HTC 10 Hardware
The HTC 10 represents a return to the manufacturer's design roots. An aluminum unibody with familiar angles and curves, accented by a deep chamfer circling the back, make up a modern interpretation of a classic smartphone design. Aside from the prominent branding on the back, there's a ton of HTC design DNA here. Everything from the contrast between the lustrous machined trim and the softer matte back, to the trademark antenna bands, is pure HTC.
A modern interpretation of a classic smartphone design — An M7 on steroids.
Veterans of the brand might recognize it as a refined, souped-up version of the company's past few flagships. Essentially, it has the look of an M7 on steroids.
It's also HTC's most ergonomic and easy-to-hold phone in recent years, and all without sacrificing the premium design elements we've come to expect. The curved back is a comfortable fit for the hand, while that enormous chamfer — combined with the flat, angled side walls — ensures a steady grip.
The HTC 10 isn't the thinnest or lightest handset you'll come across. (Nor, with an enormous metal enclosure, would you expect it to be.) That's not a bad thing — it's easy to overstate the value of both properties. What's more important is a phone which feels sturdy and well-built, and that's exactly what's conveyed by the HTC 10's somewhat chunky unibody and clean, uncluttered glass front. Its overall vibe is more industrial than the sleek, glassy Samsung Galaxy S7, but there's nothing at all wrong with that.
The rear chamfer shimmers as the HTC 10 rotates through light.
The main decorative feature — that oversized chamfer — may be a little polarizing. But there's no denying it gives the HTC 10 a necessary visual differentiator in an incredibly crowded field. And when combined with the darker antenna band in the carbon gray model we've been using, it works. On the gold and silver models, it's more pronounced — the chamfer is far more reflective, and makes the phone appear to shimmer as it tilts through different angles of light.
The HTC 10's rear camera — a 12-megapixel "Ultrapixel 2" shooter which we'll discuss in greater detail later — protrudes ever so slightly through the metal back, but not enough to cause any real issues in day-to-day use. (In fact, the slight camera bump means the phone doesn't wobble quite so much when placed on a flat surface.)
Up top, that extravagant metal design is broken up by two engineering necessities — a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a plastic section for antenna reception. It's easy to ignore on the dark gray model, but stands out a little more in the gold and silver versions.
Meanwhile, you're looking at a fairly standard port and button arrangement — a textured power key and smooth volume rocker on the right edge, below the nano-SIM slot, and a microSD tray over on the left. Down below you'll find a USB Type-C cable (supporting USB 3.1 Gen1, which means faster data transfer speeds) alongside one of the HTC 10's two loudspeakers.
HTC once again brings some serious audio credentials to the table.
Unlike its past few flagships, HTC's latest does away with the front-facing stereo speakers that had become a staple of the "M" series. Instead there's a new "BoomSound Hi-Fi" setup consisting of one front-facing tweeter (in the earpiece) and a bottom-facing woofer, each with its own amp, and Dolby lending its expertise on the processing end. Although it functions differently from earlier BoomSound implementations, the results are still impressive — powerful bass, and more volume than you're likely to ever need without any noticeable loss in clarity.
There is one trade-off, however. Because you've got one speaker facing towards you and another pointing downwards, the HTC 10's output is prone to more distortion when holding the phone in-hand, mainly due to the woofer being so close to your palm or index finger. The effect is less noticeable if the phone is lying flat — as it may well be if you're playing music.
Of course the phone's built-in speakers aren't your only option for music playback. HTC has some serious power behind its headphone port too, with a dedicated amp capable of delivering an output level of 1V, according to the company's own numbers. And using wired studio headphones, the difference is clear: HTC's pushing more power than Android rivals like the Galaxy S7.
The company is also keen to highlight the HTC 10's status as a high-definition audio certified device, with support for 24-bit audio and HD audio earphones bundled in the box in some countries. (Not including the United States, unfortunately.) It' s a neat addition sure to appeal to audiophiles, if not those of us mainly playing compressed music from streaming services.
Nevertheless, phone audio is important — it's where many of us listen to music the most. So it's great to see HTC continuing to pay close attention to audio hardware, even though the days of front-facing speakers seem to have passed.
The display is equally important, of course. It's a 5.2-inch SuperLCD5 panel at Quad HD resolution, just as we'd expect from a modern Android flagship. Generally speaking it's a good-looking screen, with vivid colors and ample brightness without appearing excessively over-saturated. (There's an optional sRGB mode in Display Settings for colorspace purists.) Off-angle visibility is decent too, with only slight color shifting noticeable on our unit at wider angles.
Sadly, wonky auto-brightness and less than spectacular sunlight visibility conspire to make the HTC 10 a little challenging to use in brighter conditions. Like a handful of other phones, including most of Samsung's high-profile models, the HTC 10 has a display overdrive mode that over-brightens the screen when very bright ambient light is detected. The problem is this doesn't kick in anywhere near as consistently as we'd like to see. Furthermore, the 10's screen appears more reflective than Samsung's latest round of SuperAMOLEDs, so it's hobbled from the outset.
It's possible some of these nagging issues with auto-brightness will be addressed in a software update. Even so, the HTC 10 is clearly a step behind the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6s in outdoor visibility.
But there's more going on around the front than just the screen. The HTC 10 has a unique new button arrangement built around the capacitive fingerprint scanner, which doubles as your home key. On either side you've got capacitive back and recent apps keys which illuminate, Samsung-style, for a couple of seconds when pressed.
In fact the similarity to Samsung's way of doing things makes the HTC button setup particularly vexing if you're coming from a Galaxy phone, as the button order is reversed. It's not a hugething, but it's definitely a thing.
HTC nails it once again, with an excellent fingerprint security setup.
The fingerprint scanner itself is among the best we've used on an Android phone. Setup is quick and painless, as is using your fingerprint to instantly power on and unlock the phone. Apple's Touch ID is faster, sure. But we're talking tiny fractions of a second here. We've also noticed fewer fingerprint-related failures in day-to-day use on the HTC 10, compared to Samsung's sensor on the GS7.
Powering this whole assembly is a collection of parts fit for any high-end smartphone. Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 820 chip lurks within, paired with a hefty 4GB of RAM and 32 or 64GB of storage, with microSD expandability. Unlike many rivals, HTC supports Android 6.0's Adoptable Storage (also known as Flex Storage), letting you directly tag your SD storage onto your internal memory and use it for just about anything. (It's possible to find apps that can't save to it, but that's the exception, not the rule.)
Rounding off the spec sheet. there's a 3,000mAh fixed internal battery, along with support for Qualcomm QuickCharge 3.0. Unsurprisingly, the HTC 10 also appears to be backwards compatible with QuickCharge 2 in the handful of older chargers we tried.
As a whole then, the HTC 10 is an impressive hardware package — the latest 2016 internals brought together in a beautiful unibody enclosure, with a high-end audio setup, a decent screen and convenient fingerprint security.
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