HTC 10 (Unlocked) - Review 2022

A funny thing happened while I was testing the new HTC ten (U.s.$699; 32GB): I couldn't end listening. HTC's latest flagship is the best smartphone for sound I've heard in a long fourth dimension, although you demand to pair it with some actually good headphones for the advantages to come up through.

To-engagement, it's also the showtime Qualcomm Snapdragon 820-powered unlocked telephone bachelor in the U.s., which makes it the almost powerful unlocked phone on the market. When you combine these benefits with a sleek design and attractive software enhancements, y'all get our new Editor's Selection for unlocked phones.

Physical Features and Bombardment

The HTC 10 feels similar a big slab of metallic at 5.74 x 2.83 ten 0.35in (HWD) and 5.68oz. Even if information technology's smaller than the Samsung Milky way S7 Edge (5.94 10 ii.86 x 0.30in), all that matte aluminum gives the impression that it'due south bigger than it is.

Up front, the phone is mostly filled upwards with a 5.2in, ii,560 x 1,440 Super LCD 5 display. It looks almost every bit vivid as the AMOLED display on the Samsung Milky way S7 merely lacks the intense contrast. It isn't always on, but as nosotros saw on the LG G5, that feature doesn't work well on LCDs anyway.

Below the screen, there's a combination home button/fingerprint sensor that is flanked by capacitive dorsum and multitasking buttons. The body is slightly water-resistant, but not waterproof—so delight don't dunk it.

HTC claimed the fingerprint sensor is the fastest in the manufacture and we found it to exist slightly faster than the Samsung Galaxy S7 equally information technology unlocked the phone in 0.iv seconds as opposed to 0.v. In practice, though, the speed difference isn't actually noticeable. As is, the sensor is noticeably more accurate than the Samsung flagships.

The dorsum of the phone looks like someone heard that Apple iPhones have chamfered edges and said, "You say they like chamfers? I'll give you a chamfer!" It'south an ultra chamfera—a relatively large, shiny, angled slide that comes downwardly to a more than conventional right angle at the edge of the phone. I'm not sure how I feel about it, only it definitely stands out. The back is domed enough that the phone will stone on a table if y'all push information technology. On the side, the power button is ridged to make it easy to discover, like the one on the HTC I A9. That's a really useful design idea process.

As with its predecessors, the HTC 10 has a microSD carte slot that had no trouble with a 200GB Lexar carte du jour and it charges with USB-C and Qualcomm'due south Quickcharge three.0 technology. HTC claimed the phone can accuse 50% of its 3,000mAh battery in 30 minutes.

Battery life is good. Nosotros got 6 hours, 4 minutes of video streaming fourth dimension, which is solid, though non upwardly to the Samsung Galaxy S7 achievement of nine hours. Of course, that isn't the whole picture: the software HTC uses manages to bleed somewhat less battery in standby than Samsung'south does and the phone comes with an app chosen Boost+ that sips ability by reducing the screen resolution when you're playing games. After 7 and a half hours in standby, a Samsung Galaxy S7 battery rated a drib past 8-10%. For the HTC ten bombardment, it just decreased by 2-3%.

Calling and Networking

The unlocked model of the HTC x supports LTE bands one/2/three/4/5/seven/12/ xiii/17/xx/28/29/thirty and LTE Category nine, meaning it will get the fastest speeds and best coverage that AT&T and T-Mobile have to offer. We institute this true in our tests, where LTE speeds and coverage have been on par with the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.

Qualcomm's TruSignal antenna tuner, introduced late concluding year, recovers from connection drops much more apace than how predecessor devices would perform. Information technology will also work perfectly on Canadian networks, although it lacks CDMA and then information technology can't authenticate on Sprint or Verizon.

Wi-Fi operation is fine, although it isn't up to Samsung Galaxy S7 levels. Nosotros got about half the speed we saw on the Samsung flagship at various distances from our Verizon FiOS test router: 20Mbps downwardly instead of 40Mbps for instance, or 2Mbps instead of 4Mbps. Information technology is still usable, particularly at closer distances.

The software update nosotros received in the centre of our testing process bumped speeds up—they had originally been fifty-fifty lower—so this may exist something that tin can exist farther improved in firmware.

Telephone call quality is very skillful, thanks to vigorous speakers and excellent LTE connectivity. Test calls are clear, loud, and sharp, and the lesser-ported speakerphone is easy to hear exterior. Noise cancellation has been very constructive. The phone supports VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling, making it fix for the new services that telcos are launching.

Software

The HTC x runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with HTC's latest version of Sense. HTC said it's trying to slim down indistinguishable apps and that effort is appreciated. The apps HTC kept are a mix of its own and Google: HTC camera, Google Photos, HTC Mail, Google Calendar, and Google Play Music, for example. The only obvious bloatware comes in the grade of apps for Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram, all of which y'all'll probably employ anyway. This is on the unlocked version, of course.

Notably, there are two major and very obvious changes from Google'south stock Android here. Start, if you swipe to the left of the dwelling screen, you lot get HTC's Flipboard-like News Commonwealth aggregator. Second, in HTC's Theme Store, you can download new Freestyle themes, all of which are made to be so open that they're almost disturbing. There is no icon grid. You tin place icons, widgets, and stickers (oversized icons) willy-nilly. The one Freestyle theme available to outset is travel-themed and manner too depression-contrast to apply, but it'south safe to say this is the least iPhone-like layout I've seen in a long fourth dimension.

