HTC One Max
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HTC One Max on Sprint gets its turn at Android 4.4 KitKat
HTC has been upgrading its normal-sized smartphones in the US to Android 4.4 KitKat for a little while; now, the giant One Max is getting its turn. Sprint has started rolling out the OS update to the 6-inch behemoth as of today. As with earlier upgrades, the One Max isn't getting Sense 6. This is more of an under-the-hood tweak whose most conspicuous additions (besides KitKat itself) are new Bluetooth device profiles and cloud printing support. Verizon hasn't pushed out a corresponding KitKat upgrade to its One Max variant, but HTC says the patch is in certification -- here's hoping that it comes relatively soon.
Sprint introduces Spark enhanced LTE, promises unprecedented speed, futuristic app support
Sprint may have lost 360,000 customers over the last quarter, but it's looking to stem that tide with the introduction of Sprint Spark, an enhanced LTE service it says will deliver "unprecedented speeds" to its cellphone users. The company demoed the service running at 1Gbps this morning, however, customers can expect "50-60 Megabits per second (Mbps) peak speeds today with increasing speed potential over time." Sprint says the service will not only enhance video and bandwidth-hogging apps, but says it's ready to take on virtual reality and "futuristic apps" -- whatever those might be. Spark is dependent on tri-band wireless devices, which are intended to seamlessly switch between Sprint's 800MHz, 1.9GHz and 2.5GHz cellular bands, depending on your location and which apps you're using. The rollout begins today with limited availability in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tampa and Miami, though Sprint promises to extend that service to 100 US cities by 2016. The first Spark-supported phones, Samsung's Galaxy Mega and Galaxy S 4 mini and LG's G2, will be available on Sprint's network on November 8th. Software updates for Samsungs' handsets will enable tri-band "shortly after launch," with a similar update scheduled for early 2014 for the G2. The HTC One Max will also support Spark, but Sprint has yet to announce availability. Update: This post originally listed tri-band support for all Spark-enabled handsets as November 8th.
HTC One Max review
The debate around giant smartphones is over. Manufacturers like Samsung, Sony and LG have amply demonstrated that it's possible to build a pocketable, phone-like device with a screen bigger than five inches. Now it's HTC's turn. But instead of re-imagining the much-praised One for this new category of device, HTC's designers have mostly just cloned it, while adding a drop of Miracle-Gro to produce a 1080p panel that measures 5.9 inches diagonally, versus the One's 4.7 inches. The result is the One Max, a product that carries over some good things from the One while also finding room for a few notable extras like a fingerprint scanner and expandable storage. At the same time, it also introduces some major snags -- not least of which are the its intimidating size and weight. The job ahead of us is to somehow find the upper body strength to weigh it all up.
HTC launches One Max with huge 5.9-inch display and fingerprint scanner
The bigger the phone, the harder it is to hide. After a slew of detailed leaks, HTC is finally ready to announce the HTC One Max: an enlarged version of the original One that boosts the size of the 1080p LCD panel up to 5.9 inches while attempting to keep the One's classy aluminum look and feel. This attempt is made regardless of the impact on general portability -- the One Max weighs 217 grams and is over 16 centimeters long and 10.3mm thick, thanks in part to the front-facing BoomSound speakers. And the phablet only gets phatter if you squeeze it into something like HTC's $90 power case, which contains a bendy 1,200mAh battery to add to the capacity of the built-in (and non-removable) 3,300mAh battery. Aside from its size, the One Max brings other big changes, including a fingerprint scanner on its rear side. We've had the chance to use the scanner and, while it isn't as neat as the iPhone 5s's, it does the basic job of letting you log in with a swipe of your fingertip. We'd have happily swapped it out for optical stabilization on the UltraPixel camera, however. The back cover is now removable, letting you expand the 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage with up to 64GB more via microSD -- a feature that was missing on the One and on the One X before that. The One Max sticks with a Snapdragon 600 (with 2GB of RAM) for processing, rather than the superior Snapdragon 800 used in rival devices like the Sony Xperia Z Ultra and Samsung Galaxy Note 3. The supported bands suggest healthy support for LTE networks in Europe and Asia, and as well as for Verizon and Sprint in the US, and HTC says global availability will start rolling out as early as this week. On the software side, we're looking at a significantly revised version of HTC's Android skin, Sense 5.5, which runs on top of Android 4.3 and provides a new level of customization for the BlinkFeed news-glancing widget, as well as a list of other features that are summarized in the press release and spec sheet below. Check out the gallery below too, and standby for our review coming very shortly.
HTC One Max specs reportedly include Snapdragon 600 chip, Android 4.3 and Sense 5.5
The One Max is far from being HTC's best kept secret -- we've seen leak after leak of the rumored larger-than-most device over the past few weeks. To make things better (or worse, depending on who you ask), Nowhereelse.fr editor Steve Hemmerstoffer has tweeted an image which includes what could be the HTC One Max's full spec list. Aside from mentioning the same 5.9-inch, 1080p display and 3,200mAh battery we heard about not long ago, today's leak suggests the One Max is set to feature a quad-core, 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600, 2GB RAM, Android 4.3 with Sense 5.5, Bluetooth 4.0 and options for 16, 32 or 64GB of built-in storage. If this turns out to be true, then there's no doubt the Taiwanese company will have an Android powerhouse in its hands, right there alongside Samsung's Galaxy Note 3. The good news is that it looks as if we won't have to wait much longer to learn all there is to know about the HTC One Max; in the meantime, head after the break to check out the purported spec sheet in its entirety.
