HTC was once a powerful force in the phone market. Even just a few
years go the company was producing solid Android devices; the One M7 in
particular was one of my favorite handsets of the time. But over the
last two years HTC has lost significant ground, releasing a collection
of uninspiring mid-range devices and flagships that failed to compete
with the big guns of Samsung, Apple and LG.
The HTC 10 marks the start of a new chapter for HTC. The company listened to user feedback – particularly surrounding the disappointing One M9 – to craft an entirely new, high-end device with a competitive and fresh set of features. If there’s any recent product from HTC that could make the company relevant again in the smartphone space, it’s this one.
The signature metal body of past HTC smartphones has returned, complete
with new additions like a fingerprint scanner and USB Type-C. The
camera, a problem area for HTC’s past devices, has been completely
overhauled in the HTC 10 with a new 12-megapixel sensor, a wide f/1.8
lens, and optical image stabilization. Plus we’re seeing welcome
iterations such as a new 5.2-inch 1440p LCD and a Snapdragon 820 SoC.
Crafting beautiful high-end smartphones is HTC’s specialty, and the HTC 10 is another exemplary display of this. The all-metal unibody, which encompasses the entire rear panel and the sides of this device, is one of my favorite chassis of the year. It looks fantastic, with the shiny beveled rim complementing the matte back panel perfectly. All of the qualities of aluminium are on full display here, leading to a premium industrial design with a feel to match.
But it’s not just the metal that makes this design good: HTC’s designers are masters at nailing the little things. The way the metal unibody joins the glass front panel minimizes a hard edge, which makes the phone comfortable to hold. The polycarbonate antenna bands are a necessary part of this design, and if anything they add to the visual appeal. The curved back panel hides thickness and fits well in your palm. The raised camera module looks surprisingly good in person too.
That’s not to say the design is perfect. The front panel, which is white on the silver model, doesn’t look nearly as slick as the rear panel. The design here is rather derivative and unimaginative, which is a stark difference from HTC’s previous smartphones.
The lack of stereo, front-facing BoomSound speakers is a huge disappointment coming from previous HTC handsets. I always love seeing a good sound system on a smartphone – it’s great for playing games or watching the odd YouTube video – and historically HTC has had the best. However, with the main speaker relocating to the bottom of the handset, the HTC 10’s speaker system is pedestrian at best.
The regression here isn’t all bad. The bottom speaker is used in conjunction with the in-call speaker above the display while playing audio, so the handset still delivers stereo audio. However the two speakers aren’t weighted evenly: the bottom speaker is more powerful and better quality, which makes the audio produced sound like it’s mostly coming from one side when the handset is held in a landscape orientation.
The speaker below the display has been removed to fit in a fingerprint sensor, which doubles as a physical home button. I prefer these sensors to be positioned on the back of the handset as it’s a more natural position (and it would allow BoomSound to remain), but HTC’s sensor here is very responsive and accurate as you’d expect from a modern flagship.
To the left and right of the fingerprint sensor are the back and app switching navigation buttons respectively. You wouldn’t know they were positioned there as the backlit icons only appear when one of the buttons is pressed. Considering the lengthy body of the HTC 10, I would have preferred on-screen buttons here to assist with usability; the physical buttons are slightly too far down the face of the handset, particularly the back button as a right-hander, for comfortable one-handed use.
The power and volume buttons are located at a comfortable position on the right side of the device. HTC has cleverly textured the power button so that it can be easily distinguished from the volume rocker without looking, which makes it very easy to hit the power button every time you want to. Again, this is another small touch that HTC has made to improve the design of the HTC 10.
Around the edges HTC has also included a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, and the USB-C port on the bottom. I always like the inclusion of a USB-C port on smartphones, and this is no exception. There’s also two trays on either side, one for the nano-SIM, and the other for the microSD card slot. The trays are well hidden enough to not disrupt the rest of the design.
1440p smartphone displays have now matured to the point where they’re bright enough for regular use, and the increased sharpness and clarity makes viewing text a pleasure. The higher resolution also has advantages in virtual reality applications, which is quickly becoming a great use case for high-end devices like the HTC 10.
HTC’s Super LCD technology has typically been one of the better LCDs on the market, and this is no exception with the HTC 10. Top end brightness isn’t as good as the LG G5 provides with its display, but we’re still getting fantastic viewing angles and reasonably deep blacks for an LCD, leading to a great contrast ratio that helps colors ‘pop’.
Color performance in the default ‘vivid’ display mode is poor as you might expect. Colors are oversaturated to deliver a more vibrant image, which does make things look great in some situations, but you lose that realistic look you’d get from a color correct display. In this mode, the display also has a very cold color temperature, which gives whites and greys in particular a blue tint.
