what apple does, everything apple does is amazing because it is done by apple by default. IIRC the review at engadget: "note 3 - cheap plastic - product sucks" and then "iphone 5c - amazing plastic - product rocks".
Things have come to a point you cannot really expect honesty from review sites, no matter how "trusted" they themselves claim to be.
Fingerprint readers are a government sponsored scam to build fingerprint databases for god knows what ill purposes, glad I got the note 3 as it looks like the note 4 will have a fingerprint sensor as well. Fingerprints are considered lower security level than even passwords, a password is in the brain, a fingerprint can be extracted from everything you touch.
People perceive (whether correctly or incorrectly) that rigidity in their phone means it is a more durable device and that the rigidity give a better in hand feel.
The iPhone 5C feels really solid, like the Lumia's, there's no flex. So I can understand the merits of claiming "cheap" plastic.
"For the incredibly small percentage of users that clamors for an SD card every single smartphone launch, it’s at least one point which won’t be belabored so tiresomely this time." Gee, thanks for making me feel like a dick for not wanting to pony up £80 for £10 worth of low performing NAND.
We get it, you don't think these things are worthwhile. That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. That doesn't justify a paragraph of text dedicated to mocking and marginalising a chunk of your readership. It devalues your opinion.
I agree. I've been an iPhone user for 4 years, but switched to the Optimus G Pro (also a huge 5.5" phone) and one of the draws was expanding the storage. It's a big enough phone to be able to read work instructions quite easily, so I have a lot of PDFs and documents on it, as well as 20GB of music. More storage never hurts. I didn't have too much trouble filling up my 32GB iPhone. I can live without it, but if choosing between 2 phones, and one has it and noe doesn't, you might as well buy the phone with more options.
How can you say a "very tiny part of the market" and know for certain? I know so many Samsung smartphone users, and do you want to know how many of them have been asked by Samsung how they use there micro SD cards, and the data storage facilities on their phones?
NONE OF THEM!
So where on earth are you pretending to get your data from? And how exactly are you interpreting the numbers? I just fail to believe you actually know the ins and outs of phone storage and micro SD card usage in smartphones upon a broad enough scale to start making allegations like you have.
Believe the reality you want, it only exists in a very small and exceptionally annoying minority.
I don't understand the the reviewer's hatred of MicroSD cards. They're a useful thing to have, for every type of user. And, the fact of the matter is, internal storage space has not been rapidly increasing in smartphones. Storage needs have, however. Unlimited data plans are gone for many users, so listening to locally-stored music makes much more sense. In addition to that, the megapixel count of smartphone cameras continue to march north, and those larger file sizes are competing with ever-increasing app sizes. MicroSD expansion just makes sense.
I understand what Google was trying to do in nixing external expansion in its Nexus lineup, but it just hasn't played out the way they wanted it to. Instead of getting a phone with 16GB of internal storage and an external expansion slot, we're more likely to just get a phone with 16GB of internal storage. Campaigning for the continued removal of MicroSD storage is doing nothing but harming us all.
"I don't understand the the reviewer's hatred of MicroSD cards."
Every reviewer have their irrational foibles that makes no sense. You just have to learn those blindspots and avoid them like the plague with each particular reviewer. With Brian we know he hates WP8, he dislikes microSD cards and he winces on AMOLED screens. He still puts out very qualified reviews but again, know when to listen, and when to just skip.
Luckily it's easy to back up the dislikes of microSD (poor Android support, slower than native storage, tradeoffs in build quality) and AMOLED screens (oversaturated, higher power drain, burn in, and sensitive to overheating), and reasons why I can't get anything done on WP8. They aren't blind spots that make no sense, they're just realities.
What an arrogant hoax. You surely realize that every point you raise has counter points, right?
How about being on consumer side for once? Make a case why 32 GB should be the bottom line. And why 64 GB should cost $20 more, not $100 more, etc,. Stop worrying about OEMs. They are doing fine. Think for once from consumers standpoint, instead of corporate-hired marketeering.
We can all find window dressing to support our opinions. That's why so many here object to your rants on AMOLED, microSD, and batteries. Despite your technical expertise, we realize your opinions in those areas has little basis in truth, and is largely just an smug opinion.
Yes, the NAND on many microSD cards is inferior to NAND built into devices. We know and we Don't Care! We use it to hold mass media, videos, photos, and music. What we care about far more is that microSD is often 10 times more cost effective and functions very well indeed.
Really Brian, telling users they really don't need the features they use and love is the height of contemptuous arrogance.
Couldn't have written it better myself, I'll be honest and say I haven't read through an entire one of Brian Klug's reviews but if they were all filled with this kind of distorted reality transposed to the general populous, I probably wasn't missing much.
Simply put, microSD opens up uses that base model 16GB phone users could never dream of using for their phones. For example, I recently had 2 large family events during the same weekend, took multiple movies at full 1080p on my SGS4 with a UHS-I microSD and captured around 25GB of footage. Never could I have done this with my 16GB Apple 4S, nor would I even attempted to do it.
And what would the other option be? Pay 2x as much for 16GB more? No thanks, not when I can just move my microSD card from one phone to the next and not get fleeced on extra storage every time I buy a new device, with my own money (seems to be a key point lost upon Brian, anyways).
So let's see... I'm a budget conscious consumer who is shopping for a smartphone that I'm going to keep for 4 years because I'm too cheap to upgrade sooner. My options are 16GB phone + microSD card for a total four year price of $3600, or a 64GB phone with faster native storage for a total four year price of $3760.
Can't you see why it's absolutely ridiculous how you microSD shills freak out over such a pointless little feature? Just buy the overpriced flash storage and forget about it, it's barely a bump in the road for someone who's paying for a smart phone data plan anyway.
I do like the cheating table of shame there, but I also worry that this would just make the cheating more sophisticated, with phones being able to detect apps even with renames and hide their clock speeds etc.
just how big are phones going to get before people realize how absolute ridiculous it looks holding a tablet sized device up to your ear? Something the size of the original htc one is just about right.
Its more ridiculous watching someone hold a tiny phone 8 inches from their face so they can see what it says and push the tiny buttons. I'll take a larger phone any day. Easier to use, harder to lose, good battery, nice screen size.
Comparison videos between the One Max and the One on YouTube also show the MICROPHONE is decidedly inferior on the One Max. I wish you had tested that as well!
Brian, while you are certainly entitled to your opinion of every aspect of the smartphone market, I think you need to take a step back and realize not everyone is in your situation and receives free phones for review or a product budget for AT to buy review samples.
I think your comments with regard to SD cards in particular are off target, as it is an important feature for many users who do not want to pay exorbitant amounts for miniscule increments of storage. 128GB models if some popular phones like the iPhone 5S literally double the on-contract price vs a 64GB SD card that sells for 50 bucks.
Contrary to what you have said, the fact the One Max's inclusion of an SD slot along with myriad other Android and Windows tabs and phones illustrates SD slots are NOT going the way of the dodo. Hopefully companies do not take your opinions on the matter as fact.
What you present regarding SD cards and build quality tradeoffs is largely a false dichotomy based on your own biases regarding particular aspects of "build quality".
Take for example, the Sony Xperia Z Ultra. It's about the same size as the One Max and offers SD card expansion. Many reviewers have positively commented on the build quality of this device, even noted that it offers water and dust resistance. A more insightful reviewer would realize that it isn't the SD card that is responsible the particular issues you have with build quality, it is the fact that the phone wasn't designed well to begin with.
Of course, you would probably still disparage all the purchasers of this device for wanting flexible affordable local storage and find some way to disparage the device for poor build quality anyway. After all, biasing people away from flexible and cheap local storage and towards expensive and easily data-mined in-cloud storage is what your corporate masters want, isn't it?
If we look at your shallow view of "build quality", then it becomes even more obvious that there is a false dichotomy. You don't spend much time balancing how easy it is to repair a device vs. how it is built. You don't balance the fact that many phones with removable back covers have replaceable batteries. Nor do you balance the additional radiation going into someone's head because a phone is made of metal. Essentially, you are looking at a few aspects of something that resonate with your biases and proclaiming some judgment that SD cards are bad for phones and that the people who want SD cards are some sort of small, unimportant, and obnoxious minority.
Even if you continue to push your biases in your "reviews", maybe it's time for a bit more honesty? You can still write a good review if you say "I just don't like SD cards because it's hard for me to manage removable local storage".
I love the way that his opinion (that's a component of reviews) that build quality suffers when SD cards are involved (particularly in the context of *this* device) is not valid but yours is?
Other manufacturer had the solution towards the door and build quality tradeoffs, it is called sd card slot with flap. Pretty please do a review on Xperias line.
I've read most of them and still find them off-base. Your arguments about a small demographic are based on what? The entire smartphone market? Honestly, this means about as much as Nokia claiming they held the majority of the cell phone market up until a few years ago, it means very little out of context. It's all about what part of the market you are targeting, for flagship phones and high-end power users, features like microSD and changeable batteries make all the difference that can be a deciding factor in which phone to purchase.
Similarly, people who care about aluminum unibody construction are a vast minority, imo, when all I see are people obscuring these case materials in protective cases made of polycarbonate or rubber.
In any case, it is good to see phone makers like HTC One are not taking your opinion as gospel, and instead, listening to their customers in deciding their hardware approaches. It is clear to me that HTC saw how the One was losing to the S4, despite positive reviews declaring the One superior in many categories only to lose in sales due to features like microSD, removable battery, 802.11AC. Coincidentally, I just named the 3 big reasons I bought an S4 instead of the One a few months ago. I fully expect the next iteration to follow the One Max and offer a microSD and removable battery, but we shall see.
May be HTC were stupid that they had to open the entire phone's back to put that microsd card. What about a slot from the sides. I believe a phone this big has quite a long side. I guess quantum geometry supports me. But yeah, that 1cm slot will destroy the build quality too just like the sim card does.
Pretty disappointing product really. No OIS, lesser SOC, and nothing really innovative or even a great price. I'm in the market to optimize down to 1 device from a phone & small tablet to just a phablet but I don't think I'll bother considering the HTC compared to either the Sony or the Lumia 1520.
Brian, Did you notice the problem that Zoes included in a highlight video now only show 1 second of motion and then freeze? I've seen that on my One when I upgraded to 4.3 and others have reported the same issue. It really seems like a bug. The highlights become much more static. All the other highlight changes are great but this is a step backward. Mike R
"I’ve said my part already on microSD cards and the fact that they’re going the way of the dodo in smartphones, I just don’t need one anymore, and definitely not at the expense of build quality. It is convenient not having to use a SIM ejector tool though, even if I carry one around all the time anyways"
I'm sorry, you carry around a sim card removal TOOL, at all times with you, and you don't think micro SD cards are relevant any more? I don't think you are qualified to write a review about this phone if that is your opinion. I mean you would rather use a cloud/pay the extra money for inbuilt storage, than use an affordable, replaceable, micro SD card... But you paid to have a sim card removing tool, and then chose to wear it upon you? At all times?...
I'm glad to see that you are not letting this issue with Brian's Klug's anti-local storage bias slip away. The sad fact of the matter is that most reviewers are notoriously biased. Some are biased due to ignorance, some are biased due to payoffs, many are biased due to both.
The fact that Brian Klug has some sort of hate trip on SD cards is not surprising. All the big money players in the US want to get rid of local storage so they can (a) increase data revenues (b) mine and sell more data (c) comply with NSA directives to collect more data on people. So we have one of Anandtech's top tier reviewers going off on how bad micro SD cards are, i.e. implying you cannot build a high quality phone if it has a micro SD card. And then the same reviewer disparages the many millions of people who depend on SD cards every day as some sort of unimportant minority.
