HTC One Max Phablet
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
3,087 words · ~15 min read
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welcome to my video about the HTC1 Max this phone review will be a little bit
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shorter than most of mine because it's pretty much a phone that I've reviewed
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before unlike the One Mini with its mini
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size and Mini specs compared to the regular one the one Max is and I suppose
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this was self-explanatory um a Max siiz
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version of the one there's no massive change in the specs though it's got a
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1.7 GHz Snapdragon 600 processor with an adreno 320 GPU 2 gigs of RAM a 5.9 in
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1080P screen that's about 373 pixels per inch with Gorilla Glass 3 Wi-Fi AC and
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Android 4.3 with a 4.4 KitKat update confirmed with those numbers in mind
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doing this review was a little weird it's the first time a one device has
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ever felt anything but blindingly fast to me it's still very fast but going
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from the Nexus 5 to the one made me appreciate the subtle allround
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difference that a faster phone running a newer more lightweight OS can make it
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didn't bother me for the last few weeks but I definitely did notice it so we'll
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start with the physical on Hands-On HTC actually sent me a case as well as a
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stylus for the phone the the case well I
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installed it used it for like two minutes and then I promptly put it down
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behind a barn with a shotgun no but seriously I seem to have lost it so I
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actually can't show it to you but I would suggest trying to find something
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else anyway the stylus is a stylus I guess it's aluminum and it feels nice
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but my issue is that unlike the Note 3 there's nowhere to store it inside the
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phone body so unless you have amazing discipline I think you're going to be
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losing and buying it over and over again and at $10 that's a little bit tough to
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swallow so I decided after trying the stylus to just go be back with no stylus
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for the duration of my review cuz I feel like that's how most people are going to
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be using it earlier this year when I first started using it I found even the
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regular one to be a bit too big for me I was coming from an iPhone 4 and a bit
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slippery with its however beautiful it may be smooth anodized aluminum backing
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now fast forward however many months it's been and that's all changed I'm
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used to the one but moving up to the one Max is that same learning curve all over
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again you've got to be extremely careful especially at first to avoid dropping it
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fortunately I didn't I mean for someone like me with small hands you have got to
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use both of them to handle this baby day
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today if you know what I mean but uh well you know what they say practice
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makes perfect and over the last few weeks I've gotten a lot better at
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handling a big the front of the phone is dominated
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by the huge 5.9 in screen and the boom
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sound speakers man I missed those speakers when I was using the xeria Z1
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and the Nexus 5 it is so nice to
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actually be able to hear things again and have them playing at me as opposed
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to coming out of the bottom of the phone into my palm I mean using the one for so
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long I had actually started taking them for granted but now that I've been on
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the other side I have a new appreciation for them the last thing on the front of
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the phone is the dedicated buttons rather than onscreen buttons now I feel
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like these are a bit of a mixed bag I at first felt very strongly that onscreen
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buttons were a negative because they took up some of your screen real estate
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but particularly on a phone like this having onscreen buttons is a non-issue
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to me because the screen is so big actually many modern phones are like
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that whereas having hard buttons goes and makes the phone itself a little bit
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bigger which is uh something that doesn't really feel necessary in this
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case so it comes down to the individual whether you prefer on screen or not on
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screen I'm kind of in the middle on the right we find my single biggest gripe
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with this phone the volume and lock buttons are so close together and so
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similar feeling that even after a couple of weeks it's pretty much a 50/50 shot
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for me to hit what I'm aiming for uh a top lock button like on the one um I
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understand why they didn't do that it would have been very difficult to to hit
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onehanded but um so that's maybe not the solution but I think a different feel to
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these buttons on the side could have helped a lot here it's still not a deal
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breaker and overall I actually really like the phone it's just that a couple
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weeks in it does continue to bother me and I wish they'd found another way to
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implement that moving on to the bottom of the phone we find a single micro USB
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charging port I feel like wireless charging is a very conspicuous absentee
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here especially with newer phones like the Nexus 5 having that as a headline
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feature in fact that's one of the biggest things I miss about the Nexus 5
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wireless charging is is a truly Next Generation type experience shift
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compared to plugging in your phone all the time so there you go guys it's not
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here but hopefully the upcoming one two or whatever they're going to call it
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will on the top we find an IR emitter
