However, the smartphone business has been a cause of concern for the company at times and according to the latest reports, everything is still not going well. Despite all this, HTC continues to launch its smartphones. Just about two months ago, HTC has launched not one or two but seven new smartphones in India.
Today we will be reviewing the company’s new flagship smartphone, the HTC 10. Unlike LG and Samsung, HTC has launched its flagship smartphone a little later in the year instead of launching it at the beginning of the year. Will this strategy of HTC work in making the phone a success? Our first impressions of the phone gave us a good experience and now it is time for this phone to go through our review process. Today we will know what are the advantages and disadvantages of this phone.
Design and texture
Talking about the design of HTC 10, this phone is made from a single block of aluminum and this phone feels like a premium smartphone. The finish of the phone is smooth, which does not make it very comfortable to hold. Due to lack of good grip, there may be a problem in using the smartphone with one hand. This HTC phone has wide chamfered edges on the rear which look beautiful when light falls on it. We noticed that when we held the phone in hand, we felt a little sharpness on the edges of the display.
The HTC 10 has a Quad HD Super LCD 5 panel with a resolution of 5.2 inches (1440×2560). Gorilla Glass is provided for screen protection. We really liked the curved display on the edges of the phone. The earpiece and the capacitive home button feel like a layer of liquid on a stone. The quality of the display given in the phone is quite good and it gives good color reproduction and accurate touch response. Users get the option to choose ‘Vivid’ or ‘sRGB’ color profile. The phone has backlit navigation buttons on both sides of the home button. The phone also has a fingerprint sensor.
The HTC 10 has a separate tray for a microSD card (up to 2 TB) and a SIM card. The volume and power buttons are good and are very easy to operate. The phone has a 3.5 headphone socket at the top and a USB Type-C port and speaker at the bottom. The Type-C port in the HTC 10 supports USB 3.1 Gen 1 speed, which allows data to be transferred quickly. This feature can be enabled by going into the Settings app.
The phone has a 12 UltraPixel 2 camera, laser autofocus sensor and dual tone LED flash on the rear. The camera lens is slightly raised on the rear but a metal ring has been provided to protect it.
The phone we received for review did not come with any accessories. You can expect to find a data cable, a Quick Charge 3.0-supported adapter, and a headset in the box that comes with the phone.
Specifications and Features
Talking about power, the HTC 10 has a lot to offer. The smartphone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. With these powerful specifications, the phone gave us good results in benchmarking tests. The phone also has features like Category 9 LTE speed (supports most Indian 4G bands), Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, dual-band Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, USB OTG and GPS. The phone does not have FM radio. Apart from this, the phone comes with reverse charging, which also works as a power bank. This option will be visible when you plug in a USB device to the phone.
HTC Sense UI is given on top of Android Marshmallow. The company has not included many of its own apps like Gallery, Music in the phone due to many apps of Google, due to which its interface looks very clear and easy. Blinkfeed can still be seen by swiping right on the home screen, but if you do not use it then it can be turned off. With this you get news snippets from Twitter and News Republic app, but you can sync Calendar, Google+, LinkedIn and about restaurants around you.
You can change the screen layout from ‘Classic’ to ‘Freestyle’ by long pressing on the homescreen. This changes the entire theme of the phone (depending on your choice) and most of the icons look like stickers. You can either link these stickers to apps or use them for general decoration.
With the Theme app, you can change the look of your phone in one go or choose different icon sets, wallpapers, sounds and fonts. The Boost+ app automatically removes junk files to free up storage. Additionally, you can lock apps with fingerprint, uninstall apps and optimize games to get better battery life.
The Settings app has a tool that lets you import data from your old Android or iPhone.
Performance
We hardly noticed any issues with the HTC 10 smartphone during our review process. The call quality is excellent and the earpiece delivers crystal clear audio. The phone does not heat up during normal use but it does get a little annoying when using the camera.
Google’s Photos app is used to save photos. The phone has the Play Music app for audio. The HTC 10 also has BoomSound which is powered by Dolby Audio. The phone has a dual-speaker setup and both have an amplifier but the bottom speaker projects sound downwards instead of towards you. The phone has a good sound experience but it doesn’t leave the same impact as two stereo speakers.
BoomSound lets you toggle between Theatre and Music modes when using the loudspeaker, but this option changes when you plug in headphones.
The camera performance has been a problem with HTC flagship smartphones but now we can say that HTC has fixed this problem. Though it is still not the best, it is much better than before. HTC is still sticking to its UltraPixel technology and this HTC 10 has the 2.0 version. This phone has a 12MP resolution camera with large 1.55um size pixels. The camera is equipped with a large f/1.8 aperture, OIS and laser autofocus. This combination results in images that are detail- and noise-free. Apart from that, images are captured with very accurate colours.
In daylight, landscape shots are good but a bit blurry. Macro shots show a slight distortion when cropped but look fine in general. Photos are good even in low light and are detailed even in dark areas.
The phone’s camera app is clean and works pretty fast. The app has basic controls on the right and a menu to switch between different shooting modes on the left. The flash and auto HDR toggles are easy to use. Apart from the standard shooting modes, the app also has a Zoe camera that can record stills and a few seconds of video. There are also panoramic and pro modes.
It is easy to record videos at 4K resolution with the camera on the phone. Along with this, you can also toggle audio recording to 24-bit high-resolution. The phone can record both hyperlapse and slow-motion videos which look great.
The 5-megapixel front camera on the phone isn’t great but with its large pixels (1.34um) and large aperture of f/1.8, it can take some decent selfies.
battery life
The 3000mAh battery on the HTC 10 lasted 8 hours and 23 minutes in our video loop test, which is a bit disappointing. However, with normal use, we were able to use the HTC 10 for a full day on a single charge. The HTC 10 supports Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 technology and the phone charges up to 50 percent in just 30 minutes.
Our verdict
The HTC 10 has been launched at a price of Rs 52,990, which puts it in the flagship category along with the Samsung Galaxy S7 (Review) and the LG G5 (Review). At such a high price, the HTC 10 is expected to be a perfect phone and the phone lives up to expectations in some aspects but disappoints in some areas. But the question arises, is it worth spending so much money on a device when you can get a similar phone with similar features and specifications for half the price? The OnePlus 3 (Review) is a great low-cost flagship launched this year and offers premium level performance. Apart from this, this phone is available at a price that most people can afford.
If we talk about HTC 10 smartphone, then it is a beautiful and well-built phone which has the most powerful components available in the market. The phone has a camera with great performance. Talking about the software, HTC has done a great job. HTC’s crazy fans will definitely buy this phone but for other people it may be a bit difficult to buy this phone. Samsung Galaxy S7 dominates the Android flagship smartphone market and there are many other phones which offer better performance at a lower price.
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