It seems obvious to me that objectivity and balance have been lost, that the reviewer is just a tool pushing an agenda.
So with the same logic laptop should get rid of SD slots too, especially macbooks with SD card sticking out. Heck, earlier macbook pros didn't have one!
I don't think what 10101010 said translates to your intelligence, lol. For one you are not really a big money player. I think what 10101010 meant is that you happily obey.
Stop listening to your friends in the phone manufacturing business for a minute and start listening to the technical crowd that makes up the majority of your readership.
I'm having a tough time liking the One Maxx - it's such a big phone for .2" screen increase over the Note 3, with the on screen buttons eating a decent part of the increased real estate.
Also the Note 2 was pretty heavy, the Note 3 was a nice decrease in weight. The difference in weight between the Note 3 and One Maxx is close to the difference in weight between the iPhone 5 and Note 3.
Well, the fingerprint issue isn't really resolved yet. We will have to wait and see how the security aspect goes. Still, my guess is that Apple is probably better at this generally than Android OEMs, specifically 2nd tier ones like HTC.
This seems like an unnecessary review, especially as many much bigger launches were ignored. Who will buy HTC One Max? Very few people. HTC is going down anyway.
I'm still waiting for the mother lode: Nexus 5. I also hope Brian can overcome his WP8 bias and review a few Nokia phones out this fall.
As an Australian, this is absolutely normal here - we use mm for dimensions of all things except for diagonal screen size which is pretty much always quoted in inches - for everything from laptops to TVs to smartphones.
Isn't it obvious to see the advantage? If you always have a bunch of 64GB devices around to review (and unlimited LTE) for free you may not know but to us mortals the saving of $200 far exceeds any inconveniences (if all) of managing them.
It's like arguing having only a single SSD storage for laptop is better than SSD+HDD hybrid because the former is faster, lighter and more failproof. Problem is not everyone can purchase 1TB of PCIe SSD, and some people prefer 128 SSD + 1TB HDD setup at a fraction of the cost.
I don't think the author is claiming that SD cards slots are bad, just that very few people use them, or would use the added capacity they would provide, thus making them a lower relative priority compared to other things like, in the case of this phone, added thickness and weight of the removable back.
Someone else was saying in another comment that carriers who bundled phones with a free SD card in the box found that the majority of people still didn't use the SD card.
I guess it never occurred to them that the bundled SD card is basically useless due to it's capacity and not it's utility? I don't use them either but with 2GB storage I can't even use to load a Windows ISO. I leave them in the box too, but replace them with my own 32 or 64GB card.....
Exactly, it's like all the reviewers out there getting free 128GB iPads to review and totally understanding Apple's position about not including a microSD slot. Yet they don't realize, most people don't want to pay $800-$900 for 128GB of storage and Cellular over the base $500 model....
Why is the Sony Z Ultra missing, much more compelling device to me than One Max? Also why use 4 decimal places on the max brightness? Really, we don't even need a single decimal place for this measure, just round it to nearest integer. Human eye can't tell minute changes in brightness at the bright end, like it can at the dark end.
Sony are killing it at the moment, in my opinion. By FAR the best mid-range handset for the money is the Xperia SP. At the high end you have the Xperia Z1, then for people who have gorilla hands, the Z Ultra.
All better phones than their counterparts by other manufacturers like HTC or Samsung. Yet, where are the reviews?
The amount of logical fallacies being committed in this comments section is staggering.
Personally I'd prefer sdcard slots in my phones, but the reality is most people don't care or don't know or aren't familiar with their use. They're going away, slowly but surely. Samsung and Sony are really the only holdouts, with the exception of bargain-basement budget devices that cut internal eMMC down to 4GB or smaller to keep BOM cost as low as possible.
Those of us who want our phones to be purely functional powerhouses of mobile computing are sadly in the minority, and the market is absolutely a tyranny of the majority.
Biggest logical fallacy is to claim that there is no need for affordable storage options in smartphones when the OEMs are charging $100, $200, $300 extra per those extra storages, and apparently the reviewer doesn't see the irony of it. If no one needs more than 16 GB, how do the OEMs get away with such ridiculous markups?
The reviewer is happy as clam as long as she gets a new phone every other week.
Yes, they're going away, slowly but surely, except they're not and in this case a device-maker that didn't include SD slots before added it to their latest flagship phone? How can you claim logical fallacy and not realize the inaccuracy of what you just wrote? Do you think next year's HTC One update will include an SD slot or no?
As for the rest, it doesn't matter what the majority of disinterested users want, like any industry, the demand of the top-end drives demand and innovation for the rest. Just as most people may not care for a microSD slot, removable battery, or unibody aluminum chassis, they will ALMOST CERTAINLY take the advice over which phone to pick based upon the input from someone who DOES care about those features, or has the phone and decides on it based on word of mouth or first hand exposure.
You're not the first person to claim the One Mini has a plastic speaker grille, but to me seeing it in person it is clearly metal, albeit with one of those clear plastic coatings like aluminum food tins usually have on the inside to protect the food. What's the deal - what makes you claim it's plastic? I agree it doesn't look great like on the One, but it quite clearly is metal albeit with a lower grade finish.
For god shake, put snappy dragoony 800 in it already. And please, anything lower then 8MP is budget phone category. ultra pixel is useless. try capture a document and Ye shall know the difference. speaker at the front are welcome thou.
Would of made much more sense to go with the SD 800. SD 400 on mini SD 600 on One and SD 800 on max. The SD 800 actually has better battery life due to LTE integration and it's faster. I can't bring myself to buy an outdated SoC when phones are already outdated so fast. Buying anything less than a SD 800 is a foolish move.
I was really pumped about the max. But the SD 600 ruined it for me. I've been let down constantly. Was pumped for the lumia 1520 but of course t-mobile isn't getting it. I was pumped for the note 3 but it was barely an upgrade from the note 2. There is nothing good enough to make me want to add 23 dollars a month to my bill to subsidize a phone when my G note 2 is fully paid off and I get pure unlimited everything for 69.99 with LTE activated in my area. Looks like my note 2 will be my trusty side kick another year. Hope the note 4 brings something great to the table.
oh ya, one more thing, the capacitive button. must have Option, Home, and Back. the option there, when in home page, when you click it should have the notification bar option. so that you can operate in one hand! no need to use the other hand to pull down the notification option. multi task button and search button are useless. long press home button and let it show the multitask window.
As one of the "incredibly small percentage of users that clamors for an SD card", I feel I need to set you straight on the issue. Using one's smartphone as a media player makes an SD card necessary if a sizeable collection of wav files are to be stored on the phone. Secondly I notice that you devote very little attention to the audio quality of the cellphones in your reviews. I suggest that you dispense with any comments on the sound quality of the built in speaker and focus more on important audio issues like what DAC the cellphone uses and what it sounds like through a decent pair of headphones.
You boys don't take well to criticism do you, every time a comment remotely criticising your articles is posted, it is removed. With that attitude, like the micro sd card, Anandtech will be going the way of the dodo soon as well. I didn't realise you were so narrow minded.
You boys don't take well to criticism do you, every time a comment remotely criticising your articles is posted, it is removed. With that attitude, like the micro sd card, Anandtech will be going the way of the dodo soon as well. I didn't realise you were so narrow minded.
I don't know whether you're just having trouble browsing the comments, but there are many comments critical of the article here, many with responses. Your claim doesn't seem to hold up.
I prefer One. SD slot is not important for me, because there is an option to extend storage with OTG reader like Meenova MicroSD Reader: http://goo.gl/U6IyY
It actually works just fine, if all you want is space for movies during a long flight (or music for special occasions etc) then it's a perfectly viable alternative to built in cardslots. I use mine pretty often, along with a regular USB OTG cable when I want to pull RAW files from my camera or access stuff I've brought from the PC on a faster USB 3.0 stick. All of it is more convenient than removing my case to get at the card on older phones I've had...
Honestly, I'd only want a microSD slot at this point if it's easily accessed from the outside like some Sony phones etc, but I can easily live without it as long as the phone has at least 32GB, so can most people. The price gouging for SKUs with more storage really has to stop tho.
Brian, Did you notice the problem that Zoes included in a highlight video now only show 1 second of motion and then freeze? I've seen that one my One when I upgraded to 4.3 and others have reported the same issue. It really seems like a bug. The highlights become much more static. All the other highlight changes are great but this is a step backward. Thanks, Mike
I for one really appreciate that Brian has an opinion and sticks to it. He sets the quality bar high and let his opinion shine through when quality is not met.
Speaking of quality I am happy to see that the different brands go more and more up in quality of the device and not only specifications. Of course some users prefer an easy setup and others prefer fully customized solution. Here I am sure that the latter group is far the smallest but this group still gets fully addressed by some of the biggest players in the market. This is impressive I think.
For me personally I am sticking to my work phone, which is an old blackberry and I can live with this situation. But if I am going to put my money toward a smartphone I for one also would go for build quality. Today I am not sure which one but it would probably be a Nokia (I have owned Nokia phones before and were happy with the build quality), HTC (I for one also like the metallic casing) or and Apple (The small form factor is for me a positive thing).
So to rap up. Brian stick with you preferences some likes some hate. But his is expected when an opinion is given.
Disclaimer: I am not a native speaking so my grammar and language errors should be overlooked.
I can respect an opposing opinion as much as the next guy, but when it's delivered in Brian's smug, "I know what's best for everyone" attitude, it's a bit much to digest.
I didn't interpret it as being smug. For that matter, I didn't interpret it as an opinion, either. Take his claim that microSD slots are going the way of the dodo. I think you can objectively look at how many devices include microSD card slots and conclude that it's no longer the norm in Android devices outside of Samsung and Sony, and also objectively look at how Android is engineered and conclude that they don't seem to be accommodating microSD slots in their OS design anymore.
I don't think you should interpret this observation as an indication that Brian hates microSD card slots or something, he's just making an observation. In the case of this handset he felt that the removable back for the microSD reader compromised the design and I agree - it's heavier, bulkier and means it's no longer a gapless unibody design. But if the device had included a microSD slot on the side or something, so as not to compromise the design, I don't think this would have been a problem.
"For the incredibly small percentage of users that clamors for an SD card..."
How about the incredibly small percentage of users who obsess (for pages) over the color and finish on the phones? Oh wait - that's you guys at Anandtech.
I just bought a smartphone with an mSD slot BECAUSE it had an mSD slot. Money where mouth is; vendors, listen up.
I have a real soft spot for HTC. My first smartphone was the Apache, and for all its ridiculousness, I loved it. Followed by the Titan, a brief flirtation with Samsung's WinMo lineup for the Omnia, then the mighty HD2 - which is still my favourite smartphone experience due to the mad levels of developer support & fully functional Android + Windows Phone 7 ports. I've now been with Samsung for the life of the Galaxy S line, jumping on the Note bandwagon after the S III, and although I (genuinely) enjoy the functionality of Touchwiz, I'm getting sick of a few things that just haven't been fixed through three or four revisions of their software suite.
I kept wanting HTC to make something that would tempt me away - had they shipped the international Evo 3D closer to the Galaxy S II's release, I'd have picked that up instead. Yet, for the past two years, there's been too many compromises - both the One X & the One disappointed in the battery life department above all others, something I'm not keen to compromise on. Especially so after the Note II set a hefty precedent.
