The first thing you notice when you pickup the HTC 10 is how good HTC is at industrial design. The sand blasted aluminium is soft and grippy in the hand. The phone feels incredibly solid with a beautifully executed chamfered edges.
The screen is protected with Gorilla Glass 3 and the "home button" is a matt finger print sensor, that work quickly and reliably every single time.
The buttons are solid (no wobble) and are extremely tactile. Clicking them is very satisfying.
The phone is definitely beautiful and a few people asked me what the device was. People rarely ask about smarpthone models I test ( since most look very similar.)
IP53 water resistance means the phone would likely survive being used in the rain (but don't try to submerge it).
The screen is a beautiful 5.2 inch super LCD 5 (QHD) screen with 565 PPI. Blacks on LCD screens aren't as dark as on AMOLED or SuperAmoLED) screens, but the HTC 10 screen has excellent color reproduction and is visible in all but the brightest sunlight conditions.
The capacitive buttons below the screen mean you are not losing any valuable real estate for virtual buttons. A definite plus.
The phone includes its signature BoomSound tweaks and hardware. The quality built in DAC (Digital Audio Converter) supports 24 bit high resolution (hi res) audio. Older HTC devices had 2 front facing speakers while the HTC 10 has a tweeter on the top and a woofer on the bottom. This is one of the drawbacks of this phone. The older HTC phones were amazing when consuming content or playing games because of the front facing speakers. The HTC 10 is good but not as good as its older siblings. BoomSound support Dolby audio and now works system wide (when using the built in speakers or headphones - not available via bluetooth headphones).
Hardware spec dump:
- Snapdragon 820
- 4GB RAM
- Adreno 530 GPU
- 32 GB if internal storage, expandable
- WIFI 802.11ac
- Bluetooth 4.2
- 3000 mAh battery
Software
Sense is tightly built into their version of android and it is though even finding the version installed.
HTC has tried to fight bloat and has not double installed apps. As an example the default calendar was Google Calendar while the camera app is the HTC one. HTC has tried to choose the best app for each function. Most HTC created apps have adopted Material design which means apps feel unified (between the Google ones and the HTC Ones). This is a very good thing to improve consistency.
My test version came from Bell and had bundled Bell apps that did were not material design and could not be uninstalled.
HTC bundles an app called Boost+ which helps eliminate bloat. Until using the HTC device, I had to install a third party app to perform this clean-up.
Usability
The first thing you will notice is how responsive the device is when scrolling a long list of apps (100+ apps on my test device). It's refreshing to see that even with the HTC skin, responsiveness doesn't seem to suffer.
I installed and tested these 5 demanding Android games for testing :
- Modern Combat 5: Blackout
- Asphalt 8: Airborne
- Real Racing 3
- N.O.V.A 3 Freedom Edition
- Dead Trigger 2
All of the above games opened quickly and ran smoothly. After playing these games for 10-15 minutes, the phone becomes warm but nothing too dramatic.
HTC Connect is included again and works relatively well. It allows you to stream on device content to various devices from Chromecast to Miracast and Bluetooth. The most surprising inclusion is the ability to stream to Apple Airplay devices (to AirPlay speakers and AppleTV).
The device supports lock-screen gestures (such as launching the camera from an off screen).
I've been testing the HTC 10 for 2.5 weeks now (while at home and while travelling for business). I loaded our corporate Mobile Device Management framework and used it as my main work smartphone during this time.