Phablets are all the rage among smartphone users today despite only coming into existence at the tail end of 2011. Why buy both a phone and a tablet when you can get the best of both worlds in one device? Just look at smartphone sales this past year and you will see that consumers cannot get enough of these hybrid phones. Two of the hottest Phablets on the market include the one-month-old HTC One Max and the Samsung Galaxy Note III.

These two phones are clearly in a battle for Phablet supremacy, but how does the HTC One Max hold up compared to the 10-million-selling Note III? For starters, the Max has an incredibly large 5.9" 1080p display. Yet the Note III's display is nearly as gargantuan thanks to its 5.7" 1080p screen. Some tech columnists have been bold enough to say that the Note III has the best screen on the market today, even beating out the iPhone 5s' Retina display.

HTC also took a note out of Apple's playbook by including a fingerprint scanner like the iPhone 5s. But Apple incorporates the scanner intelligently into the phone's home button whereas the One Max's scanner is awkwardly placed underneath the rear-facing camera. It's not stylish at all and resembles a wart. However it does work as advertised, and it's a feature the Note III neglected to include.

Oddly enough, no stylus is included with the HTC One Max, and even if you buy one for the phone there is nowhere to hold it so it won't get lost. The Note III thankfully has a slot that holds its so-called "S pen" firmly in place. Samsung's TouchWiz software also makes it a breath to type or write. No such stylus optimization made its way into the HTC One Max, though the supplied Sense 5.5 software is no slouch.

Both phones feature Google's Android 4.3 Jelly Bean software. Android 4.4 KitKat is already out for Google's own smartphone, the Nexus 5, and an update next month will bring the Note III up to speed. The One Max is in line to be updated as well, though the release date hasn't been announced yet.

The main thing people dislike about the HTC One Max though is the poor quality of its build. The original HTC One featured a stunning 4.7" display wrapped with high-grade aluminum and plastic accents. Perhaps the bigger display on the One Max caused HTC to take cost into account and eschew the premium, mostly aluminum, design for a mix of plastic and metal. Samsung on the other hand loves to build plastic devices. The Note III's plastic casing is ok and one of the cases Samsung markets for the devices is made out of pleather.

Both of these phones are have been getting a lot of love from the press. Will you be picking one up this holiday season?