Then there's the SD card argument. Given the instability & low quality of the memory, combined with the poor and confusing experience SD cards can give consumers, I don't mind that they're going out of vogue. Wouldn't store anything crucial on something so volatile. Although in principle I wholeheartedly support user-accessible upgrades, SD slots are no excuse for insufficient internal storage, as everyone with a '16GB' Galaxy S4 discovered. For my use-case, however (Swapping between devices regularly, keeping a lot of lossless music offline, and storing backup images), an SD card slot is a definite point towards a device.
Now, for the first time in 2+ years, HTC have made a device that ticks the most important boxes - screen size, battery capacity & run-time, expandable storage. I can deal with the size, I'm a Note fan (Also have the 5.9" Pantech Vega N°6, which is a mammoth device). Although flip cases are not my bag, a portable kickstand with 20% extra battery sounds fantastic. The metal build, the stereo speakers, the SLCD when I'm getting awfully sick of poorly calibrated AMOLED panels, it all stacks up. They're even taking proper advantage of the screen size with a 5x5 home screen grid, Samsung's persistence with 4x4 on the Note II & 3 is baffling to me. The lack of OIS is a downer, I do love and use the S Pen regularly, the lack of S800 is almost deal-breaking, and yet...
HTC have finally made a device that appeals to the core of my smartphone experience, and I feel compelled to give them money in the hopes they keep doing this.
Thanks for the tip on the Meenova OTG-SD card adapter! I just went and bought one, even though I don't yet have an Android device. I will someday, and this is too good to pass up. Plus, such a tiny company could disappear. BTW I lobbied Sandisk, Transcend etc a year ago for something like this but those that replied said it couldn't be done...
As for Brian Klug's comment that microSD is "going the way of the dodo": He probably thinks that means an evolutionary death. In fact the dodo was killed off by idiots with no concern for the future. There's nothing "natural" about losing microSD - it packs huge amounts of affordable storage in a tiny, rugged, hot-swap package. It should rightfully be with us for many years. Unfortunately, it's being marketed out existence by tablet makers pushing internal RAM, telecom carriers pushing data usage, and probably even Hollywood.
Yes I have to admit brian has some odd perspectives at times. I find it easier when I remind myself that " Es not the Messiah! - Es just a naughty naughty BOY!"
I could see something like Meenova's reader coming a mile away once USB OTG support became common place... I'm just surprised it took a Kickstarter campaign to make it a reality, and that it isn't more popular given this apparent need for removable storage amongst enthusiasts.
I also thought we'd see USB OTG flash drives before we saw a USB OTG reader.... Though I guess it wouldn't be much smaller since you can't hide the flash memory inside the male connector itself like some of the full size USB microSD readers do.
most note users do use their pens. I have the note 2 and the spend in one of the reasons I bought it among it being awesome. I love snote and I use it alot. I have a flip case which turns into a stand so that is useful for writing.
in the chart comparing the one/mini/max on the first page the mini is stated to have 4x krait 200 cores. as i understand, the mini is dualcore only and looking at the info on this page http://www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon/processors/400 i believe it uses krait 300 cores because it's clocked at 1,4ghz.
As always I really appreciate the depth and clarity of Brian's reviews. I've noticed one thing really missing from all, and perhaps that is because review hardware simply doesn't come with this accessory- car docks are not mentioned. After struggling with a poorly implemented car mode on the HTC Thunderbolt, I am very curious how well it works with the HTC dock. After all, one really good reason to buy a phablet over a normal size phone is that a phablet is the ideal form factor for a satnav app running docked. (Another good reason is to ditch a separate e-reader and just carry one device, not really a flaw in the review but this isn't really mentioned. I'm sure many buyers have this in mind when they buy that really, really big phone.
Sorry, I haven't read all posts. I liked the review for the most part. And I see someone was in Tucson to take the video, cool. I'm in Tucson.
The HTC one max is my first smart phone (!) and I've been around since the early 70's. I got away with a pay as you go phone and an ipod up until now.
I wanted a bigger phone that could be used more like a laptop in a pinch for a new job I'm getting. I might need a keyboard for cli stuff, and using something like VNC is easier on a bigger, higher resolution screen is better.
For me, lots of this nitpicky stuff doesn't matter. I wanted a high quality, large screen and something I could hold onto reasonably well. The Mega doesn't have the screen quality. The Note is built around the stylus which I won't use. The SD card slot helps because I want to store all 30+ gigs of my music plus a few more gigs of videos (work related) on the phone. Not possible with the internal storage and software build.
Can someone explain to me why CPU speed is so important on a phone? For my laptop/home computer, the only thing I need CPU for is games or if I need a virtual machine to get a certain type of job done. Otherwise, I can wait, it's not a big deal. Even the virtual machine using my CPU isn't a huge problem, I'm patient :)
Tech for tech's sake is not productive. I haven't needed a faster CPU in my laptop or home computer for years. Memory, sure :)
The deal breaker for me on this HTC is the rattling vibration feedback. Holy cow, what were they thinking? But I don't like the other big phones so I have to decide if I can live with it.
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ddriver - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Doesn't seem to be doing well in its category (phablets that is) - considering devices already on the market and those soon to be launched, I'd guess the main selling point for this device will be brand loyalty. And people complained the note was too big...Omega215D - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
The BoomSound speakers are much better than what the Note 3 puts out but you pay the price for them in extra height and possibly thickness. Also, HTC is pretty good at making the most of the battery capacity in which many of their phones have great standby times and good usage life.kmmatney - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
The price may make a difference. I was planning on buying a note 3, but went for the LG Optimus Pro G because it was $200 cheaper at $99, and almost the same size screen. If the HTC One Max is $199, it might sway some buyers. I probably would have bought it just for the speakers.jshsimpson1 - Friday, November 15, 2013 - link
you missed out on the note 3Chaitanya - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
a small typo on 1st page. Battery aint 1210mah, its 3300mah I believe.IanCutress - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
1210 mAh is the Power Flip battery. 3300 mAh is the phone battery.MrCommunistGen - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
If you're talking about this line: "The battery isn’t huge, at 1210 mAh and 3.75V (4.53 watt-hours), but it does give a boost as I’ll show in the battery section." he's referring to a battery + flip cover case.nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
One MAX - 164.5*82.5*10.29mm 217gGalaxy note 3 - 151.2*79.2*8.3mm 168g
I can understand the size but why that heavy and thick?
Johnmcl7 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I was surprised at the thickness/weight as well, the larger Z Ultra comes in a lot thinner and a bit lighter despite the fact it has a larger 6.44in screen and fully weather sealed:Sony Z Ultra - 179.4 x 92.2 x 6.5 mm 212g
ShieTar - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Both the Note 3 and the Z Ultra are dead flat though, while the One Max has a nice curvature on the back. Its surely a question of personal reference which you prefer, personally I like the curved body better than something thin and flat.ddriver - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
The note 3 is not really flat, the camera bulges a little bit, but yes, the overall shape of the back cover is flat. It is modular and replaceable though which does open a bit of customization option.kertisoka - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I don't think that the camera bulge is a plus though..ddriver - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
A shame really, they could have put a much better sensor and optics in such a thick body...beginner99 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Well the One and One Mini were already pretty oversized too in comparison to other models with the same screen size so nothing new (and IMHO bad). I like the design but the screen is too small or the chassis too big.FunBunny2 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Ya want stereo speakers on the front? well, until they make speakers that play through the screen, physics will be physics.Omega215D - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
The BoomSound speakers and the different shell thickness/ weight compared to the Samsung. Samsung uses thinner shells in order to achieve their svelt bodies and lighter weight. Also depends on the display technology used. LCDs are heavier than OLEDs.heron_kusanagi - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Hi Brian,Could you please do a Nokia Lumia 1020 review?
Drumsticks - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I'd also love to see a modern windows phone review. The 1520, personally. I mean, we got a Z10 review didn't we?If nothing else, id love to see a dive into Nokia's imaging on the 1020 and 1520, which is some engineering that I think everyone should be capable of appreciating, no matter how much you dislike the OS.
Alexvrb - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Yeah, I'd also like to see a proper 1520 review. I'm not surprised nobody at Anandtech got an invite to Nokia's event. Keep tossing their review phones in a closet (trash can?)... I'd quit sending you anything, if it was up to me. Waste of time and money.On the other hand, since he hates WP, it might just end up being a big ol' take a dump on the WP device article.
kyuu - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
+1BlakKW - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
+2cbrownx88 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
+3MarcSP - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
+4hrrmph - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
+5The Saint - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
"I’ve said my part already on microSD cards and the fact that they’re going the way of the dodo in smartphones, I just don’t need one anymore, and definitely not at the expense of build quality. It is convenient not having to use a SIM ejector tool though, even if I carry one around all the time anyways. For the incredibly small percentage of users that clamors for an SD card every single smartphone launch, it’s at least one point which won’t be belabored so tiresomely this time."That's funny. Seems to me if there's one thing that seems to be going the way of the dodo, it's Android manufacturers like HTC who think prettiness and premium feel are more important than functionality. 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.
Meanwhile, Samsung will continue laughing by being both the only player that focuses on functionality, and the only player that makes money in the Android world.
nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Apple charges $100 for 16GB memory and you can find 32GB micro SD at around $15. I wonder why most reviewers conveniently ignore this fact and just compare the baseline price of the products. I can do the math and I won't buy any device without expandability.Drumsticks - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I'm not sure that expandibility is the biggest selling point for galaxy phones outside of tech enthusiasts. Most people are not movie hogs etc and find 32GB reasonable. Business users and media enthusiasts on the other hand, would. But they don't represent everyone. Especially with streaming.I think its more brand name appeal and how much more recognizable they are. After all, apple does even better, and its not like they've ever offered MicroSD support.
personally I just think 16GB needs to die, and 32 should be standard up to 128GB in $50 increments max using high quality flash.
Spunjji - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Agreed about 16GB needing to die. But why would it when plenty of companies still make an extra $100 per sale by forcing people to upgrade to the minimum serviceable level? At least the Micro SD slot, with all its failings, allows some sort of other option. "pay as you grow" instead of throwing the whole shebang away when your storage needs outpace the crappy little chip soldered into your device.The0ne - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
My decision on a phone is1. Screen size and resolution
2. MicroSD slot
I use my phone more as a e-reader and media device than a phone. That's not to say I don't use it as a phone normall, I do but it's not all that it does. Duh? Having the MicroSD slot for expansion is Godsend. All my books and technical PDF's are there. All my music, videos and photos are there (just the favorite ones), and so forth.
Why wouldn't you want to have all of those on your phone? It is convenience for me. One device to do what I like to use it for.
Davidjan - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Agree with you. We can use OTG reader to expand storage like Meenova MicroSD Reader if we want: http://goo.gl/U6IyYsmartypnt4 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
One thing people always brag about on Android is consumer choice. If Samsung more fits your needs, more power to you. But I fail to see how removing one of the top tier Android phone manufacturers is a good thing. I don't want any one company to be massively ahead of the rest in market share, because I believe some competition is a good thing and prevents companies from resting on their previous success and putting out crap new products.Say what you will about mircoSD slots. Personally, I don't store much on my phone anyway, so it's not a big deal to me. But please don't espouse the absurd opinion that removing players from the Android space will in any way improve it.
smartypnt4 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Shit. On my phone. Did not mean to reply to you, but rather the guy you commented on. My bad.JeffFlanagan - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
>Shit. On my phone.OK, but you're going to need a new phone.
nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
HTC one is a nice device but it has too many deal breakers for me and more (no micro sd, sealed battery, almost non-repairable, terrible QC, low-resolution camera)They basically shot their own feet, trying the apple way, while being no apple.
smartypnt4 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Clearly you missed my point. I'm not interested in arguing the merits of a removable battery or microSD card slot. All I'm saying is that dude needs to chill out. If the Android space is truly about choice, what do you care what HTC does as long as SOMEONE makes the phone you want. In this case, HTC's phones this year clearly don't meet your needs/requirements, and that's fine. Saying they shot themselves in the foot is a bit harsh, though. I know several people who bought HTC Ones over SGS4's simply because of how the thing felt when they held the device. Say what you will about specs, features, etc., but not everyone values the same things you do. Hard to accept, I know. But my good lord. Are you really so shortsighted as to believe that the general population gives a rat's ass about removable batteries, SD card slots, phone repairability (wtf?), anecdotal evidence of bad QC, and a camera that makes heavy tradeoffs (in this case, IQ for low-light performance)?Not everyone has exactly the same desires or needs as you. Which is the beauty of the Android space: people have the luxury of choice, which you only get with multiple manufacturers competing in the same space.
/endrant
nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
So the device w/o micro sd slot is effectively $100-200 more expensive than device with one.iPhone 5s 64GB: $399 w/contract, total storage 64GB
S4 16GB + 64GB sdxc : around $200 w/contract, total storage 80GB
I know companies prefer to removing the slot to sell the high capacity devices with greater margin (BOM difference of 16GB and 64GB devices is almost negligible) but why we consumers blindly follow what they are doing?
MKy - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I can understand Apple there. Adding an SD card slot would be adding a means for the user to completely ruin the experience. Internal flash of my Ipad 4 reads/writes about 160MB/s, don't know about the newer models. A cheap SD card reads about 4 MB/s, writes even worse. So imagine running apps off it or using it as data storage. Would be painful.Spunjji - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Simple solution: Refuse to support cheap-ass storage. Validate some cards and support those, refuse app installation to SD. My 64GB Micro SDXC benches faster than most phone NAND... it cost me £40.kyuu - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I haven't been able to find any actual data on the storage performance of the iPad 4 (or any iPad for that matter), but I find your 160MB/s number rather unlikely. The storage used in iPads is the same used in iPhones, to the best of my knowledge, which isn't very fast.MKy - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Actually it is that fast. You can find benchmarking tools in the app store and even measure it by hand - open a say 5 gig video in one app and then choose open in another, then count the seconds it takes to copy it over (the delay after issuing the command) and calculate. The flash in iphone 5 is about the same speed.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.Dentons - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Brian, we know you hate SD cards and removable batteries. We also know that you are far more impressed by a phone that shows a bit of metal skin than by a phone that has actual features like removable batteries and microSD expansion.Your statement that "SD cards are going the way of the dodo" is laughably out of touch. Despite your personal wishes, the best selling smart phones on the planet, in nearly every size category, still have both microSD expansion and removable batteries.
You don't want these features, we get it. For whatever reason, you embrace the removal of these usable features. You clearly don't appreciate the convenience of being able to carry large volumes of media files at an economical price. Just as clearly, you don't mind having to search for chargers in every airport. Some of us aren't like you, many of us in fact.
It does seem odd that an in-depth technology site like Anandtech puts far more emphasis on the material making up the thin outer skin of a device, than the actual hardware features of that device. Each of Brian's reviews features a long discussion either lauding a metal skin or deriding a plastic one, while almost nothing on SD or batteries.
Is it too much to ask for a little less focus on your metal skin fetish and more focus on a device's actual features.
nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Good point. Whenever you go to airport, you'll see lots of iPhones getting charged at power outlets. It's beyond me how people can expose their $$$$$ phone that way.Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I see lots of every kind of phone being charged at power outlets, and I'm in airports nearly every week :)-Brian
fenneberg - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
keep dissing your base and you´ll be lost Mr. Klug.I am on my third battery and on a SD that holds all of western Europe Garmin quarterly up-dated maps and 45 GB of music on a Garmin-Asus A50 that I love cause it works and works.
steven75 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
You are the fringe. AT will be just fine.Tegeril - Friday, November 1, 2013 - link
Don't let the door hit you on the way out?superflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Dont be silly Brian.Samsung phones never need to be recharged. Only sheeple and HTC One owners have to recharge.
Sheesh
ddriver - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
It's because apple products don't have mSD slots ;) I bet the moment they start including those (by some miracle of nature I suppose :D ) the extra slot will be the best thing since sliced bread around AT :Dsherlockwing - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Apple won't accept mSD slots on phones, paying Microsoft license fee for every Iphone & Ipad sold due to their FAT 32 patent is too much for them.apertotes - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Completely agree. This Rivendel Aluminum praise is getting old. Phones are tools, not jewels or fashion statements.Braumin - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
The SD cards I agree with, but removable batteries not so much. Manufacturers can include much larger custom batteries into a phone if it doesn't need to be a square battery that pops out the back. Plus, you can easily find microUSB battery extenders, which are FAR more convenient than swapping a battery because you don't need to reboot to do it.SD cards though - I don't think they need to go away until manufacturers (cough APPLE cough) stop gouging customers on increased storage.
Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
SD cards, far and away, are going the way of the dodo. They're effectively already deprecated by the base Android platform (requiring OEMs to manually backport the ability to move APKs and OBB files over), and 3rd party SD support is pretty much in decline. The handful of applications that I'd expect to natively use the SD card either have it as a hidden feature, or have removed it entirely (I'm looking at you, Spotify).That pretty much leaves them only for use as dumb, manually managed storage. Like it or not, that's the reality.
The context (that you left out) is that I wouldn't trade build quality for an SD card, it makes almost no sense to have a huge removable door on the One max just for the sake of an SD card. The tradeoff is huge here.
Also the other reality regarding removable batteries is you do lose volume that way that could've been dedicated to more battery had it been sealed internally. That's fact.
The data I've seen from OEMs and operators shows that microSD cards get changed by a tiny demographic of users, or even used, if not installed - yes, OEMs had to start manually installing SD cards since users can't be bothered to install them. Continue to cling to 'em, but normal consumers don't care, and the rest of the world has pretty much moved on.
-Brian
apertotes - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
heck yeah, I like to dumb manually manage my movies and music files without cluttering my apps space. Why is that so retarded? I have 80 gb in my S3, and I only have 10 free. Am I stupid for using a flagship device as a poweruser would? Should I pay $400 for a phone and use it only as an internet connected device? I think that reporters have way to much easy access to new devices and internet everywhere. Why would I stream movies or music if I can have them on my phone, and play them even on the subway or during a weekend on the mountain?There is zero reason not to want expandable space on a phone, other than being able to say "Yes, but this is unibody aluminium". And most reporters are doing half of Apple's job in convincing people that they really do not need a micro-sd card. "Why do you need it, when you can simply pay $10/month for Spotify, and then $40/month for an unlimited data contract to use Spotify?" Well, of course, you are swimming in money, you do not need a micro-sd card. But that is like convincing everybody to ditch their cars and simply call a cab whenever they need it.
Steven JW FCK - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Damn straight! You tell em! I mean how much money and infinite 4G signal has this guy got to try and rubbish the Micro SD card.Dentons - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
It isn't difficult to see why reviewers awash in a torrent of new, free, phones aren't particularly enamored in these features.Reviewers don't use phones for 2+ years.
Reviewers don't have to pay for the larger memory models.
Reviewers don't keep any phone nearly long enough to wear out the built-in batteries.
On the whole, most phone reviewers interests aren't very well aligned with those of a cost-conscious consumer.
kiwidude - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Agreed, I'm still using my Galaxy S 8GB + 32GB, on my third battery and would have been forced into a new phone I have no need for if it wasn't for these features. Data here is very expensive so any cloud/streaming solution is impractical. I agree though in a world were the cost of the phone is not important, you update your phone faster than it takes for a battery to die and where you have unlimited data great.rabidkevin - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Couldn't agree more.. I just finally paid off my galaxy s2 after 2 years. The comments this reviewer makes are insane! He has no idea what he is talking about.superflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Finance a $100,000 house for 30 years. ReasonableFinance a $25,000 vehicle for 4 years. Reasonable
Finance a $600 phone for 2 years. Retarded.
Johnmcl7 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Thankfully you're almost completely wrong on all counts there but it's a surprisingly ignorant post coming from someone who is generally knowledgeable when it comes to technology.Firstly, micro SD cards are not going the way of the dodo - they were in decline but there's been a noticeable turn around in devices supporting the technology. The microSD support in the HTC phone in this review is a turnaround from HTC's previous position and Nokia have brought microSD expansion to their 1520 which is also a change as previously their top end phones (1020, 925, 920 etc.) did not have sd expansion.
As for support in Android, the fact that it's not used in Nexus devices or part of the base system is completely irrelevant as Android builds are usually heavily customised in many areas. Samsung are one of the main Android handset manufacturers and they support microSD across their range, quite seemlessly as well plus Sony although not nearly as big are also sticking with micro SD support. The fact that the micro SD can only be used as 'dumb' data doesn't matter as that's what it is great for, many people criticise SD storage when it was incorrectly used in place of onboard storage (when it was a stupidly small amount). Micro SD expansion is ideal for larger amounts of video such as HD films and music, leaving the onboard memory for applications.
As for a supposed tradeoff, that's a completely nonsense excuse and a really poor one at that - it's easily possible to produce micro SD slots without compromising the build quality, Sony are currently able to produce weather sealed phones with micro SD slots.
And if nothing else, you should at the very least appreciate what SD expansion offers cost wise - the amount of money charged for onboard memory is completely ridiculous, it's far, far more than high speed micro SD cards cost.
I don't believe the data you've seen from OEM's as it doesn't make any sense at all - if such a small amount of people are using them, why do companies keep on putting them there? Why are companies adding micro SD slots to phones? I can't claim my experience to be in any way representative but looking at large deal sites when someone posts a good deal on a micro SD card, the deal usually gets very popular and most people are buying the cards for their mobile phones.
As for batteries being bigger if they're sealed in, that is absolutely not 'fact' and it certainly doesn't always apply in practice. The HTC One is a similar physical size to the Samsung Galaxy S4 (despite the larger difference the screen sizes suggest) yet the removable battery in the S4 is larger than that in the One. Either way, the differences are very small particularly compared with the full capacity of a battery which can be immediately achieved when swapping it out but not on a device with a sealed battery. Given current smartphones can quickly burn through batteries, it make a lot of sense to be able to switch over the battery and be back up to full almost immediately yet frustratingly few companies are now offering user accessible batteries as standard.
Furthermore, the battery is unlikely to last the full two years a phone should and certainly won't while keeping performance. On a device with a removable battery that's not an issue as it's a matter of seconds to swap over but for devices with a sealed in battery it's a much more time consuming and expensive repair.
John
Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I don't know how you can be objectively "wrong" about whether or not you think the tradeoffs are worth it, but whatever. I'll address the rest of your points:>As for support in Android, the fact that it's not used in Nexus devices or part of the base system is completely irrelevant as Android builds are usually heavily customised in many areas.
The base platform has deprecated SD card support, plain and simple. You saw the SGS4 launch initially with SD card support that essentially only worked for music and as a storage intent for the camera. Later they added the ability to move application data over by backporting it. Ironically enough today you see NVIDIA doing the same thing with Shield and their own BSP.
>it's easily possible to produce micro SD slots without compromising the build quality,
The context here is the One max, it isn't worth the tradeoff in build quality.
>I don't believe the data you've seen from OEM's as it doesn't make any sense at all - if such a small amount of people are using them, why do companies keep on putting them there? Why are companies adding micro SD slots to phones? I can't claim my experience to be in any way representative but looking at large deal sites when someone posts a good deal on a micro SD card, the deal usually gets very popular and most people are buying the cards for their mobile phones.
