Ars HTC 10 review: “HTC builds the best Android flagship of 2016”

The HTC 10 takes the HTC design formula and distills it down to its purest form. There’s nothing but excellent smartphone here – no silly gimmicks or odd design decisions. Even the software was treated rather well, with any curiosities relegated to optional parts of the OS that can be turned off or replaced.

HTC really seems to have taken the feedback from the One M9 to heart. The design is much more compact, with less bezel dead space dedicated to speakers and an HTC logo. The SoC is improved by dumping one of the first and hottest Snapdragon 810 implementations for the cooler, faster 820. The ugly side ridge design of the M9 is gone. The camera is a lot better, too, particularly when it comes to low light.

I have a soft spot for HTC, but with Nexus phones being the Android enthusiasts’ phones, and with Samsung taking everything else, it’s going to be hard for them to sit somewhere in the middle. People who buy Samsung aren’t going to suddenly buy an HTC, and toned-down Sense or no, this is still not Android-proper, so updates will be a mess (it’s already running outdated software), so enthusiasts won’t really be enticed either.

I’m not really sure where HTC’s smartphone business is going.

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