A Beats exec may have just outed the HTC One Max

The president of Beats headphones spoke candidly and publicly in a recent interview about what's almost certainly the HTC One Max, a phone that HTC itself hasn't yet officially announced. Whoops!

Beats President, COO and Co-Founder Luke Wood was chatting with Stuff about his company's future with HTC when he mentioned "a large-format HTC device out in the fall."

"I don't even know if they've announced it yet," he continued.

He may not have mentioned it by name, but for our money, he's got to be talking about the HTC One Max we've been hearing oh so much about lately.

Jumping the gun

It's a big deal when one of the best smartphones gets an enlarged upgrade with a bigger display and improved specs, and that's exactly what the HTC One Max is expected to deliver.

We understand Wood's excitement about the device, though it probably would have been smarter to wait until HTC revealed it officially before he started bragging that Beats audio will be featured on it.

But brag he did: "We're still on that device," he said.

Beats' partnership with HTC isn't as certain going forward, though.

"We learned a lot of great things with HTC," Wood said.

"Right now I can't comment as to whether that relationship will continue or not continue, but for Beats, it's been very productive, because we've done a lot of work [on HTC phones] and I'm very proud of the way those devices sound."

We learned on Sept. 27 that Beats is buying back its shares from HTC for $265 million (about £165m / AU$284m), though the companies still plan to work together going forward.

Wood also bemoaned hardware makers' investment in video quality over sound quality over the last decade and a half, which he sees as grossly disproportionate, and discussed other aspects of the audio business.

• The latest rumor claims that the HTC One Max will be released on Oct. 17, two days later than was previously thought.