HTC 10 Review

This is the brand new HTC 10 first impressions as a new flagship smartphone. It’s a hardware and software packaged that We think is pretty promising so this is what we’re working with here

Design

First of all this is definitely HTC so full unibody metal jacket again from top to bottom and gives it that premium feel we are already used to. And you only really hear about premium feel when there is usually either glass from metal involved. Samsung being the one that likes to use a lot of glass. HTC for the metal lovers. And It feels good in the hand like a solid chunk of metal should. They got a lot of the little things right to elect the button placement. The ridged power button on the side while the volume buttons are nice for identifying it.

Of course HTC heard we like chamfer. So they gave us chamfers like no others, all the way around the back of this device. Nice big shiny beveled edge. But the sides are also still flat so it’s pretty easy to hold there on the front. You have a 5.2 inch quad HD display and then capacitive buttons surrounding a fingerprint sensor combined with home button at the bottom which is pretty common look right now. The glass sought of wraps around the front as one big sheet of slightly curved edges. So it’s definitely pretty high-end feel.

Hardware

On the inside it is high-end too. Like I said it’s a flagship device by HTC so you have a snapdragon 820 chip with 4GB of ram and a 3000 mAH battery. Plus you do have expandable storage again in the form of a micro SD card slot. There’s also a USB type C port at the bottom. And now you’re probably be wondering since it’s an HTC phone what’s go with the speakers like there is no massive stereo front facing speaker. No you do not have that but you still have a system that HTC is calling “Boom Sound” which is a stereo speaker system of a woofer on the bottom for the lower frequencies. And a smaller front facing speaker up on the top for the higher frequencies and they work simultaneously. This is an interesting solution to a problem that We’re not really sure anyone actually had but so far it sounds decent. Again it’s no stereo front facing pair but it sounds pretty good.

Camera

Now the camera this is also something HTC is clearly been struggling with for a little bit. This year again on paper it’s pretty promising, rocking in a 12 mp camera with an F 1.8 aperture and Optical Image Stabilization and pretty large pixels 1.55 microns. So it’s a big enough sensor for them to call it an ultra-pixel camera. It should be pretty quick with laser auto-focus and a fast camera app.

HTC Said that:

HTC 10’s camera has been redesigned from the ground up to be more intuitive. Now taking great photos is as simple as pressing a button. And all the settings are at your fingertips, so you can fine-tune things effortlessly. Easy to use doesn’t mean less capable. Pro Mode offers advanced options for power users, including RAW format.

So yeah this is definitely something We’re gonna be testing pretty often for the full review. HTC users have high hopes for it. But yet right now it seems solid. The front facing camera is a 5mp wide-angle shooter again with F 1.8 and with Optical Image Stabilization again as well. So you can get those super stable selfies.

Software

HTC did something We really like in the software department first of all it’s definitely an overall cleaner version of HTC skin on top of Android it’s more vanilla and has this more material design look. With a lot of the stock apps and settings etc. HTC claimed that they worked with Google to reduce the number of duplicate apps that you get out the box that do the same thing. HTC users do have some particular feeling about the duplicate apps, they’ll have like two apps installed on every phone to do pretty much everything. Two email apps, two texting apps, two web browsing apps two’s of everything. Google already makes most of their stock apps from nexus phones available in the play store. So what HTC did was essential to remove any duplicate apps that they don’t need and Google already makes. Now the default calculator app on this phone is the new calculator, the default calendar is Google calendar and when you’re taking photos with the camera on the go to view them the default Gallery app is Google photos. So it’s awesome that they work with Google to pull this off. But we’re sure that some carriers will still find a way to mess this up with all their pre-installed bloatware. But thumbs up HTC every one does like this step. You may be thinking if HTC is going to go all Googley why not just go full Nexus. Well they still offer their own stuff with the software as well so some fun custom launcher and the layouts stuff, then you get personal audio profiles with the super high-end 24bit sound in this phone which looks dope and some battery optimization on top of quick charge 3.0 and even Apple Airplay audio streaming right out the box native support that’s definitely a first on Android phone.

HTC 10 Quick Specs:

• Form factor: Metal unibody designed to take a hit (testing included 10,000 drops, scratches, corrosion, 1 week in extreme temps from -20°C to 60°C)
• Screen: 5.2″ Super LCD 5 with QHD resolution (1,440 x 2,560px, 564ppi); 2.5D Gorilla Glass
• Camera: 12MP sensor (1/2.3″, 1.55µm pixels), 26mm/80° lens with f/1.8 aperture and Optical Image Stabilization; Laser AF and dual-LED dual-tone flash; Manual mode with 12-bit RAW
• Selfie camera: 5MP (1.36µm pixels), 23mm/86° lens with f/1.8 apertrure and Optical Image Stabilization (a first); 1080p video recording
• Video camera: 4K 2160p video recording with Hi-Res audio (24-bit stereo from three mics with noise cancellation); 720p @ 120fps slo-mo; Hyperlapse
• Audio: 24-bit DAC and premium headphones; BoomSound dual speaker with two dedicated amps
• Platform: Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Sense UI; Snapdragon 820 chipset, 4GB of RAM; 32GB or 64GB of storage expandable with a microSD card
• Connectivity: LTE 450Mbps, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2; Display Port (USB Type-C connector); wireless streaming with Apple Airplay, Miracast, Chromecast
• Battery: 3,000mAh; Quick Charge 3.0 (50% in 30 minutes)
• Misc: Fingerprint sensor (recognition in 0.2 seconds)

So HTC 10 is pretty promising package. We will be testing of course all this stuff including the higher-end headphones that come in the box for the full review. So definitely stay tuned for that and figure out if this really is the phone to save HTC. Thanks for reading.