HTC needed to do something different this year. Something special, even. To compete with the orher out there, HTC's new phone had to be more than just another metal slab. The difference, I'm hoping, will be audible. I spent a bit of time with the HTC 10, and it may be the ideal phone for music lovers.
The HTC 10's body is deceptive. At 5.7 by 2.83 by 0.35 and 159-gms, it feels larger and more solid. The back is very domed—the phone rocks on a table—and it's marked by two of the biggest chamfers you've ever seen: Ultrachamfers. Along with the big HTC logo, it's clear that the phone won't be mistaken for a rival smartphone, face down at least.
The front has a 5.3-inch, 2,560-by-1,440 Super LCD 5 screen. There's a physical home button/fingerprint scanner below the screen. On the side, the power button is ridged like it was on the HTC One A9, which makes it easy to find with your finger. Inside, there's a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, along with 4GB of RAM. There's a real USB-C jack on the bottom, and the phone supports Quickcharge 3.0 (although not wireless charging.)
HTC promises great cameras, but everyone promises great cameras—the truth will, as always, be in the testing. The main camera is a 12-megapixel unit with 1.55-micron pixels and optical image stabilization, which HTC says gives great low-light performance. On the front, there's a 5-megapixel selfie camera with OIS and a screen flash. The main camera records 4K video with 24-bit audio, it can handle input twice as loud as most phones, and the cameras have RAW support. When I see "OIS plus loud recording," I think of a phone to take to concerts, which makes sense given the audio excellence I talk about below.
Listen to This
So what really sets the HTC 10 apart? Audio, I think. HTC has, for a while, paid more attention to speakers and headphone amps than any other smartphone maker except Marshall, and I think that attention will pay off here.
The onboard speakers are odd: there's a front-facing tweeter at the top, and an edge-facing woofer at the bottom, delivering separated but mono sound. And they really do! If you cover the woofer with your finger, it gets tinny. Still, there's less distortion than you get on most other phones, as the 10 is using two speakers and one is front-facing.
I have very high hopes for that headphone amp, though. It's a 1v amp, which is more powerful than the amps on other smartphones, connected to a 24-bit DAC. Yes, it's 24-bit and not 32-bit, but I'm betting that the headphone amp and better tuning will make a much more audible difference than a 32-bit DAC would. The phone comes with a "hi-res certified" headset worth about $90, and you can tune the phone's audio to your own hearing capabilities by listening to a series of tones.
And if you need bigger speakers, well, this is the first Android phone that supports Apple's AirPlay. That's a huge deal. It'll only work for audio, not video, but it's officially licensed, so it will continue to work as Apple updates AirPlay. That means the HTC 10 will work with any Apple-certified speakers or other devices.
HTC is walking an interesting tightrope with its software. It's keeping its Sense skin over Android 6.0, but it's trying to slim down the included applications. On the HTC 10 I saw, that means getting rid of its redundant Gallery app in favor of Google Photos, and getting rid of its Calendar app in favor of Google Calendar—but loading its own Messages app rather than Google Hangouts for SMS. However, Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram are preloaded and undeletable. That makes for an 8.3GB system load on phones that come in 32GB and 64GB sizes. Fortunately, there's a MicroSD card slot that works fine with 200GB cards.
The HTC 10 will be available later this month from Etisalat in UAE and STCin Saudi Arabia at a price of AED 2399 or SAR 2399.We'll have a full review soon. So stay tuned!
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