Take it or leave it I suppose, but that's the reality. Samsung continues to do it as a differentiation point, as do a few others. I would say however the trend against microSD by OEMs like Google and obviously HTC backs up this claim, rather than your other one.
The anecdote I heard that really made me think about this was that one of the major operators in the USA added a requirement that OEMs preinstall SD cards since users weren't even doing so with the pack-ins. Says something interesting about what demographic even knows about removable storage.
>As for batteries being bigger if they're sealed in, that is absolutely not 'fact' and it certainly doesn't always apply in practice.
Sorry, you are completely wrong here.
Removable batteries need to have a dedicated protection circuit for CE compliance and this adds to volume. In addition they need to be structurally sound, this translates to a plastic frame around the battery itself, and around the volume the battery occupies in the phone. That's the point almost everyone always misses when they start arguing about removable battery volumes versus internal battery volumes, and you can ask any OEM about it, its 100% fact that internally sealed affords bigger volumes in addition to geometries that wouldn't work with a removable battery. Also every OEM shoots for at least a two year longevity. Both LG (and Motorola) have talked a lot about how long they tested their 3.8V chemistry before accepting it.
-Brian
rabidkevin - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
What you are missing is that OEM's want internal only storage to CONTROL THE MARKET! Charging premiums on space for outrageous amounts. It has nothing to do with user demand. Why would anyone turn down 32gb of extra space for 30 bucks?I still have a galaxy s2 that I just FINALLY paid off after 2 years. I'm not ready to make payments for 2 more years when I have a perfectly good working phone in my hand.
Black Obsidian - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
You're rabid alright, Kevin.The vast majority of users don't want expandable storage, because the vast majority of users aren't using all of the storage in their (overwhelmingly base-model-storage) phones as it is. Why is this? Well, because the vast majority of users aren't carrying 1,000+ hours of music around with them at all times. Hell, I'd be shocked if the majority of users even HAVE 16GB of music in the first place!
Us geeks aren't the whole smartphone market. Pre-iPhone, we absolutely were. Now? To say we even account for 5% of the overall market would be overly generous, probably by a factor of 10. We're a tiny, TINY fraction of the market, and even then, only *some* of us care about removable storage.
The OEMs might enjoy milking people by charging them $100 for each $20 increment of flash, but relatively few people are bothering to pony up for 32 or 64GB even where it is an option. If you combined all the people who actually use expandable SD *and* all the people who upgrade from base 16GB devices with no expansion, I doubt you'd reach even 10% of the market. Or 5%, for that matter.
(relatively speaking) Nobody cares.
Klug4Pres - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Brian, some people want removeable SD cards, and what's more the ability to use them is, objectively-speaking, a useful feature with almost no down-side (if we ignore business decisions to economise by reducing internal storage on phones with this feature, and what Google sees as the inability of users to deal with more than one storage location). If the HTC One has a particular design that would be compromised by allowing SD cards, that may be so, but there are other possible designs, and I doubt you could argue that they would be systematically inferior."Being deprecated by a platform" is not a good reason not to support them. Google obviously has a vested interest in tieing people to the Cloud, so we shouldn't care what Google thinks about this.
You have argued, persuasively, that removeable batteries do involve more of a trade-off, but again some people are more than willing to accept that trade-off because of how they wish to use their device, and because they may wish to make use of the device for longer than the expected service life of the battery.
Oh, and I'm calling flamebait on the "going the way of the dodo" comment.
Jedi2155 - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
I take issue with the comment on internal batteries being bigger when sealed in versus removable. In terms of energy I have yet to see this to be true. All the galaxy phones have continued to have removable batteries yet remain in an incredibly small form factor. My Note II has nearly the same energy capacity (~3100 mAh, Note 3 ~3200 mAh), in a smaller and thinner form factor than the 3300 mAh of the HTC One max. I personally believe most of the reason for an internal battery is simply laziness in design. It simply takes a lot more engineering and design work to include a removable battery versus not. I completely believe its possible to cram a removable version of the same 3300 mAh battery in the phone with the volume they had available in this phone. I bet they could have increase the battery volume even further if they put more effort into it.My primary point is that, while going internal does offer some volumetric benefits, majority of the manufacturers do not exploit it for the simple reason that it costs more.
I'm not even going to touch the microSD comment (even while quite possibly true, many geeks and their gf's still demand it).
Steven JW FCK - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
So what is wrong having "dumb manually managed storage?"It sounds to me like a feature, and a feature I would happily want to have in its usefulness in being partitioned off from the rest of the phone.
And build quality? Really? The way you talk about build quality sounds more like you are interested in how pretty it looks to you and other people? Your hand is supposed to be around the phone when you use it in the first place, so most of this phones plastic surround will be invisible to you and others, so why are so fussy on wanting a pretty phone, over a feature packed phone? Would better build quality translate into better drop-ability? Not at all! That would be an absurd conclusion to blindly believe.
Dentons - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
But Brian, you don't focus on build quality, not really. Your critique suggests an overwhelming devotion to the fashion of these devices. You're actually neglecting the underlying technology in many cases to focus instead on things one suspects most Anandtech readers could care less about. Honestly? How much time did you devote to the Gold iPhone in a recent podcast? Yes, it's gold, we get it.Carhartt jeans, Toyota Camry's, and Samsung phones all have good build quality. Louis Vuitton, Rolls Royce, and metal skinned phones are almost entirely about fashion. Not the phone's electronics of course, but the metal casing, yes, fashion. You're ignoring the actual technology in favor of focusing, and focusing, and focusing on the minutia of the exquisite metalized skins of these devices.
Metal may often be studier, but that doesn't devolve everything else to crap. That is often the conclusion to be drawn from your criticism. In point of fact, there are plastics with far better strength to weight ratios than any metal. As a technology person, I really don't care if the case is metal or plastic, so long as it's functional. Your endless rants about the greasy Samsung casings truly baffles me. One wonders if you have some sort of unusual oil factories in the palms of your hands?=.
Or just maybe, you go through so many phones that are all so similar, the small differences start to become big differences. In that light, I recommend the following XKCD comic strip: http://xkcd.com/915/ - "Connoisseur"
Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Yes I do focus on build quality in the review, and the context is still the tradeoff not being worth it in the case of the One max."neglecting the underlying technology"
What are you even talking about?
-Brian
Dentons - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I'm talking about the fact that you rarely, or barely give any kudos to devices with microSD and user swappable batteries. Those features aren't listed as benefits, they're hardly mentioned at all. Anandtech tests everything else, but I cannot recall the last time Anandtech tested the speed of a microSD port.Your recent review of the Note 3 was a case in point. You barely mentioned either of those features. They are real, actual hardware differentiators. For many of us, not only are they important differentiators, the absence of them is a deal breaker.
A cost conscious consumer can honestly want a device to be future proofed for a few years. We don't get new, free, phones a few times each month. Our batteries wear out. Media sizes are ever increasing. Not all of us want to rely, nor can we rely on the cloud for all our media needs. It is a waste for us to spend an extra $200 for a phone with 64GB when we're far better served with $30 in cheap SD storage. As you point out, we cannot use it for apps, it's for video and music. For those use cases, the highest quality NAND is generally wasted.
Even though you don't use those features, the best selling smart phone models in the world still have them. You spend orders of magnitude more time discussing the casings, finishes, and lustrousness of phones than either of those. So yes, in this case, you definitely are neglecting the underlying technology in favor of fashion.
On this topic, in both in your reviews and on the podcast, your attitude is one of "I know what you need better than you know what you need". That's what you're telling us. That you're the expert, and that you know best.
How would you respond to a reviewer repeatedly telling you that you really didn't need the features you used every single day? That's what you're doing. It's annoying, and insulting.
apertotes - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Well, if they did not neglect those features they would have to criticize Apple for not providing them, and that is a deadly sin.Since Apple is perfection, that is the mirror they use to analyze the rest. Things that do not exist in Apple are worthless by definition.
Dentons - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
You make a relevant point, and allude to another equally important point.As you point out, by not giving kudos to phone makers who include microSD and removable batteries, they don't have to list the absence of those features as cons to the Apple and Nexus products the staff here tend to glow over.
Which leads into another key point. We all know what would happen were Brian's to neglect to mention a key, unique, hardware differentiator in the review of an Apple product. Apple or their marketing agency would contact him. They'd bitch, they'd moan, they'd complain, they may even threaten future review status.
Many reviewers know not to neglect a focus on Apple's little differentiators, but they have little compunction in reviewing 'lesser' devices with a completely different set of rules.
steven75 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
You realize that Google itself dropped SD support from Android, right? Something Brian has mentioned numerous times, yet here you are again making the claim that "Apple is perfection" like a true troll.PC Perv - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
And you have no issue with OEMs charging extra $100 per each incremental storage size? Sure you get free phones and lots other perks so perhaps that is why you are so understanding of the OEMs. But have you thought about this nonsense from consumers' point of view?I am guessing no. Every other pages are filled with the author's worry and concern about OEM's margins or market share. Why do you care? Why should I care about their cost savings? This has been the trend of this site for a long time. Unbelievable amount of corporate favoritism plus unapologetic ignorance on users.
rabidkevin - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I'm sorry, but you make zero sense.sherlockwing - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
You can purchase 13000 mAh External battery packs for $37 weighing 0.9lbs, a far better option than a extra battery for GS4.Dentons - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
And I can purchase 4, 3100 mAh Galaxy Note II batteries for about half that. All 4 together weigh just .47 pounds (54 grams each, 0.11 lbs each)All together, the four of them take up less space than any external battery pack I've ever seen. If I'm only going to be gone overnight, I need only take 1 spare. With all 4 and the battery in the phone, I can usually operate for a solid week without recharging once.
A user replaceable battery is also a hedge against the planned obsolescence of built-in batteries. Batteries wear out, the have a very finite number of cycles. A battery that will no longer hold a charge is one of the leading reasons consumers buy new phones.
User replaceable batteries and micorSD are as much about reducing consumer costs as anything else. It isn't difficult to see why reviewers awash in a torrent of new, free, phones aren't particularly enamored in these features. They don't use phones for 2+ years. They don't pay for the larger memory models. They don't wear out batteries.
chizow - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Agree with pretty much everything you've written in all of your replies. The fact that this comment section is dominated by comments disagreeing with Brian's position on microSD should say something, but I doubt it will have any lasting impact on his opinion of the matter.It's a good thing device makers seem to be going in the opposite direction, all I see now are devices adding the functionality.
superflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Alinsky tactics.Attack the messenger when the message is not what you want to hear.
Grow up.
Gadgety - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
It's funny - when reading negative comments on HTC phones these days I can't help but think it's Samsung sponsored comments (BTW I have a Samsung phone).ddriver - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I wish samsung paid me :) Dunno about paid comments, but there sure are a lot of paid reviews, and I don't mean paid by samsung,I think negative comments towards this device are well justified, it goes beyond the reasonable size and hardware is ... previous gen at best. Given all this space to cram components in, this phone should have been much, much better. Alas, htc is no samsung that produces everything and no apple to exploit fanatical brand loyalty, so the only way to keep profit margins decent while keeping the price "reasonable" is to offer cheaper and slightly out-of-date hardware.
Sm0kes - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
He's not talking about the validity of the criticism, but instead the relentless "shill" type comments that constantly bring up Samsung in every discussion.FYI - Samsung was being investigated by the Taiwan's FTC back in April for paying student "shills" to slam HTC and advocate for Samsung on tech review sites. Google for the link. It's pretty clear Samsung's marketing is pretty scummy.
