HTC 10 Review - The return to glory?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,850 words · ~9 min read
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for me like probably many of you HTC
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made my first Android phone I mean check this out this is me with the 1 M7 so
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shiny and exciting and then I like probably many of you was disappointed by
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HTC by their complacency their pricing
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their customer service their build quality basically insert reason not to
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care anymore here the 1 M9 era marked a particularly rough patch in the
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Taiwanese company's history with investors valuing it at less than the
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cash it had in the bank I mean what I
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mean what but more recently there's been good news too the HTC VI is the VR
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headset to get if that tall guy I hang around with is to be believed he's not
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dying but HTC's Core Business is mobile
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phones and that thing is not a phone so
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are they ready to give up and just make computer peripherals from now on
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apparently not meet the HT
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C10 to celebrate the launch of their Nitro plus radon rx480 Sapphire is
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giving some of them away learn more and enter the giveaway at the link in the
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video description the 10 like every other
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Flagship smartphone right now packs a Snapdragon 820 CPU paired with an adreno
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53 GPU so performance should be pretty
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much right in there with everyone else assuming that the overheating issues
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that the 1m9 demonstrated in our water cooled phones video haven't made a
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reappearance and it looks like we're in okay shape here the iPhone 6s is the
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golden standard and doesn't throttle in my geek bch repeatedly test at all but I
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consider anything around a 10 to 15% reduction in performance during
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continuous heavy use to be very good the
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10 Falls well short of that Mark a
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surprise given its ample thickness but it isn't something that I noticed day
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today and at least it doesn't cut in half like its predecessor also packed
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into the 10's aluminum frame is 4 gigs of lpddr4 RAM 32 or in some regions
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apparently 64 gigs of storage and a non- removable 3,000 mAh battery that saw me
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through every day during my time with the device features that have become
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shockingly standard fair in recent times I mean
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it's not a knock against the 10 it's a good thing it just doesn't help it stand
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apart let's get then to what does the
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screen is a subtly curved Corning Gorilla Glass topped 5.2 in super LCD 5
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affair with a pixel count of 2560 x440
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making it a solid choice for use in a VR viewer like Google cardboard if you're
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into that sort of thing nothing about its viewing angles
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antireflectivity colors popped out and in fact while I didn't notice this in
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daily use next to the Galaxy S7 and the iPhone 6s it's display has a noticeable
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pink cast something that neither switching from Vivid to srgb color mode
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nor adjusting color temperature helped with so okay then that was a lie the
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screen wasn't a differentiating point below the screen is a capactive home
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button with a quick and accurate integrated fingerprint sensor flanked by
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two Hardware capacitive buttons for last application and back that I wish could
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be swapped like on the OnePlus 3 but that I otherwise can't complain about
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the chin bar size on the 10 was actually just perfect for me to type totally
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naturally above the screen is an optically stabilized 5 megapixel selfie
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camera that does a little more noise reduction postprocessing than I would
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personally like but otherwise generated very good results Apple really has some
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catching up to do with their next generation selfie Cam and then finally
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an exceptional feature gone is boom
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sound dual front-facing speakers but
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here is actually a replacement that I can't believe no one else thought of the
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earpiece speaker doubles as a loudspeaker that combined with the
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surprisingly directional bottom firing speaker that handles more of the mid and
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low frequencies delivers an exceptionally balanced listening
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experience ice work HTC also on the
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bottom of the 10 is some dents from me dropping it oops the main microphone and
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a USB 3.1 gen 1 type-c shaped Port more
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on that in a moment but this is another pretty sweet feature with the fast file
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transfer feature enabled I was able to saturate the 100 and 150 megabyte right
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and read speeds respectively of the internal storage moving videos to and
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from a computer this is great for offloading photos and videos or loading
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media onto your device before a trip
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unfortunately it doesn't seem like you can set it to work this way by default
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for reasons that are Beyond me but that I think may have to do with the USB
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type-c shaped Port not having been
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implemented in accordance with the USB type-c standard qualcom Quick Charge 3.0
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variable voltage fast charging prevents
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QC 3.0 Chargers from operating at the
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same time that data transfer is taking place which makes oneplus's Dash charge
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a 4 amp 5vt fast charging method look
