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an HTC, and toned-down Sense or no, this is still not Android-proper, so updates will be a mess (it’s already running outdated software), so enthusiasts won’t really be enticed either.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.
As far as I can tell, they don’t mention battery life at all in this review. WTF? There’s also no mention that the phone is not water resistant, or that the phone doesn’t support wireless charging.
As for the phone itself, you can buy one unlocked in the US, so that almost makes up for the two things mentioned above that it lacks compared to the S7
There’s a pair of graphs from their battery tests – the HTC 10 scores below average on both the web browsing test WebGL tests.
It’s immediately before the camera section.
They don’t have to. I’ve never yet seen an Android phone with battery life worth crap.
I saw the images for the HTC 10 and the first thing I noticed was it seemed to have gone back to the One M7 appearance (minus speakers on the front). I loved my M7. I bought one for both Verizon and TMobile and still have them (somewhere).
It is still my favorite phone, though after the awful looking M8 and M9 I ended up going over to LG (G3, G4, V10). The HTC 10 is almost tempting enough to jump back, however I fear the speakers won’t be as good on the ends instead of the front like they moved them. Sadly.
I’ll wait and see how they go. I will probably buy one on Swappa after the price comes down a bit. If they hold up after being out a few months.
I _wish_ I could buy an HTC One M7 scaled up like the LG V10. I’d love that phone with a larger size.
The LGs have been really good for me, though I do have some random hangs with the V10 (which are starting to get really annoying and frustrating). In fact, the LG G3 and up that I’ve had are the first phone that worked well enough for 90%+ of what i wanted to do with the phone that I never rooted them. They are actually the very first phones I’ve not rooted.
Anyway, kudos to HTC for appearing to _FINALLY_ hear their customers about the annoying front logo wasted space and ugly M8 and M9 designs. The 10 looks really really nice. Can’t wait to go to a wireless store and play with one.
Edited 2016-04-15 23:21 UTC
One speaker is on the front, at the top, integrated into the ear piece and tubed for higher frequencies. The other is on the bottom, tuned for lower frequencies. You still get stereo sound, but with (supposedly) better acoustics.
for stereo, don’t you need the speakers left and right and both on the same frequencies?
Turn the phone to landscape and the speakers are on the left and right.
According to the Ars and Anandtech hands-on testing, it gives stereo sound and sounds good. No idea how it compares to the Boomsound speakers on previous models, though.
It’ll be interesting to bring my M7 and play some music side by side to compare. I might do that when I go check it out at a store.
The M7 was great for its day. It’s still a really nice phone. I love playing with it still. I basically used it as a music player because it sounded pretty decent. Now my little daughter uses it as a phone. Still going strong.
If one speaker is tuned for higher frequencies and the other for lower ones, then yeah, you will get stereo, but it’ll be unbalanced.
Who cares about the speakers? Are they good enough to hear the ringer? Yes? Well then, please use headphones to listen to music and video: at $5 and above they provide vastly better audio than any cellphone built-in speaker, while respecting the right of the people around to enjoy some peace.
People blaring music from their phones in public areas should be struck by lightning, or something more painful.
Ok, mister grouch, there are other places where I play music on my phone other than in public. Is it so terrible that I play it in the privacy of my own home for quick videos without slapping on headphones? Kind of cheaper to rely on the phone than installing a whole house sonos set up.
I find phone speakers so bad that I bought a cheap Bluetooth speaker for that very purpose. Compression and all, it still sounds better than any phone speakers I’ve heard.
And I don’t regret it. I’m coming from a Nexus 4, which was great except the lousy camera and the poor sound quality both through the earpiece and the headphone jack (oh, and the flimsy glass body, but then). The Samsung also has a far better screen, but i don’t really care: it’s still tiny, and thus not really all that useful. It’s not as if I can judge my photos on it. I still need my 27″.
But I’m happy that the new HTC is a good alternative. The last few years, they’ve suffered from bad camera hardware and software, battery life, etc., but with these problems sorted, it’s a lot easier to choose a phone based on other preferences. Whatever you buy, among the top phones, you can be safe that it’s one of the best options, Samsung, HTC, LG, Apple, or (probably) Sony.
But I’d switch in a second if there were a Nexus device (you know the ones that always get the latest Android) if they’d sell one with an SD Card Slot and a Stylus.
I’ll settle for my Note4 instead, and now that I’ve got a GearVR and Gear S, no reason really to switch to anything else, including HTC phones.
Though I did pre-order the HTC Vive.
The pre-sales on their site are coming with an unlockable boot loader.
That alone is tempting to get this phone over an S7 Edge.
Then again the international version of the S7 Edge is also unlocked.
“Non-removable Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery”.
I’ll Pass.
Don’t know about you guys, but I’d expect something that costs $500+ to last me more than just 1 year.
What phone besides a Nexus variant IS running the latest version of Android? Only a precious few, sad to say, and that is the killer feature of Android for me. The HTC 10 looks really nice, I would consider it in another world. I don’t need a phone that makes waffles or X-Ray’s packages or some other “killer feature” that reviewers and tech bloggers just have to have or they will brand a new device as “boring”. But timely updates are simply a must. After enjoying same-day updates on my iPhones for the past 8 years, I admit I am spoiled in this regard, but it is the one feature that I simply will not give up, even for a great-looking phone such as the HTC 10.
Agreed, for the security implications even if not the features. Timely updates, in today’s world, are a necessity not a luxury.
Belive it or not, we do exist.
My whole family own M8’s.
A lot of my friends own Samsungs (e.g. S5).
Many of my friends are impressed with my M8.
It’s a good phone, believe it or not, many of my Samsung friends think it’s a better phone than what they have. I kid you not. I know that sounds absolutely impossible, but for whatever reason, that’s what they say.
Is my phone running the version of Android that came out last week? No. But oddly enough, most of may Samsung friends are behind the version I’m currently running, which is 6.0. And of course those older Samsung users are struggling because their very expensive phone is becomimg obsolete. With that said, this is the “norm” for pretty much all Android phones. They tend to follow a 2-3 year life cycle at the max.
I’ve got my upgrade cycle timed with the “one cent” purchase time that happens annually, so I get the latest and greatest HTC for one penny. It means a two year contract with my provider…. I guess I don’t switch providers every 6 mos. like the majority of the people here though.
So laugh at me. Flame me… Give your worst. I like my HTC and wouldn’t trade it for a Samsung or Nexus or whatever. But at the same time I don’t spend my time telling my friends that they are horrible people for buying a Samsung, etc. They seem happy too. Apart from the proprietary Samsung Pay, I don’t see any feature they have that my phone can’t do.
Updates will be a mess? HTC partnered with Google to slim down Sense and also removed some HTC apps to replace them with Google ones for the expressed reason of faster updates.
What outdated software does the HTC 10 have?
Edited 2016-04-19 14:25 UTC