HTC 10 review

However, the smartphone business has sometimes been a cause of great concern for the company and according to the latest news, everything is still not going well. Despite all this, HTC is continuously launching its smartphones. Just about two months ago, HTC launched not one or two but seven new smartphones in India.

Today we will review the company’s new flagship smartphone HTC 10. Unlike LG and Samsung, HTC has launched its flagship smartphone a little late instead of launching it at the beginning of the year. Will this strategy of HTC work in making the phone successful? We had a good experience with our first impressions of the phone and now it’s 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 construction
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 due to which its grip is not very comfortable. Due to lack of good grip, there can be problem in using the smartphone with one hand. This HTC phone has wide chamfered edges on the rear which look beautiful when the light falls on it. We noticed that when holding the phone in hand, there is a slight sharpness at the edges of the display.

The HTC 10 features a 5.2-inch (1440×2560) resolution Quad HD Super LCD 5 panel. Gorilla Glass has been provided for screen protection. We particularly liked the curved display at the edges of the Phonon. The earpiece and capacitive home button look like a layer of liquid over a stone. The quality of the display given in the phone is very good and it provides good color reproduction and accurate touch response. Users get the option to choose ‘Vivid’ or ‘sRGB’ color profiles. The phone has backlit navigation buttons on either side of the home button. The phone also has a fingerprint sensor.

The HTC 10 has separate trays for a microSD card (up to 2 TB) and a SIM card. The volume and power buttons are well placed and 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 provided in HTC 10 supports USB 3.1 Gen 1 speed, so that data can be transferred faster. This feature can be enabled by going to the Settings app.

There is a 12 ultrapixel 2 camera, laser autofocus sensor and dual tone LED flash on the rear of the phone. The camera lens is slightly raised on the rear but a metal ring is provided to protect it.

No accessories were sent with the phone we received for review. In the box that comes with purchasing the phone, you are expected to get a data cable, an adapter with Quick Charge 3.0 support and a headset.

Specifications and features
Talking about power, HTC 10 has a lot of power. This smartphone has Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor, 4 GB RAM and 32 GB storage. With this powerful specification, we got good figures in benchmarking tests from the phone. Apart from this, the phone 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, this phone comes with reverse charging so that it also works like a power bank. This option will appear when you plug a USB device into the phone.

HTC Sense UI is given on top of Android Marshmallow. Due to many Google apps, the company has not provided many of its own apps like Gallery, Music in the phone, due to which its interface looks quite clear and easy. BlinkFeed can still be accessed by swiping right on the homescreen, but can be turned off if you don’t use it. This gives you news snippets from Twitter and the News Republic app, but you can also sync calendars, Google+, LinkedIn, and information about restaurants near 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 makes most of the icons look like stickers. You can either link these stickers to the app or simply use them for decoration.

With the Themes app, you can change the look of your phone all at once or choose from different icon sets, wallpapers, sounds and fonts. Boost+ automatically removes junk files to free up app storage. Additionally, you can lock apps with fingerprint, uninstall apps, and even optimize games to get better battery life.

There’s a tool in the Settings app that lets you import data from your old Android or iPhone.

performance
We hardly encountered any issues with the HTC 10 smartphone during our review process. The call quality on the phone is excellent and the earpiece provides crystal clear audio. The phone does not get hot during normal use but when using the camera the phone gets hot which causes some discomfort.

Google’s Photos app is used to save photos. The phone has a Play Music app for audio. The HTC 10 also features BoomSound, powered by Dolby Audio. The phone has a dual-speaker setup and both have an amplifier but the bottom speaker delivers sound downwards instead of towards you. The phone has a good sound experience but it does not leave the same impact as two stereo speakers.

BoomSound lets you toggle between theater and music modes when using the loudspeaker, but this option changes when you plug in headphones.

The lack of camera performance in HTC’s flagship smartphones has been one of the reasons but now we can say that HTC has solved this problem. However, it is still not the best but much better than before. HTC still sticks to its UltraPixel technology and version 2.0 has been given in this HTC 10. This phone has a 12 megapixel resolution camera with large 1.55um size pixels. The camera is equipped with a large F/1.8 aperture, OIS and laser autofocus. With this combination the photos come out detailed and noise-free. Apart from this, photos are captured with extremely accurate colors.

In daylight, landscape shots are good but a bit grainy. There is a slight lack of detail when cropping the macro shots but when viewed normally they look fine. Pictures are good even in low light and are detailed even in dark areas.

The phone’s camera app is clear and works quite fast. The app has basic controls on the right and a menu to switch to different shooting modes on the left. The flash and auto HDR toggle are easy to use. Apart from the standard shooting modes, the app also has a Zoe camera that lets you record stills and short seconds of video. Along with this, there are also panorama and pro modes.

It is easy to record videos at 4K resolution with the camera provided in the phone. Along with this, audio recording can also be toggled 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 is not very good but with the large pixel (1.34um) and large aperture F/1.8, some good selfies can be taken.

battery life
The 3000 mAh battery provided in HTC 10 lasted 8 hours 23 minutes in our video loop test, which is a bit disappointing. However, under normal usage, we were able to use the HTC 10 for a full day on a single charge. HTC 10 supports Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 technology and the phone charges up to 50 percent in just 30 minutes.

our decision
The HTC 10 has been launched with a price tag of Rs 52,990, which puts it in the flagship category along with the Samsung Galaxy S7 (Review) and the LG G5 (Review). With such a high price, the HTC 10 is expected to be a perfect phone and the phone lives up to expectations in some cases but disappoints in others. But now the question arises that is it right to spend so much money on such a device when a similar phone with the same features and specifications can be found at half its price? OnePlus 3 (Review) is a great low-cost flagship to be launched this year and this phone 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 superbly designed phone which has the most powerful components available in the market. The phone has a camera with great performance. Talking about software, HTC has done an excellent job. Crazy fans of HTC will definitely buy this phone but for other people it may be a little difficult to buy this phone. The Samsung Galaxy S7 dominates the Android flagship smartphone market and there are many other phones that offer better performance at a lower price.