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good for reasons that go beyond keeping the phone cooler during charging h on
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the left of the device is a Micro SD slot for expandable storage awesome and
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on the right is the SIM tray the volume rocker and a lock button that thanks to
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the textured top is easy to differentiate both in pocket and without
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the headphone jack is on top in the middle and if it sounds ridiculous the
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first time you plug it in you're like what is all this bass in my music turn
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off the Dolby enhancement in the settings menu you're welcome and then at
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the rear is a noise cancelling microphone dual tone flash laser
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autofocus and 12 megapix rear camera
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whose lower megapixel count hurts under
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ideal well-lit conditions but who conservative d noising postprocessing
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Optical image stabilization and larger light scooping pixels deliver some of
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the best low light performance I've seen
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these images were taken under identical lighting conditions with the S7 the 6s
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and the 10 check out how well you can read that text with the 10 and I'd say
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for the most part camera control is a really strong point too autofocus is
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laser Qui all the usual shooting modes like 4K video Raw Stills or slow-mo are
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there plus it's got this neat hyperlapse mode that folks are going to have a lot
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of fun with and the pro sliders all show
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up on screen at the same time making it really fast to adjust when manually
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shooting I just wish it was a little faster to open personally I mean the app
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itself launches as quickly as anyone else but HTC's implementation of gesture
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control isn't the best I've seen the two swipes down to open the camera is a
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little flaky and only works when the screen scen is off and this is a
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criticism of everyone not just HTC but
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why can't I reconfigure whichever gestures I want to do whatever stuff I
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want anyway I still like the scent skin
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including blink feed and it's pretty close to stock Android now so at this
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point all that's left is for me to drop
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the phone and deliver my conclusion it feels like every other reviewer in the
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world is declaring it to be a hit a clinic on how to make a smartphone or
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some other variation of the second coming but I didn't come twice or even
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once for that matter though it should be noted that that is not because the HTC1
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is a bad phone it actually remarkably
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doesn't seem to do anything wrong it's
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just because it also doesn't push the Innovation envelope in any way that's
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meaningful to me personally the better speaker experience is going to win over
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some buyers for sure but I'm more partial to the
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waterproofness of the S7 and the pressure sensitive screen and lightning
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fast performance including Wave 2 AC Wireless I wish everyone else would
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Implement that of the iPhone 6s maybe
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the problem though is that phones are just kind of mature now the last
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remaining huge gap in smartphone functionality that Apple enjoyed the
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camera has mostly been closed by the Koreans the Chinese and now the
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Taiwanese to the point where I feel like a phone isn't so much stand out good as
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stand out bad with anything else being
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good but maybe that in itself is a good thing maybe the fact that a solid phone
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that performs well and feels good in the hand in spite of its thicker design
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doesn't excite me anymore is just good for buyers because that's what the HTC1
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is I personally still prefer the S7 but
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you might not and it's good to have choice
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and you know what other choice is good for consumers the choice of where to put
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your dbrand skin do you want to put it on a laptop do you want to put it on a
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phone do you want to put it on a game console or a game controller well that's
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up to you and you've got more choices too if you head over to dbrand.com we've
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got that Linked In the video description you can use their fantastic configurator
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to configure your device whether it's uh
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the you know touchpad of a laptop versus the bottom or the top of it or whether
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it's the back of a phone versus the sides of a phone you can configure
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pretty much any surface on the device with any color and any finish you want
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and you can preview it in real time so you'll know before you get it that it's
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going to a fit great on your device
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because all dbrand skins are Precision cut and B represent your personal style
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whether your personal style is tasteful or clown likee I won't judge so again
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that's the link to dbrand.com in the video
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description thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do
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but if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or check out the link to
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where to buy the stuff we featured so the htc10 at Amazon in the video
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description also linked in the description is our merch store which has
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cool shirts like this one and our community Forum which you should totally
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join now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to
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watch next so click that little button in the top right corner to check out our
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