Gadgetory

tis the season for a larger smartphones I'm Bridget Carey and this is your cnet update HTC has revealed its latest super-sized phone the HTC One max is a smartphone with a high def 5.9 inch screen and just like the rumours foretold it has a fingerprint scanner on the back you can use that scanner to unlock the phone or open apps this model is also different because you can remove the backplate to add a microSD card to expand the storage but you won't be able to access the battery to replace it if you want a large phone and your between the Galaxy Note 3 and the HTC One max well when you just compare hardware specs to know three wins the one max has an older slightly slower processor and its camera is good but it goes by a different measurement than megapixels it uses a branding term called ultrapixels the note is also a little smaller thinner and lighter and it comes with a stylus HTC's extra large phone goes on sale in the UK within the next couple of weeks for the u.s. it'll be sold at Sprint and Verizon but it may not arrive until November larger screens are the trend these days so much so that Microsoft updated its Windows Phone 8 operating system to work with phones that have screen sizes between five and seven inches and it would show an additional column and several more rows on the start screen there are no windows phone 8 devices of that size yet but we could see one in a week the rumored 6-inch Nokia Lumia 1520 is expected to be announced at an event in Abu Dhabi on october twenty second if you already own a Windows 8 Phone you also get a few perks from the update including task switching a driving mode and the ability to assign a unique tone alert to a specific contact the update will roll out in the coming weeks and months to every windows phone 8 device moving from smartphones to speakers wireless speakers are a growing category and if you're in the market for a multi-room speaker check out cnet's review of the sonos play one which has been awarded an editor's choice for its category it's a stylish and well-made speaker for two hundred dollars and it plays music from your personal library as well as some services like Amazon Cloud Sirius XM Spotify Pandora and Rdio but it's not Bluetooth it's a little more complicated because it creates its own wireless network and sonos is throwing in its $50 bridge device for free to get you started it doesn't play every type of streaming service so if you primarily use google music all access iTunes radio or Xbox music then you're better off getting a Bluetooth speaker that's your tech news update but you can get more details at cnet com / update from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey