Just like its predecessors, the One M7 and One M8, the HTC 10 also has an aluminium unibody chassis. The rounded edges and slightly curved back combine to make the phone comfortable to hold while giving it a sophisticated look. But it is hard to ignore the fact that the 10 weighs 161g, which is more than the Samsung Galaxy S7 (152g) and OnePlus 3 (158g). The power button has an unconventional serrated texture—a nice visual element.
The 10 has a 5.2-inch Super LCD5 display, with 2,560×1,440 resolution. It is definitely impressive in terms of sharpness, colour accuracy and native brightness levels. The reflections are minimal, greatly enhancing comfort of use. However, it lacks the sort of vibrancy that the Samsung Galaxy S7’s Super AMOLED or the OnePlus 3’s Optic AMOLED screen exhibit.
There is absolutely no shortage of power, and the 10 runs the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, with 4 GB RAM. Google Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) has the slick HTC Sense interface. This time around, HTC has cleaned up the clutter too in terms of preloaded third-party apps. What you get instead while setting up the phone is a screen that suggests some popular apps you might want to download. The 3,000 mAh battery lasts a day with medium use, but drains quicker than the Galaxy S7 and the LG G5, if you are using the camera or watching a video.
The 10 supports Hi-Res Audio, including 24-bit audio files. It will also process your lower bit-rate MP3 music files to sound better, as long you are using a good-quality headphone or speaker.
After some struggles with the camera performance over the past couple of years, HTC has reverted to UltraPixel sensor technology, with the larger pixels capturing more light—the 10 has 1.55µm-sized pixels, the Galaxy S7 has smaller 1.4µm pixels. It gets most things right, helped by optical image stabilization—the colours are largely accurate and the low-light photos are detailed better than before. However, we did notice some inconsistencies—some photos looked a bit dull, while some daytime shots suffered from over-exposure.
The 10 has an elegant design, a cool Android interface, and snappy performance. But the camera needs fine-tuning. A good smartphone, but it still doesn’t offer that something extra to justify the price.
[“Source-Livemint”]