RYF - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
The problem with the relentless rant of commenters with regard of the requirement of the SD card is that they have, in fact, ignored the reality that all will want to stuff their phones with media.My anecdotal observations in my social circle show that they do not need 16GB/32GB+64Gb of storage. It is good to have but they do not need it. And I have received complaints from SGS3 user that the 16GB built in memory has caused a great deal of problems in game app installtion as these apps are not transferrable to SD card.
The demands for SD card slot is okay. There are many phones out there to choose from. But to condemn Brian for expressing his thoughts and to criticitizing the every device manufacturers out there not to have the SD card slot is definitely irrational. We have choices here. And we should respect the different choices.
Sm0kes - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Agreed. Expandability is a feature that many value. I personally don't. To each their own.willis936 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Love the review. I hadn't even heard of this phone coming out.I know it's a bit much to ask this but could you start doing a more intensive audio benchmark suite on phones and tablets? It's very often overlooked but a lot of people will use the devices they keep on them as sources (usually pull down from the cloud) and THD+N and response numbers and graphs would be very helpful in making decisions.
cheinonen - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
We have something in the works for this. Hopefully it happens soon, because it will be awesome when it does.synaesthetic - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Output impedance PLEASE.Impulses - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
+1000ZeDestructor - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Still no review of any Sony gear....Any news on that Brian?
Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I'll review it when they send it, still got nothing.-Brian
Myrandex - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Too bad that statement doesn't apply to new Nokia phones :/superflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
The phone for the 1%.Yeah, everybody's dying to hear about another Windows fail phone
PC Perv - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Hah. At least you are being honest here. Of course you won't review anything unless you get it for free. (and then some)Black Obsidian - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
This isn't the glory days of the dot-com boom. Few (if any) sites have the kind of budget that allows them to go out and buy whatever random devices their readership expects them to review.I'm sure that Brian would consider reviewing your favored device if you wanted to send him one, though.
JMFL - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Mostly decent review, except in my opinion Brian's equivocation regarding the finger print sensor in comparison to Apple's. To be fair Brian stated that the One Max sensor is "further from perfection than Apple's", however from reading the rest of the text, one could come to the conclusion that in the grand scheme of things the HTC's and Apple's sensors are more similar than not.I would hazard to guess that in 6 months time, most Iphone 5S users will be using the fingerprint scanner. I don't think the same will be said for the HTC Once Max sensor.
ddriver - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
It doesn't really matter what apple does, everything apple does is amazing because it is done by apple by default. IIRC the review at engadget: "note 3 - cheap plastic - product sucks" and then "iphone 5c - amazing plastic - product rocks".Things have come to a point you cannot really expect honesty from review sites, no matter how "trusted" they themselves claim to be.
Fingerprint readers are a government sponsored scam to build fingerprint databases for god knows what ill purposes, glad I got the note 3 as it looks like the note 4 will have a fingerprint sensor as well. Fingerprints are considered lower security level than even passwords, a password is in the brain, a fingerprint can be extracted from everything you touch.
blacks329 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
People perceive (whether correctly or incorrectly) that rigidity in their phone means it is a more durable device and that the rigidity give a better in hand feel.The iPhone 5C feels really solid, like the Lumia's, there's no flex. So I can understand the merits of claiming "cheap" plastic.
steven75 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
It doesn't matter how many times you tell this to ddriver. He has made up his mind that material usage is a binary thing.Spunjji - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
"For the incredibly small percentage of users that clamors for an SD card every single smartphone launch, it’s at least one point which won’t be belabored so tiresomely this time."Gee, thanks for making me feel like a dick for not wanting to pony up £80 for £10 worth of low performing NAND.
We get it, you don't think these things are worthwhile. That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. That doesn't justify a paragraph of text dedicated to mocking and marginalising a chunk of your readership. It devalues your opinion.
themossie - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Agreed. Brian, you write superb reviews but that has no place here.kmmatney - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I agree. I've been an iPhone user for 4 years, but switched to the Optimus G Pro (also a huge 5.5" phone) and one of the draws was expanding the storage. It's a big enough phone to be able to read work instructions quite easily, so I have a lot of PDFs and documents on it, as well as 20GB of music. More storage never hurts. I didn't have too much trouble filling up my 32GB iPhone. I can live without it, but if choosing between 2 phones, and one has it and noe doesn't, you might as well buy the phone with more options.Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
See my above comment, the reality is that it is a very tiny part of the market, and an exceptionally loud one.-Brian
Steven JW FCK - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
How can you say a "very tiny part of the market" and know for certain? I know so many Samsung smartphone users, and do you want to know how many of them have been asked by Samsung how they use there micro SD cards, and the data storage facilities on their phones?NONE OF THEM!
So where on earth are you pretending to get your data from? And how exactly are you interpreting the numbers? I just fail to believe you actually know the ins and outs of phone storage and micro SD card usage in smartphones upon a broad enough scale to start making allegations like you have.
Believe the reality you want, it only exists in a very small and exceptionally annoying minority.
rabidkevin - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Bullshitsuperflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Agreed.Someone need to grease their gears. Their screech is annoying and not supported by a vast majority.
lazymangaka - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I don't understand the the reviewer's hatred of MicroSD cards. They're a useful thing to have, for every type of user. And, the fact of the matter is, internal storage space has not been rapidly increasing in smartphones. Storage needs have, however. Unlimited data plans are gone for many users, so listening to locally-stored music makes much more sense. In addition to that, the megapixel count of smartphone cameras continue to march north, and those larger file sizes are competing with ever-increasing app sizes. MicroSD expansion just makes sense.I understand what Google was trying to do in nixing external expansion in its Nexus lineup, but it just hasn't played out the way they wanted it to. Instead of getting a phone with 16GB of internal storage and an external expansion slot, we're more likely to just get a phone with 16GB of internal storage. Campaigning for the continued removal of MicroSD storage is doing nothing but harming us all.
Mondozai - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Lazumangaka:"I don't understand the the reviewer's hatred of MicroSD cards."
Every reviewer have their irrational foibles that makes no sense. You just have to learn those blindspots and avoid them like the plague with each particular reviewer.
With Brian we know he hates WP8, he dislikes microSD cards and he winces on AMOLED screens. He still puts out very qualified reviews but again, know when to listen, and when to just skip.
Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Luckily it's easy to back up the dislikes of microSD (poor Android support, slower than native storage, tradeoffs in build quality) and AMOLED screens (oversaturated, higher power drain, burn in, and sensitive to overheating), and reasons why I can't get anything done on WP8. They aren't blind spots that make no sense, they're just realities.-Brian
PC Perv - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
What an arrogant hoax. You surely realize that every point you raise has counter points, right?How about being on consumer side for once? Make a case why 32 GB should be the bottom line. And why 64 GB should cost $20 more, not $100 more, etc,. Stop worrying about OEMs. They are doing fine. Think for once from consumers standpoint, instead of corporate-hired marketeering.
rabidkevin - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Hello apple paid spokepersonsuperflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Hello Samsung ShillDentons - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
You're displaying confirmation bias, writ large.We can all find window dressing to support our opinions. That's why so many here object to your rants on AMOLED, microSD, and batteries. Despite your technical expertise, we realize your opinions in those areas has little basis in truth, and is largely just an smug opinion.
Yes, the NAND on many microSD cards is inferior to NAND built into devices. We know and we Don't Care! We use it to hold mass media, videos, photos, and music. What we care about far more is that microSD is often 10 times more cost effective and functions very well indeed.
Really Brian, telling users they really don't need the features they use and love is the height of contemptuous arrogance.
chizow - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Couldn't have written it better myself, I'll be honest and say I haven't read through an entire one of Brian Klug's reviews but if they were all filled with this kind of distorted reality transposed to the general populous, I probably wasn't missing much.Simply put, microSD opens up uses that base model 16GB phone users could never dream of using for their phones. For example, I recently had 2 large family events during the same weekend, took multiple movies at full 1080p on my SGS4 with a UHS-I microSD and captured around 25GB of footage. Never could I have done this with my 16GB Apple 4S, nor would I even attempted to do it.
And what would the other option be? Pay 2x as much for 16GB more? No thanks, not when I can just move my microSD card from one phone to the next and not get fleeced on extra storage every time I buy a new device, with my own money (seems to be a key point lost upon Brian, anyways).
seapeople - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
So let's see... I'm a budget conscious consumer who is shopping for a smartphone that I'm going to keep for 4 years because I'm too cheap to upgrade sooner. My options are 16GB phone + microSD card for a total four year price of $3600, or a 64GB phone with faster native storage for a total four year price of $3760.Can't you see why it's absolutely ridiculous how you microSD shills freak out over such a pointless little feature? Just buy the overpriced flash storage and forget about it, it's barely a bump in the road for someone who's paying for a smart phone data plan anyway.
Spunjji - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
Nice work, that straw man was totally asking for it and boy did you give it to him. You're such a big man.tipoo - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I do like the cheating table of shame there, but I also worry that this would just make the cheating more sophisticated, with phones being able to detect apps even with renames and hide their clock speeds etc.FalcomPSX - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
just how big are phones going to get before people realize how absolute ridiculous it looks holding a tablet sized device up to your ear? Something the size of the original htc one is just about right.AssBall - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Its more ridiculous watching someone hold a tiny phone 8 inches from their face so they can see what it says and push the tiny buttons. I'll take a larger phone any day. Easier to use, harder to lose, good battery, nice screen size.MikePCUser - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Comparison videos between the One Max and the One on YouTube also show the MICROPHONE is decidedly inferior on the One Max. I wish you had tested that as well!chizow - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Brian, while you are certainly entitled to your opinion of every aspect of the smartphone market, I think you need to take a step back and realize not everyone is in your situation and receives free phones for review or a product budget for AT to buy review samples.I think your comments with regard to SD cards in particular are off target, as it is an important feature for many users who do not want to pay exorbitant amounts for miniscule increments of storage. 128GB models if some popular phones like the iPhone 5S literally double the on-contract price vs a 64GB SD card that sells for 50 bucks.
Contrary to what you have said, the fact the One Max's inclusion of an SD slot along with myriad other Android and Windows tabs and phones illustrates SD slots are NOT going the way of the dodo. Hopefully companies do not take your opinions on the matter as fact.
Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Please read my above comments about SD cards, the reality is that the demographic that uses them is a lot smaller than you'd think.Also there's no 128 GB iPhone 5S, just 64 GB.
The context everyone is missing is that I would not trade an SD card slot for the removable door and build quality tradeoffs it brings.
-Brian
10101010 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
What you present regarding SD cards and build quality tradeoffs is largely a false dichotomy based on your own biases regarding particular aspects of "build quality".Take for example, the Sony Xperia Z Ultra. It's about the same size as the One Max and offers SD card expansion. Many reviewers have positively commented on the build quality of this device, even noted that it offers water and dust resistance. A more insightful reviewer would realize that it isn't the SD card that is responsible the particular issues you have with build quality, it is the fact that the phone wasn't designed well to begin with.
Of course, you would probably still disparage all the purchasers of this device for wanting flexible affordable local storage and find some way to disparage the device for poor build quality anyway. After all, biasing people away from flexible and cheap local storage and towards expensive and easily data-mined in-cloud storage is what your corporate masters want, isn't it?
If we look at your shallow view of "build quality", then it becomes even more obvious that there is a false dichotomy. You don't spend much time balancing how easy it is to repair a device vs. how it is built. You don't balance the fact that many phones with removable back covers have replaceable batteries. Nor do you balance the additional radiation going into someone's head because a phone is made of metal. Essentially, you are looking at a few aspects of something that resonate with your biases and proclaiming some judgment that SD cards are bad for phones and that the people who want SD cards are some sort of small, unimportant, and obnoxious minority.