Luckily, for those craving an accurate display for color critical work, HTC has included an sRGB display profile that significantly improves the performance of this display. Switching to this mode doesn’t make the display completely accurate – the color temperature is still too cold – but this can be corrected by entering the temperature slider and adjusting it three notches to the warm (left) side.
When the display is corrected in this fashion, the display is very accurate, coming in just above 2.0 dE2000 in our accuracy tests. Personally I’d still leave it on the vivid mode (and there’s a temperature slider in this mode too if you’d prefer a warmer display) but I appreciate how HTC has included a color accurate mode.
It’s also worth mentioning that because HTC has used physical rather than on-screen navigation buttons, the screen real estate available is larger than some other smartphones like the LG G5. The 5.2-inch display is pretty comfortable to use in general, and the slim bezels to either side assist with usability.
In the HTC 10 in particular there is 4 GB of LPDDR4 memory and either 32 or 64 GB of memory. Most models you’ll find on the market will be the 32 GB model as this device also packs a microSD card slot for cheap expandable storage. There’s also USB 3.1 support through the USB Type-C port for fast data transfer to this storage.
Connectivity wise there are no surprises. Dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, DLNA, GPS + GLONASS, and LTE Category 9 with support for up to 450 Mbps down and 50 Mbps up. There are different models of the HTC 10 out there with a different collection of LTE bands, but the US model seems to cover most regions pretty well with its 13 FDD bands. The model for Australia, and the one I received, supports fewer FDD bands but includes TDD support for the region.
One key piece of connectivity that the HTC 10 includes is AirPlay support out of the box, which allows this phone to easily connect to media devices through Apple’s protocol. AirPlay devices are abundant and the protocol works quickly and easily, so it’s a clever inclusion by HTC.
Performance in general from the HTC 10 is fantastic as you’d expect from a high-end device. Let’s take a look at how the handset performs in a range of benchmarks
On the CPU side, the HTC 10 is 62% faster than the HTC One M9 with its Snapdragon 810 SoC, which is a significant performance improvement. The 10 is slightly faster than the Galaxy S7 Edge in CPU workloads, and as expected, performance is nearly identical to the LG G5. We’re also seeing more than double the performance of the HTC One M8 for those thinking of upgrading from a two-year-old Snapdragon 801 device.
The HTC 10 marks the start of a new chapter for HTC. The company listened to user feedback – particularly surrounding the disappointing One M9 – to craft an entirely new, high-end device with a competitive and fresh set of features. If there’s any recent product from HTC that could make the company relevant again in the smartphone space, it’s this one.
Crafting beautiful high-end smartphones is HTC’s specialty, and the HTC 10 is another exemplary display of this. The all-metal unibody, which encompasses the entire rear panel and the sides of this device, is one of my favorite chassis of the year. It looks fantastic, with the shiny beveled rim complementing the matte back panel perfectly. All of the qualities of aluminium are on full display here, leading to a premium industrial design with a feel to match.
But it’s not just the metal that makes this design good: HTC’s designers are masters at nailing the little things. The way the metal unibody joins the glass front panel minimizes a hard edge, which makes the phone comfortable to hold. The polycarbonate antenna bands are a necessary part of this design, and if anything they add to the visual appeal. The curved back panel hides thickness and fits well in your palm. The raised camera module looks surprisingly good in person too.
That’s not to say the design is perfect. The front panel, which is white on the silver model, doesn’t look nearly as slick as the rear panel. The design here is rather derivative and unimaginative, which is a stark difference from HTC’s previous smartphones.
The lack of stereo, front-facing BoomSound speakers is a huge disappointment coming from previous HTC handsets. I always love seeing a good sound system on a smartphone – it’s great for playing games or watching the odd YouTube video – and historically HTC has had the best. However, with the main speaker relocating to the bottom of the handset, the HTC 10’s speaker system is pedestrian at best.
The regression here isn’t all bad. The bottom speaker is used in conjunction with the in-call speaker above the display while playing audio, so the handset still delivers stereo audio. However the two speakers aren’t weighted evenly: the bottom speaker is more powerful and better quality, which makes the audio produced sound like it’s mostly coming from one side when the handset is held in a landscape orientation.
The speaker below the display has been removed to fit in a fingerprint sensor, which doubles as a physical home button. I prefer these sensors to be positioned on the back of the handset as it’s a more natural position (and it would allow BoomSound to remain), but HTC’s sensor here is very responsive and accurate as you’d expect from a modern flagship.
To the left and right of the fingerprint sensor are the back and app switching navigation buttons respectively. You wouldn’t know they were positioned there as the backlit icons only appear when one of the buttons is pressed. Considering the lengthy body of the HTC 10, I would have preferred on-screen buttons here to assist with usability; the physical buttons are slightly too far down the face of the handset, particularly the back button as a right-hander, for comfortable one-handed use.
