Building on a dubious foundation

Sense 5.5, built atop Android 4.3, is HTC’s latest effort at convincing you that it’s adding value to Google’s mobile OS. To that end, the company points out that 70 percent of HTC One customers are using BlinkFeed — a news and social media aggregator that closely resembles Flipboard — regularly. My reading of that statistic, given that BlinkFeed is the default home screen on the One, is that 30 percent of users are actively avoiding the company’s headline feature. As if to prove that point, HTC has now made BlinkFeed removable. That’s a good change, in isolation, but why waste resources on emulating something that already exists for those who want it (namely, Flipboard)? HTC has spent time building in RSS and Google+ support, adding a new Reading List, and automating setup — for a feature that 30 percent of its users run away from in terror.

A similar lack of inventiveness is evident in the rest of the Sense 5.5 additions: the photo gallery now has an animated GIF maker, Zoe photos have more themes and audio options… and that’s about it. HTC calls these enhancements, but I call them a failure to innovate. There’s nothing on the One max that I can’t get from any other Android phone. Samsung’s quick toggles in the notifications menu are better implemented and quicker to access, Sony’s aesthetic flourishes are prettier, and even LG has a lead with its implementation of a double tap to wake or put a device to sleep. HTC sweetens the deal a little with a free 50GB of Google Drive storage for two years, but the fact remains that a company that needs its devices to stand out is playing it far too safe.

A company that needs its devices to stand out is playing it far too safe

That timidity is evident not only in the software and design of the HTC One max, but also on its spec sheet. The Snapdragon 600 processor that powers the One is retained with the One max, giving you predictably unchanged performance. Four cores and a 1.7GHz max speed are nothing to scoff at, but Samsung and Sony manage to fit the more powerful Snapdragon 800 within their Note 3 and Z Ultra devices, leaving HTC lagging. The One max’s 3,300mAh battery does give it one category where it leads the others, though in my experience it didn’t last significantly longer than the Galaxy Note 3. A day and a half’s use with either device is a perfectly reasonable expectation, and if you’re comfortable pushing past the low battery warning, you’ll probably get two full days before reaching for a charger. This is one of the great benefits of these jumbo phones: more space to fit more battery.