Even if you continue to push your biases in your "reviews", maybe it's time for a bit more honesty? You can still write a good review if you say "I just don't like SD cards because it's hard for me to manage removable local storage".
Tegeril - Friday, November 1, 2013 - link
I love the way that his opinion (that's a component of reviews) that build quality suffers when SD cards are involved (particularly in the context of *this* device) is not valid but yours is?Spunjji - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - link
The point is that neither is more valid, but Brian's claiming his is. Ta-daaa!bairlangga - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Dear Brian,Other manufacturer had the solution towards the door and build quality tradeoffs, it is called sd card slot with flap. Pretty please do a review on Xperias line.
chizow - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I've read most of them and still find them off-base. Your arguments about a small demographic are based on what? The entire smartphone market? Honestly, this means about as much as Nokia claiming they held the majority of the cell phone market up until a few years ago, it means very little out of context. It's all about what part of the market you are targeting, for flagship phones and high-end power users, features like microSD and changeable batteries make all the difference that can be a deciding factor in which phone to purchase.Similarly, people who care about aluminum unibody construction are a vast minority, imo, when all I see are people obscuring these case materials in protective cases made of polycarbonate or rubber.
In any case, it is good to see phone makers like HTC One are not taking your opinion as gospel, and instead, listening to their customers in deciding their hardware approaches. It is clear to me that HTC saw how the One was losing to the S4, despite positive reviews declaring the One superior in many categories only to lose in sales due to features like microSD, removable battery, 802.11AC. Coincidentally, I just named the 3 big reasons I bought an S4 instead of the One a few months ago. I fully expect the next iteration to follow the One Max and offer a microSD and removable battery, but we shall see.
rituraj - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
May be HTC were stupid that they had to open the entire phone's back to put that microsd card. What about a slot from the sides. I believe a phone this big has quite a long side. I guess quantum geometry supports me. But yeah, that 1cm slot will destroy the build quality too just like the sim card does.Samwise - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Anandtech, please include the Droid MAXX in you battery life comparisons. Thank you.tuxRoller - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Why don't you have the iDevices storage benched?VengenceIsMineX - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Pretty disappointing product really. No OIS, lesser SOC, and nothing really innovative or even a great price. I'm in the market to optimize down to 1 device from a phone & small tablet to just a phablet but I don't think I'll bother considering the HTC compared to either the Sony or the Lumia 1520.sherlockwing - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
The lack of S800 and OIS are very disappointing, to add the SD slot but not the S800 SOC to enable UHS-I speed for SD card is pretty silly.mregan - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Brian,Did you notice the problem that Zoes included in a highlight video now only show 1 second of motion and then freeze? I've seen that on my One when I upgraded to 4.3 and others have reported the same issue. It really seems like a bug. The highlights become much more static. All the other highlight changes are great but this is a step backward.
Mike R
Steven JW FCK - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
"I’ve said my part already on microSD cards and the fact that they’re going the way of the dodo in smartphones, I just don’t need one anymore, and definitely not at the expense of build quality. It is convenient not having to use a SIM ejector tool though, even if I carry one around all the time anyways"I'm sorry, you carry around a sim card removal TOOL, at all times with you, and you don't think micro SD cards are relevant any more? I don't think you are qualified to write a review about this phone if that is your opinion. I mean you would rather use a cloud/pay the extra money for inbuilt storage, than use an affordable, replaceable, micro SD card... But you paid to have a sim card removing tool, and then chose to wear it upon you? At all times?...
10101010 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I'm glad to see that you are not letting this issue with Brian's Klug's anti-local storage bias slip away. The sad fact of the matter is that most reviewers are notoriously biased. Some are biased due to ignorance, some are biased due to payoffs, many are biased due to both.The fact that Brian Klug has some sort of hate trip on SD cards is not surprising. All the big money players in the US want to get rid of local storage so they can (a) increase data revenues (b) mine and sell more data (c) comply with NSA directives to collect more data on people. So we have one of Anandtech's top tier reviewers going off on how bad micro SD cards are, i.e. implying you cannot build a high quality phone if it has a micro SD card. And then the same reviewer disparages the many millions of people who depend on SD cards every day as some sort of unimportant minority.
It seems obvious to me that objectivity and balance have been lost, that the reviewer is just a tool pushing an agenda.
Brian Klug - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I clearly am an agent of the NSA and this is a long-game to get all of your data. Clearly.-Brian
nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
So with the same logic laptop should get rid of SD slots too, especially macbooks with SD card sticking out. Heck, earlier macbook pros didn't have one!fenneberg - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Still dissing, eh..PC Perv - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I don't think what 10101010 said translates to your intelligence, lol. For one you are not really a big money player. I think what 10101010 meant is that you happily obey.Dentons - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Wow, your arrogance is astounding.Stop listening to your friends in the phone manufacturing business for a minute and start listening to the technical crowd that makes up the majority of your readership.
piroroadkill - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Hey, HTC, how about the Butterfly S?dawheat - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I'm having a tough time liking the One Maxx - it's such a big phone for .2" screen increase over the Note 3, with the on screen buttons eating a decent part of the increased real estate.Also the Note 2 was pretty heavy, the Note 3 was a nice decrease in weight. The difference in weight between the Note 3 and One Maxx is close to the difference in weight between the iPhone 5 and Note 3.
Mondozai - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Well, the fingerprint issue isn't really resolved yet. We will have to wait and see how the security aspect goes. Still, my guess is that Apple is probably better at this generally than Android OEMs, specifically 2nd tier ones like HTC.This seems like an unnecessary review, especially as many much bigger launches were ignored. Who will buy HTC One Max? Very few people. HTC is going down anyway.
I'm still waiting for the mother lode: Nexus 5.
I also hope Brian can overcome his WP8 bias and review a few Nokia phones out this fall.
GruntboyX - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I love how the dimensions are reported in mm. However the screen size is in inches.MercuryStar - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
As an Australian, this is absolutely normal here - we use mm for dimensions of all things except for diagonal screen size which is pretty much always quoted in inches - for everything from laptops to TVs to smartphones.nerd1 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I always liked Brian's review for the most part for this time it's getting ridiculous.iPhone 5GS 64GB: $399 w/contract
Galaxy 4S 80GB (16GB+64GB sdXC): $199 w/ contract
Isn't it obvious to see the advantage? If you always have a bunch of 64GB devices around to review (and unlimited LTE) for free you may not know but to us mortals the saving of $200 far exceeds any inconveniences (if all) of managing them.
It's like arguing having only a single SSD storage for laptop is better than SSD+HDD hybrid because the former is faster, lighter and more failproof. Problem is not everyone can purchase 1TB of PCIe SSD, and some people prefer 128 SSD + 1TB HDD setup at a fraction of the cost.
MercuryStar - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I don't think the author is claiming that SD cards slots are bad, just that very few people use them, or would use the added capacity they would provide, thus making them a lower relative priority compared to other things like, in the case of this phone, added thickness and weight of the removable back.Someone else was saying in another comment that carriers who bundled phones with a free SD card in the box found that the majority of people still didn't use the SD card.
chizow - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I guess it never occurred to them that the bundled SD card is basically useless due to it's capacity and not it's utility? I don't use them either but with 2GB storage I can't even use to load a Windows ISO. I leave them in the box too, but replace them with my own 32 or 64GB card.....chizow - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Exactly, it's like all the reviewers out there getting free 128GB iPads to review and totally understanding Apple's position about not including a microSD slot. Yet they don't realize, most people don't want to pay $800-$900 for 128GB of storage and Cellular over the base $500 model....Mr Majestyk - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Why is the Sony Z Ultra missing, much more compelling device to me than One Max? Also why use 4 decimal places on the max brightness? Really, we don't even need a single decimal place for this measure, just round it to nearest integer. Human eye can't tell minute changes in brightness at the bright end, like it can at the dark end.piroroadkill - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Sony are killing it at the moment, in my opinion.By FAR the best mid-range handset for the money is the Xperia SP. At the high end you have the Xperia Z1, then for people who have gorilla hands, the Z Ultra.
All better phones than their counterparts by other manufacturers like HTC or Samsung. Yet, where are the reviews?
synaesthetic - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
The amount of logical fallacies being committed in this comments section is staggering.Personally I'd prefer sdcard slots in my phones, but the reality is most people don't care or don't know or aren't familiar with their use. They're going away, slowly but surely. Samsung and Sony are really the only holdouts, with the exception of bargain-basement budget devices that cut internal eMMC down to 4GB or smaller to keep BOM cost as low as possible.
Those of us who want our phones to be purely functional powerhouses of mobile computing are sadly in the minority, and the market is absolutely a tyranny of the majority.
bairlangga - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Agree. Just snapped a 64gb sdxc uhs1 on my xperia yesterday. Couldn't be much happier ;-)superflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
If a 64 GB uSD card makes you happy, you might have problems.PC Perv - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Biggest logical fallacy is to claim that there is no need for affordable storage options in smartphones when the OEMs are charging $100, $200, $300 extra per those extra storages, and apparently the reviewer doesn't see the irony of it. If no one needs more than 16 GB, how do the OEMs get away with such ridiculous markups?The reviewer is happy as clam as long as she gets a new phone every other week.
chizow - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Yes, they're going away, slowly but surely, except they're not and in this case a device-maker that didn't include SD slots before added it to their latest flagship phone? How can you claim logical fallacy and not realize the inaccuracy of what you just wrote? Do you think next year's HTC One update will include an SD slot or no?As for the rest, it doesn't matter what the majority of disinterested users want, like any industry, the demand of the top-end drives demand and innovation for the rest. Just as most people may not care for a microSD slot, removable battery, or unibody aluminum chassis, they will ALMOST CERTAINLY take the advice over which phone to pick based upon the input from someone who DOES care about those features, or has the phone and decides on it based on word of mouth or first hand exposure.
bairlangga - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Dear Anand(Tech),No love for Xperias? Saw every brand are accounted for here, except Sony ;-)
superflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Because Sony want proved a demo sample. Blame your shitty manufacturer for that one, SparkyMercuryStar - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
You have the HTC One Mini listed as a quad core Krait 200. Isn't it actually a dual core, and isn't it actually Krait 300, being that it's MSM8930aa?MercuryStar - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
You're not the first person to claim the One Mini has a plastic speaker grille, but to me seeing it in person it is clearly metal, albeit with one of those clear plastic coatings like aluminum food tins usually have on the inside to protect the food. What's the deal - what makes you claim it's plastic? I agree it doesn't look great like on the One, but it quite clearly is metal albeit with a lower grade finish.AbbyYen - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
For god shake, put snappy dragoony 800 in it already. And please, anything lower then 8MP is budget phone category. ultra pixel is useless. try capture a document and Ye shall know the difference. speaker at the front are welcome thou.fixxxer0 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
am I the only one laughed out loud at the speakerphone volume graph.... (beats off)Laststop311 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Would of made much more sense to go with the SD 800. SD 400 on mini SD 600 on One and SD 800 on max. The SD 800 actually has better battery life due to LTE integration and it's faster. I can't bring myself to buy an outdated SoC when phones are already outdated so fast. Buying anything less than a SD 800 is a foolish move.I was really pumped about the max. But the SD 600 ruined it for me. I've been let down constantly. Was pumped for the lumia 1520 but of course t-mobile isn't getting it. I was pumped for the note 3 but it was barely an upgrade from the note 2. There is nothing good enough to make me want to add 23 dollars a month to my bill to subsidize a phone when my G note 2 is fully paid off and I get pure unlimited everything for 69.99 with LTE activated in my area. Looks like my note 2 will be my trusty side kick another year. Hope the note 4 brings something great to the table.