Of the 32GB of internal storage, nearly 25GB is made available. Y'all can always add together a microSD bill of fare, and unlike the Samsung Milky way S7 or the LG G5, this phone supports Google's Adoptable Storage way to make the carte du jour look similar internal storage.

In terms of performance, the HTC 10 is on par with other Snapdragon 820 devices like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the LG G5, with one notable exception: If you use the HTC x Boost+ software to knock screen resolution down to 1080p in games, y'all'll boost your frame rates too.

Listen Upwardly

HTC is well-known for awesome audio experiences. It introduced front end-facing BoomSound speakers on the HTC One M7 three years ago and has, since, paid attention to things that really make a difference, similar headphone amps, equally opposed to things that are largely inaudible, like 32-bit DACs.

The HTC 10 doesn't accept front-facing speakers. Instead, it has a front-facing tweeter up by the earpiece, and a woofer that doubles as the speakerphone along the lesser. This creates mono sound that's a little hard to measure the volume considering it'due south radiating from the whole phone rather than coming out of a specific signal. It sounds less tinny than nearly phones, but not room-filling.

But when you plug in headphones: Wow!

The 1V headphone amp, more powerful than in the Samsung Milky way S7 or the Apple iPhone 6s, can drive high-end headphones such every bit the Bowers & Wilkins P5 like no other flagship smartphone can. The payoff is in gorgeously round, textured, detailed audio, whether you're listening to pop, jazz, or classical. It merely gets better as you plough the volume up. The deviation is less noticeable in mediocre headphones, so it pays to invest (and y'all'll have to, since HTC doesn't include any headphones at all). Compared with the HTC 10, sound through the Samsung flagships sound flattened and subdued.

Headphone audio quality is farther improved via a Personal Audio Profile (PAP), my favorite feature Samsung abandoned in the Galaxy S6. PAP surveys your audible faculties and enhances the frequencies where your hearing is slowly fading. The consequence for me is discovering that in that location are bass notes in some of my favorite songs that I just hadn't been noticing at all. At present, I most can't work when using the telephone to mind to music, it'southward that good.

But information technology gets even better! This is the first Android phone to officially support Apple'south AirPlay, the formerly proprietary Wi-Fi streaming protocol that a number of wireless speakers support. In a panel in the settings menu, you tin can quickly connect to Chromecast, Miracast, and AirPlay devices. The phone can stream video via Chromecast and Miracast, but only do audio through AirPlay. That's fine. It's a scarlet on meridian of the best sound playback phone available.

Photographic camera and Video

The story with the HTC 10'due south camera is a petty bit more mixed than with the audio and is where the Samsung Galaxy S7 pulls ahead a bit.

As is, the HTC x can shoot stills in RAW or JPEG, its camera app has some Pro Manner controls (shown beneath), and information technology tin can tape upwardly to 4K video at 30 frames per second. It has built-in slow-motion and hyperlapse modes likewise. Both of its cameras have optical image stabilisation to shine out videos. Sticking with the audio theme, information technology also records high-quality sound upward to twice every bit loud as other smartphones without clipping.

Powering the main camera is a 12MP unit with 1.55µm pixels, a system that is slightly larger than the 1.4µm pixels in the Samsung Galaxy S7. That should make for amend depression-light functioning, right? Alas, no. The latter'south f/1.7 aperture, slightly larger than the former'southward f/1.8, along with its added focus pixels seem to brand a difference.

In adept light, photos look great. The differences come out when the lights go downwardly. On a cloudy solar day, the Samsung Galaxy S7'due south shots expect merely a bit brighter and sharper. Very low-light shots on the HTC ten are a bit noisier than the brand new Samsung smartphone, but more importantly, the HTC flgaship entry has trouble focusing in situations where the Samsung Galaxy S7 has no problems. Generally speaking, focus feels slower somehow.

Borer to focus doesn't alter the exposure, hence taking photos with a night foreground and a bright background beingness a difficult chore at times. In addition, the HTC 10 would likewise occasionally throw an mistake about me blocking the light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation autofocus when I did no such affair. For the last bit, HTC confirmed this will exist improved in a software update.

As for the forepart-facing 5MP camera with its 1.34µm pixels, it has a proficient if somewhat noisy performance. It's a little soft in low-light but at to the lowest degree it doesn't do the irritating super-smoothing thing that Samsung and LG flaagship smartphones do. Likewise, it'due south still less noisy than the Apple iPhone 6s.

Comparisons and Conclusions

The HTC 10 is the best music phone on the market place, and a strong performer all around. Its solid, all-metal body, quick operation, and fast fingerprint scanner make for an elegant experience.

Besides the sound quality, we still like the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge a scrap meliorate. It packs an fifty-fifty bigger screen into an only slightly wider torso, rocks a larger battery, and, more importantly, uses a better camera. Depression-low-cal camera performance is a hugely important feature, and both Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge lead the pack right now.

Also, while information technology isn't running stock Google Android, HTC Sense has relatively few superfluous apps and is full of new and very useful features like AirPlay support. While the HTC x is also more than expensive than its competitors at The states$699, you lot're getting value for that coin. That makes the HTC ten our new Editor's Choice for unlocked phones.

[PCMag Body of water Editor's Note: The HTC ten is now on sale in parts of Southeast Asia with pricing hovering around the US price tag, after conversion. Malaysia will see the device rolling out onetime in July 2022 at RM2,799]

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/android/11538/htc-10-unlocked

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