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yay universal remote and a headphone jack then on the back we find the Ultra
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pixel camera which just like the one has strong image stabilization and is easy
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to get good Stills with even in low light but has a little bit of difficulty
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with autofocus NVIDIA mode um so I it
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tends to kind of look for focus a lot but maybe we'll see a software update
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for that I mean you see how much the Nexus 5 camera improved just with a
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software update so maybe there's still hope for it on the back we also find a
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fingerprint scanner that I had on for about an hour before I gave up I think a
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big part of the issue for me was that um to get a solid scan you can only really
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do it if you can reach it properly and consistently pull your finger across it
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in a repeatable manner and that required me to hold the phone with two hands now
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I don't mind operating the phone two-handed but being able to unlock it
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one-handed to quickly look at things is a must for me let's move back to the
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front of the phone and take some time to really talk about the screen the viewing
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angles are solid I can't see the touchscreen interface even on uniform
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backgrounds which is a personal pet peeve of mine and while it lacks some of
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the sharpness of the 4.7 in 1080P screen
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on the one unless you're reading very small text from very close up all day I
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doubt you would ever even notice that I think the only complaint that I really
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have about it is the slight warm or
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yellow cast of the colors compared to the one especially which has a more cool
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or blue look although even that stopped bothering me after about the first day
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it is still obvious in a side-by-side comparison though now onto the size
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there are definite challenges associated
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with handling a 6-in but I think we can all agree that
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having such a big clear screen is great for certain things um content
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consumption is an example lately I've been mostly using my NVIDIA shield for
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watching videos in bed or around the house but the One Max due to its massive
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screen and great speakers has actually taken over that Duty I also find myself
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zooming in less on photos that I'm viewing on the phone um when I hand it
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to people to take a picture or a video for me they often comment that they can
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see really clearly it's easy to use and and these things are great I
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mean but initially I didn't necessarily
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feel like my appreciation for those things outweighed the inconvenience of
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the largess because of my of my small hands and in fact initially my review
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notes about the phone's ludicrous size included only um stories like my wife's
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cousin laughing at me when I was talking on it just because it's so big and I had
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some negative stuff about little places where sense 5.5 didn't make use of the
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additional screen size for General productivity like for example in the app
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tray um and things were going to come out a bit negative um although in HTC's
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defense while the app tray displays exactly as many icons in the grid as the
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one and even the one mini um most stuff
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is is adapted reasonably well like the launcher supports a full additional row
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and column of icons and stuff like that so so that was a very minor complaint
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but anyway that the direction I was headed then about 3 days into my
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evaluation of the phone something happened I was standing in an office
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texting someone and a middle-aged lady behind a desk nearby said to me wow what
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phone is that I showed it to her and she
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proceeded to play around with it and tell me a story about how her kids made
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her get an iPhone and she hates it because she can't see anything on it or
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type anything on it cuz it's just too small for her to press the buttons and I
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realized she's right typing even though
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it does require two hands for me to grip the phone and use it at the same time is
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an absolute Dream On The One Max without thinking about it I had forgotten to
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install swift key because even with my small hands and HTC's unexceptional
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stock keyboard I was faster with less Reliance on auto correct and I'm a
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reasonably good touchscreen typist so I think that's my new summary about the
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size while I can use this phone and there are things I do like about it that
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tradeoff of screen size to phone size wasn't necessarily designed for people
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like me who want information density and compactness it was made for people who
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might legitimately need a big screen for ease of use where large display elements
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will be perfect and I can I can think of a lot of people like that software wise
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I've used sents for months so there weren't really any surprises here but
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I'll summarize some of the things I do and don't like about it swiping down
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from the top with one or two fingers for your notifications or for your quick
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toggles is good I like HTC's quick toggles implementation it doesn't have
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3,000 things in it like Samsungs but it doesn't just lock you into half a dozen
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basic things you will not use anything else like stock Android um however I do
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still use power toggles just because I
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particularly with a large phone like this have trouble getting two fingers up
