HTC One Max review

Battery life on the HTC One Max is much better than we expected, and perhaps that's being a little harsh on HTC.

After all, this is a brand that looks like it's finally getting a handle on the insane amounts of power its phones were chewing through in recent years, and the HTC One was much kinder to its battery pack with a recent update.

Actually, beyond all that, we should have just realised that like Samsung, HTC has used the extra space the larger screen commands to whack a massive battery pack behind it, and the results are much better than we could have hoped for.

The fact that HTC Zoe files now longer create loads of pictures in the Gallery folder does help, as most of us will have these set to auto-upload, which nabs a lot of battery power. On top of that, we noticed that the camera app didn't take as much juice as we expected it might, nor did playing music and video for long periods of time take loads of power out of the system.

GPS tracking was a surprising drain, with nearly 25% of the power going during a one hour run. This was partly due to the screen being turned no more than usual, but we'd have thought the loss would have been in line with what we've experienced throughout the phone.

It's not something that most runners will have to think about, as the HTC One Max is just too large to worry about as a running accessory. We doubt that any running pouches will ever be made to hold it.

But it's worth making sure you've got a car charger if you're thinking of using the handset as a sat nav - and you should, as it's an excellent choice with its gargantuan display and clear audio notifications. However, don't go out using it to navigate if you don't have a power pack to back it up.

In terms of raw numbers, the HTC One Max delivers genuine performance while lasting over a day, which is excellent. The 3300mAh power pack is the sort of thing we're used to seeing in high end handsets, and we're happy that HTC has gone with the idea to keep up with the trend in the industry of offering phones with over 3000mAh power packs.

There will be many that wonder why it's not removable, which is an obvious question seeing as the cover comes off the back of the One Max. It's because the phone is designed in such a way that the processor, screen and all manner of other innards are packaged together so tightly that a discrete power unit that the user can get their hands on simply wasn't possible with the footprint.

Users should get used to this being an issue, as we can see Samsung following suit soon. A removable battery creates design headaches, and with the way a phone looks becoming ever more important (just as LG, which created a battery that was moulded around the innards) companies will move to inbuilt power packs given most consumers don't ever remove them.

As long as each has a robust returns policy should the battery give up the ghost, this shouldn't be a bad thing.

Extra apps

HTC hasn't gone too hard on the additional apps with the HTC One Max, sticking with the elements it knows and loves.

The main change is the Scribble app, which looks like it wants to be a combination of Evernote and the S Note app found on the Galaxy Note 3.

It's a messy, hard to use and fairly useless app in our opinion. Write anything with your finger (the optional stylus isn't coming to Europe or the US) and it gets added in a rather odd shrunken down way. Adding in pictures is a random affair, and there's an option to get "web content" that simply opens the browser.

You can create a neat scrapbook of information if you really, really work at it, but in truth most won't bother doing such a thing when there are far better options on the Play Store.

Google Drive comes pre-installed, and as we we mentioned, you should consider downloading this as soon as possible to make sure you've got the additional storage it brings. You annoyingly have to tap it in the Gallery to start drawing in pictures, but once that's done it's a really helpful way of doing things.

Plus any time you see the share icon, you can then have it upload directly to the cloud server, which is a nice way of saving the things you need.

And let's have a special mention of the HTC Weather app as that's one of CEO Peter Chou's favorites... as well as ours, too. Not only is it better integrated into the system than on any other phone (always displaying at the top of the Blinkfeed list, for instance) but it's also got more data on offer.

Want to know the hourly weather in your area? You've got it. The future forecast? You don't need to jump to a separate app.

There's not a lot of pre-installed nonsense on the HTC One Max, and for that we're truly thankful.