AbbyYen - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
oh ya, one more thing, the capacitive button. must have Option, Home, and Back. the option there, when in home page, when you click it should have the notification bar option. so that you can operate in one hand! no need to use the other hand to pull down the notification option. multi task button and search button are useless. long press home button and let it show the multitask window.Ranger101 - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
As one of the "incredibly small percentage of users that clamors for an SD card", I feel I need to set you straight on the issue. Using one's smartphone as a media player makes an SD card necessary if a sizeable collection of wav files are to be stored on the phone. Secondly I notice that you devote very little attention to the audio quality of the cellphones in your reviews. I suggest that you dispense with any comments on the sound quality of the built in speaker and focus more on important audio issues like what DAC the cellphone uses and what it sounds like through a decent pair of headphones.Ranger101 - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
You boys don't take well to criticism do you, every time a comment remotely criticising your articles is posted, it is removed. With that attitude, like the micro sd card, Anandtech will be going the way of the dodo soon as well. I didn't realise you were so narrow minded.superflex - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
AT is going nowhere. You're SD card is.Ranger101 - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
You boys don't take well to criticism do you, every time a comment remotely criticising your articles is posted, it is removed. With that attitude, like the micro sd card, Anandtech will be going the way of the dodo soon as well. I didn't realise you were so narrow minded.MercuryStar - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I don't know whether you're just having trouble browsing the comments, but there are many comments critical of the article here, many with responses. Your claim doesn't seem to hold up.Davidjan - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I prefer One. SD slot is not important for me, because there is an option to extend storage with OTG reader like Meenova MicroSD Reader: http://goo.gl/U6IyYrituraj - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Really laughed out loud at that stupid thing..Impulses - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
It actually works just fine, if all you want is space for movies during a long flight (or music for special occasions etc) then it's a perfectly viable alternative to built in cardslots. I use mine pretty often, along with a regular USB OTG cable when I want to pull RAW files from my camera or access stuff I've brought from the PC on a faster USB 3.0 stick. All of it is more convenient than removing my case to get at the card on older phones I've had...Honestly, I'd only want a microSD slot at this point if it's easily accessed from the outside like some Sony phones etc, but I can easily live without it as long as the phone has at least 32GB, so can most people. The price gouging for SKUs with more storage really has to stop tho.
apaceeee - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
The frarme is tooooooo narrow...It's almost frameless...And I trust it can be carelessly touched .dawp - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
please allow us to flag these spammers on the front page like we can in the forumsmregan - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Brian,Did you notice the problem that Zoes included in a highlight video now only show 1 second of motion and then freeze? I've seen that one my One when I upgraded to 4.3 and others have reported the same issue. It really seems like a bug. The highlights become much more static. All the other highlight changes are great but this is a step backward.
Thanks,
Mike
frakkel - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I for one really appreciate that Brian has an opinion and sticks to it. He sets the quality bar high and let his opinion shine through when quality is not met.Speaking of quality I am happy to see that the different brands go more and more up in quality of the device and not only specifications. Of course some users prefer an easy setup and others prefer fully customized solution. Here I am sure that the latter group is far the smallest but this group still gets fully addressed by some of the biggest players in the market. This is impressive I think.
For me personally I am sticking to my work phone, which is an old blackberry and I can live with this situation. But if I am going to put my money toward a smartphone I for one also would go for build quality. Today I am not sure which one but it would probably be a Nokia (I have owned Nokia phones before and were happy with the build quality), HTC (I for one also like the metallic casing) or and Apple (The small form factor is for me a positive thing).
So to rap up. Brian stick with you preferences some likes some hate. But his is expected when an opinion is given.
Disclaimer: I am not a native speaking so my grammar and language errors should be overlooked.
Dentons - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
I can respect an opposing opinion as much as the next guy, but when it's delivered in Brian's smug, "I know what's best for everyone" attitude, it's a bit much to digest.MercuryStar - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I didn't interpret it as being smug. For that matter, I didn't interpret it as an opinion, either. Take his claim that microSD slots are going the way of the dodo. I think you can objectively look at how many devices include microSD card slots and conclude that it's no longer the norm in Android devices outside of Samsung and Sony, and also objectively look at how Android is engineered and conclude that they don't seem to be accommodating microSD slots in their OS design anymore.I don't think you should interpret this observation as an indication that Brian hates microSD card slots or something, he's just making an observation. In the case of this handset he felt that the removable back for the microSD reader compromised the design and I agree - it's heavier, bulkier and means it's no longer a gapless unibody design. But if the device had included a microSD slot on the side or something, so as not to compromise the design, I don't think this would have been a problem.
GiantPandaMan - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Please stop using the word literally incorrectly.It should only be used when you could take the something either figuratively or literally.
IE-
"He blew up."
"He got popular?"
"No, literally he blew up. The dynamite he was carrying exploded."
Saying a phone is literally a larger version of another phone is unnecessary. The phone is a larger version of another phone.
Arbie - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
"For the incredibly small percentage of users that clamors for an SD card..."How about the incredibly small percentage of users who obsess (for pages) over the color and finish on the phones? Oh wait - that's you guys at Anandtech.
I just bought a smartphone with an mSD slot BECAUSE it had an mSD slot. Money where mouth is; vendors, listen up.
onslaught86 - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I have a real soft spot for HTC. My first smartphone was the Apache, and for all its ridiculousness, I loved it. Followed by the Titan, a brief flirtation with Samsung's WinMo lineup for the Omnia, then the mighty HD2 - which is still my favourite smartphone experience due to the mad levels of developer support & fully functional Android + Windows Phone 7 ports. I've now been with Samsung for the life of the Galaxy S line, jumping on the Note bandwagon after the S III, and although I (genuinely) enjoy the functionality of Touchwiz, I'm getting sick of a few things that just haven't been fixed through three or four revisions of their software suite.I kept wanting HTC to make something that would tempt me away - had they shipped the international Evo 3D closer to the Galaxy S II's release, I'd have picked that up instead. Yet, for the past two years, there's been too many compromises - both the One X & the One disappointed in the battery life department above all others, something I'm not keen to compromise on. Especially so after the Note II set a hefty precedent.
Then there's the SD card argument. Given the instability & low quality of the memory, combined with the poor and confusing experience SD cards can give consumers, I don't mind that they're going out of vogue. Wouldn't store anything crucial on something so volatile. Although in principle I wholeheartedly support user-accessible upgrades, SD slots are no excuse for insufficient internal storage, as everyone with a '16GB' Galaxy S4 discovered. For my use-case, however (Swapping between devices regularly, keeping a lot of lossless music offline, and storing backup images), an SD card slot is a definite point towards a device.
Now, for the first time in 2+ years, HTC have made a device that ticks the most important boxes - screen size, battery capacity & run-time, expandable storage. I can deal with the size, I'm a Note fan (Also have the 5.9" Pantech Vega N°6, which is a mammoth device). Although flip cases are not my bag, a portable kickstand with 20% extra battery sounds fantastic. The metal build, the stereo speakers, the SLCD when I'm getting awfully sick of poorly calibrated AMOLED panels, it all stacks up. They're even taking proper advantage of the screen size with a 5x5 home screen grid, Samsung's persistence with 4x4 on the Note II & 3 is baffling to me. The lack of OIS is a downer, I do love and use the S Pen regularly, the lack of S800 is almost deal-breaking, and yet...
HTC have finally made a device that appeals to the core of my smartphone experience, and I feel compelled to give them money in the hopes they keep doing this.
Arbie - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Don't belabor it tiresomely.Arbie - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
@DavidjanThanks for the tip on the Meenova OTG-SD card adapter! I just went and bought one, even though I don't yet have an Android device. I will someday, and this is too good to pass up. Plus, such a tiny company could disappear. BTW I lobbied Sandisk, Transcend etc a year ago for something like this but those that replied said it couldn't be done...
As for Brian Klug's comment that microSD is "going the way of the dodo": He probably thinks that means an evolutionary death. In fact the dodo was killed off by idiots with no concern for the future. There's nothing "natural" about losing microSD - it packs huge amounts of affordable storage in a tiny, rugged, hot-swap package. It should rightfully be with us for many years. Unfortunately, it's being marketed out existence by tablet makers pushing internal RAM, telecom carriers pushing data usage, and probably even Hollywood.
whatsa - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Yes I have to admit brian has some odd perspectives at times.I find it easier when I remind myself that
" Es not the Messiah! - Es just a naughty naughty BOY!"
Impulses - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
I could see something like Meenova's reader coming a mile away once USB OTG support became common place... I'm just surprised it took a Kickstarter campaign to make it a reality, and that it isn't more popular given this apparent need for removable storage amongst enthusiasts.I also thought we'd see USB OTG flash drives before we saw a USB OTG reader.... Though I guess it wouldn't be much smaller since you can't hide the flash memory inside the male connector itself like some of the full size USB microSD readers do.
UltraTech79 - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link
Stupidly large.jshsimpson1 - Friday, November 15, 2013 - link
most note users do use their pens. I have the note 2 and the spend in one of the reasons I bought it among it being awesome. I love snote and I use it alot. I have a flip case which turns into a stand so that is useful for writing.fokka - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
in the chart comparing the one/mini/max on the first page the mini is stated to have 4x krait 200 cores. as i understand, the mini is dualcore only and looking at the info on this page http://www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon/processors/400i believe it uses krait 300 cores because it's clocked at 1,4ghz.
hangfirew8 - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
As always I really appreciate the depth and clarity of Brian's reviews. I've noticed one thing really missing from all, and perhaps that is because review hardware simply doesn't come with this accessory- car docks are not mentioned. After struggling with a poorly implemented car mode on the HTC Thunderbolt, I am very curious how well it works with the HTC dock. After all, one really good reason to buy a phablet over a normal size phone is that a phablet is the ideal form factor for a satnav app running docked. (Another good reason is to ditch a separate e-reader and just carry one device, not really a flaw in the review but this isn't really mentioned. I'm sure many buyers have this in mind when they buy that really, really big phone.acruhl - Saturday, April 12, 2014 - link
Sorry, I haven't read all posts. I liked the review for the most part. And I see someone was in Tucson to take the video, cool. I'm in Tucson.The HTC one max is my first smart phone (!) and I've been around since the early 70's. I got away with a pay as you go phone and an ipod up until now.
I wanted a bigger phone that could be used more like a laptop in a pinch for a new job I'm getting. I might need a keyboard for cli stuff, and using something like VNC is easier on a bigger, higher resolution screen is better.
For me, lots of this nitpicky stuff doesn't matter. I wanted a high quality, large screen and something I could hold onto reasonably well. The Mega doesn't have the screen quality. The Note is built around the stylus which I won't use. The SD card slot helps because I want to store all 30+ gigs of my music plus a few more gigs of videos (work related) on the phone. Not possible with the internal storage and software build.
Can someone explain to me why CPU speed is so important on a phone? For my laptop/home computer, the only thing I need CPU for is games or if I need a virtual machine to get a certain type of job done. Otherwise, I can wait, it's not a big deal. Even the virtual machine using my CPU isn't a huge problem, I'm patient :)
Tech for tech's sake is not productive. I haven't needed a faster CPU in my laptop or home computer for years. Memory, sure :)
The deal breaker for me on this HTC is the rattling vibration feedback. Holy cow, what were they thinking? But I don't like the other big phones so I have to decide if I can live with it.