HTC 10 - Sculpted by Light

The world of technology is a merciless place, filled with fierce competition and lack of compassion for those who fall behind. No one knows that better than HTC, a company trying to stay relevant in the increasingly diverse smartphone market. Although they’ve had some issues in the past, 2016 is turning out to be a great year for HTC. Besides making Vive, an Oculus Rift competitor, they’ve just showcased a new flagship called HTC 10. Can it keep up with other devices in its class? Let’s find out!

HTC’s designers were among the first ones to use unibody design, putting their phones way ahead of competition. Instead of creating something flashy with a “look at me attitude”, HTC’s devices took a more gentle approach by incorporating classic elements with modern materials. Users were delighted by this simple sophistication because the end product was a wonderfully crafted smartphone. HTC 10 uses that recipe to induce the same feeling we got when we first picked up a unibody smartphone. Clean metallic design combined with chamfered edges provides users with confidence when handling the phone and at the same time maintains HTC’s classic design ethos. With dimensions of 145.9 x 71.9 x 9 mm and weighing 161 grams, HTC 10 isn’t cumbersome or unwieldy for the vast majority of users.

Following the trend of keeping screen size below five-and-a-half inches, HTC fitted a 5.2-inch Super LCD5 panel. Some users prefer punchy colours while others look for a more authentic array. Nonetheless, with 1440 x 2560 pixels totalling 565ppi density, HTC 10 showcases incredible detail in all types of content.

Most flagships nowadays are powered by some form of Qualcomm chipset. With Snapdragon 820 under the bonnet, HTC 10 joins the crowd, but that isn’t a bad thing. Unlike last year’s overheating Snapdragon 810, the new generation of chips has shown incredible potential and performance. Combined with Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of RAM, performance isn’t really an area that needs our attention. More important is the fact that HTC decided to clean up Sense UI and bring it closer to stock Android. We’ve seen a couple of companies do this, making us wonder about the reason behind it. Don’t worry though, BlinkFeed is still present and waiting to aggregate your favourite news in one place. Internal memory comes in at 32 or 64 gigabytes and can be expanded via a microSD card.

Imaging is handled by a 12-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front camera. You might be wondering where all the pixel count went, but don’t forget about HTC’s nifty UltraPixel technology. By having bigger pixels, more light is allowed in thereby improving low-light performance. Sample photos show that there is a lot to be excited about as the level of detail is exemplary.

Facing a very tough crowd, HTC decided to take its latest flagship back to basics and perfect each individual element and that’s enough in our book.