With the introduction of the HTC 10, it’s very obvious that the Taiwanese giant is trying to reclaim its position in the smartphone market, but did it succeed?
HTC has dropped the M from its naming process in a move to separate itself from its previous generation devices, and was able deliver a well built smartphone (as usual) with an enhanced software experience and performance.
Let’s start with the hardware
This is the part where HTC keeps on excelling, and this year it’s no different. The HTC 10 continues its tradition with the all metallic unibody and introduces a new look with a brushed aluminum and mirrored chamfered edges. The 10 feels great in hand, comfortable to hold and has a good grip. Nevertheless, I do feel that this new design won’t be appealing to everyone.
Unlike its predecessors, the front panel is redesigned and is now a single piece of glass across the device which houses a 5.2-inch quad HD 2560 x 1440-pixel LCD panel. There are two capacitive buttons sitting next to the fingerprint scanner, which doubles as a home button. The display colors aren’t as vibrant as on an AMOLED display, but HTC does a great job in reproducing vivid color profiles that delivers more saturation than most LCD display.
Towards the center of the device (top) you’ll find the 3.5mm headphone jack, which is now capable of producing 16-bit to 24-bit audio quality.
On the right side (where all the buttons are located) you’ll find the volume rocker and the power button underneath it with a textured feel to avoid confusion while clicking.
The bottom houses a Quick Charge 3.0-ready USB-C charging port and the much beloved BoomSound speakers. Yes, they are back, HTC’s signature BoomSound speakers return but with a slight redesign, where a miniature tweeter is now located on the front of the device and a subwoofer at the bottom.
The 10 has plenty of volume with great audio quality through the new speakers, HTC has done a really good job here, but the real enjoyment comes with its pair of bundled Hi-Res headphone that deliver a superb experience with its support for 24-bit Hi-Res audio tracks and Dolby Audio.
Performance & Software
One of the many new approaches HTC took this year is on the software front. HTC Sense 8 now looks more like stock Android, and the company said it worked with with Google to achieve the material design feel and reduce the number of duplicate apps like HTC’s gallery app which is now combined with Google Photos.
Bundled with the Snapdragon 820 and 4GB of RAM, Sense 8 works flawlessly. Apps launch and load instantaneously; multitasking is a perfect and the gaming experience is very smooth. The only downside is that on some occasions, when using heavy games, the device became hot and uncomfortable to use.
Other than that, there are a couple of HTC apps like Boost+, which clears memory and works on improving your gaming experience.
HTC also introduced its freestyle themes which lets you create some new and unusual home screens thanks to its free-moving design. Users can place stickers anywhere on the home screen, allowing them to break free from Android’s traditional grid layout. The Freestyle Layout takes some getting used to for sure.
When it comes to battery life, the HTC 10’s 3,000mAh battery lasted around 12 hours in continuous usage, and its USB-C Quick Charge 3.0 port certainly made things easier when it came to charging. The HTC 10 can reach 50% charge in just half an hour. But i surely didn’t get the “up to 2-days” that HTC claimed it would provide.
Blinkfeed — the news and social feed aggregator — sits to the left of the home screen as usual, and with the new Sense 8, the design has changed to a more picture-based layout.
Camera
HTC phones have had a troubled camera history. The UltraPixel technology — while good on paper — proved to produce unremarkable photos. In a smartphone generation where cameras have become critical in purchase decisions, HTC has time and again staggered behind, despite boasting otherwise superior overall phone specs than the competition.
How does the HTC 10 perform? In a nutshell, significant improvement over the past, but not quite there yet.
The camera on the HTC 10 is certainly the best camera that HTC has ever produced. It is a 12 UltraPixel-2 camera with 1.55 micron pixels — kinda like the one on the Nexus 6P. HTC has also incorporated an optical image stabilisation to its front camera, a first in the smartphone industry.
What’s good about the camera mostly sits in the friendly software. There are a few shooting modes — accessible on the left side of the screen — that give you access to Pro mode, panorama, hyper-lapse, Zoe, and slow motion. HDR and flash can be switched on and off without going through any other menu. Settings for each give you finer granularity on image dimensions, grids, and other things.
The Pro mode is pretty good, and gives you control over focus, white balance, exposure compensation, ISO and shutter speed. You can quickly adjust the settings with the sliders for that perfect shot. If you’re using auto-focus, you’d notice that it’s incredibly fast thanks to the laser-focus technology. This same technology can also be problematic; the phone keeps warning you that the laser module is blocked, and often the camera struggles to focus when you choose your own focus point.
Photos taken are a mixed bag, although certainly better than previous HTC phones. Overall, the photos are decent, but flat in colour. This gives the user more flexibility for the editing, but as far as most people are concerned, photos lack a punch from the get-go. Colour saturation is a personal preference; I like some punch in the colours, but not the extreme end found on the Galaxy S7. HTC 10’s photos are a tad too flat in my opinion.
The front-facing camera is a wide-angle selfie, and it does a great job even though I am not truly fond of ridiculously long arms from the wide-angle distortion (found on most phones these days). The image stabilisation doesn’t really do much to be honest.
What threw me off though is the low-light performance. The UltraPixels have a tendency to blow light sources out of whack, and it gets frustrating sometimes when you have to almost always manually adjust the exposure compensation. It just detracts from the good user experience, especially if you’re at a birthday party with candles everywhere.
Conclusion
The HTC 10 is a huge improvement on last year’s M9 in every single aspect. The 10 is a superb and promising smartphone, easily matching all the other competing flagships. It has a gorgeous screen, BoomSound speakers and Hi-res audio support, and the Freestyle homepage gives Android a fresh new look. The camera is still a let-down, but not as bad as the previous models.
So, did HTC make its comeback? They did take a very good first step towards it, but the phone still does not offer anything groundbreaking that surpasses the rest. It’s not the best phone for 2016, but it’s not far from it either.
The HTC 10 is now available in the market and is priced at AED 2399.