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there one-handed when if I just want to turn on my flashlight and I'm kind of
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scrambling it's nice to be able to just scroll down with one and activate the
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flashlight with one hand just like that um HTC's phone migration wizard is
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wireless and easy to use something I wouldn't have even mentioned and would
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take for granted if I hadn't tried Sony's terrible ones so recently um I
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also love senses multitasking compared to other implementations like the stock
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Google one that only shows a few recently opened applications and require
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scrolling um blink feed is something that people either use or don't use I
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don't use it but I can recognize it as an efficient way to look at all your
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social media feeds and stuff like that it's just not for me um zo are another
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thing that I don't really use because to me they're kind of like Vines um without
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even a button to pause recording they're just little Tim limited video clips for
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those of you who don't know what a zo is and the One Max can record regular
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videos so I'd like to just have the option to keep it short just a few
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seconds or keep it rolling um highlight reel another software feature one that I
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actually do use from time to time lets you put together Quick videos and it
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does automatic cuts and filters and stuff like that set to music and that
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works with zo or regular videos so zo feel a little bit unnecessary and and
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like you're limiting yourself a little bit now uh one other thing and I've
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already been been informed that this isn't a big deal and lots of phones do
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it but whatever this was my first time noticing it is that even if your phone
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battery is dead the one and the one Max for that matter will turn on for a long
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enough enough to trigger your alarm in the morning this is great if you're like
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me and occasionally forget to plug in your phone before going to sleep when
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it's really really low this feature actually saved my butt one day during
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this review and I would have otherwise slept in so that's something that I did want to mention overall I like the
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software maybe it's partly because my first Android experience is with sense
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5.5 so it's very familiar to me but
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there was one thing that I really missed from the Moto X and the Nexus 5 okay
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good Google you've won me over on the whole voice thing Google Now integration
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with 4.3 in the one is just not as good
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or as intuitive as those other phones and even though at the time I didn't
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feel like I was using it much even just trying to use maps for navigation on the
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one I really really missed it so the summary is I guess I'll write
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my obligatory the voice quality on the One Max is excellent um I guess like the
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speakers it's a side effect of having space inside the device and the fact
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that the microphone can actually be quite close to your mouth um so I felt
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like I should mention that but other than that the conclusion of this video
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is quite simple if you liked the one but you felt like it needed to have a bigger
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battery and screen then this is pretty much your dream phone um okay no it has
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some other differences um upgradeable storage is one of them I like the
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implementation of the removable back there is a very slight Gap but it
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doesn't detract from the overall fit and finish to me that's a trade-off I'm
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willing to make moving on to the submarine conclusion oh wait sorry hold
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on voice quality on the One Max I guess it is it is a phone is excellent I guess
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like the speakers um being better
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because you know it's just like bigger and easier to build good sound devices
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in a bigger space I guess it's a side effect of the phone just being larger
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but it was definitely a strong point for the phone um okay there sorry now now
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conclusion time so other than that the conclusion for this video is quite
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simple if you liked the one but you felt like it needed to have a big battery and
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screen then this is pretty much your dream phone okay no it has some other
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differences as well I mean the upgradeable storage is one big one and I
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actually like the implementation of the removable back there is a slight Gap
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here but I don't feel like it detracts from the overall fit and finish that
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much um they've added a very very small lip like on the One Mini to I guess help
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prevent screen scratching if you put it face down but it really is very small
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and I still wouldn't put it face down on things either way it's a welcome
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addition um both the haptic feed back and the vibrate ringtone feel less high
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pitched and obnoxious to me so yeah there are some definite improvements and
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with that in mind I would say the One Max is a better phone than the one but
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to me it doesn't come down to those little changes it comes down to whether
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you feel like you can handle all 5.9 in
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of its strong
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sculpted anyway guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked
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it leave a comment letting me know if you think faets like the One Max are
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great or if you think that they're stupid and you know let the debate rage
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on in the YouTube comments and as always guys don't forget to subscribe to lus
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