The power and volume buttons are located at a comfortable position on the right side of the device. HTC has cleverly textured the power button so that it can be easily distinguished from the volume rocker without looking, which makes it very easy to hit the power button every time you want to. Again, this is another small touch that HTC has made to improve the design of the HTC 10.
Around the edges HTC has also included a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, and the USB-C port on the bottom. I always like the inclusion of a USB-C port on smartphones, and this is no exception. There’s also two trays on either side, one for the nano-SIM, and the other for the microSD card slot. The trays are well hidden enough to not disrupt the rest of the design.
Display
The HTC 10 includes a 5.2-inch Super LCD 5 display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440, equating to a pixel density of 564 ppi. Interestingly, this is HTC’s first major smartphone release with a 1440p display, as the One M8 and One M9 both included 1080p displays while the market was shifting to 1440p. Of course HTC has used 1440p technology on some of their other limited release products, but it’s great to see the technology come to their main flagship.1440p smartphone displays have now matured to the point where they’re bright enough for regular use, and the increased sharpness and clarity makes viewing text a pleasure. The higher resolution also has advantages in virtual reality applications, which is quickly becoming a great use case for high-end devices like the HTC 10.
HTC’s Super LCD technology has typically been one of the better LCDs on the market, and this is no exception with the HTC 10. Top end brightness isn’t as good as the LG G5 provides with its display, but we’re still getting fantastic viewing angles and reasonably deep blacks for an LCD, leading to a great contrast ratio that helps colors ‘pop’.
Color performance in the default ‘vivid’ display mode is poor as you might expect. Colors are oversaturated to deliver a more vibrant image, which does make things look great in some situations, but you lose that realistic look you’d get from a color correct display. In this mode, the display also has a very cold color temperature, which gives whites and greys in particular a blue tint.
Luckily, for those craving an accurate display for color critical work, HTC has included an sRGB display profile that significantly improves the performance of this display. Switching to this mode doesn’t make the display completely accurate – the color temperature is still too cold – but this can be corrected by entering the temperature slider and adjusting it three notches to the warm (left) side.
When the display is corrected in this fashion, the display is very accurate, coming in just above 2.0 dE2000 in our accuracy tests. Personally I’d still leave it on the vivid mode (and there’s a temperature slider in this mode too if you’d prefer a warmer display) but I appreciate how HTC has included a color accurate mode.
It’s also worth mentioning that because HTC has used physical rather than on-screen navigation buttons, the screen real estate available is larger than some other smartphones like the LG G5. The 5.2-inch display is pretty comfortable to use in general, and the slim bezels to either side assist with usability.
Hardware Overview and CPU Performance
There’s nothing too unusual about the hardware found in the HTC 10. The SoC is a Snapdragon 820 that we first reviewed in the LG G5, so we know already that we’re getting fantastic performance. The Snapdragon 820 packs a quad-core Kryo CPU split into two clusters: one clocked at 2.15 GHz and the other clocked at 1.59 GHz. There’s also an Adreno 530 GPU clocked at 624 MHz, a new Hexagon 680 DSP, and a 64-bit memory controller providing up to 29.8 GB/s of bandwidth.In the HTC 10 in particular there is 4 GB of LPDDR4 memory and either 32 or 64 GB of memory. Most models you’ll find on the market will be the 32 GB model as this device also packs a microSD card slot for cheap expandable storage. There’s also USB 3.1 support through the USB Type-C port for fast data transfer to this storage.
Connectivity wise there are no surprises. Dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, DLNA, GPS + GLONASS, and LTE Category 9 with support for up to 450 Mbps down and 50 Mbps up. There are different models of the HTC 10 out there with a different collection of LTE bands, but the US model seems to cover most regions pretty well with its 13 FDD bands. The model for Australia, and the one I received, supports fewer FDD bands but includes TDD support for the region.
One key piece of connectivity that the HTC 10 includes is AirPlay support out of the box, which allows this phone to easily connect to media devices through Apple’s protocol. AirPlay devices are abundant and the protocol works quickly and easily, so it’s a clever inclusion by HTC.
Performance in general from the HTC 10 is fantastic as you’d expect from a high-end device. Let’s take a look at how the handset performs in a range of benchmarks
On the CPU side, the HTC 10 is 62% faster than the HTC One M9 with its Snapdragon 810 SoC, which is a significant performance improvement. The 10 is slightly faster than the Galaxy S7 Edge in CPU workloads, and as expected, performance is nearly identical to the LG G5. We’re also seeing more than double the performance of the HTC One M8 for those thinking of upgrading from a two-year-old Snapdragon 801 device.
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