The HTC 10 Review
by Joshua Ho on September 19, 2016 8:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
One of the major areas worth discussing when it comes to mobile devices is computing performance. As much as OEMs try to not talk about this, ultimately what distinguishes a smartphone from a featurephone or simple flip phone is dramatically improved compute. Running a web browser, running a full Linux OS with apps that require JIT or AOT compilation are all tasks that demand large amounts of system memory and compute. Similarly, any kind of 3D game is going to require quite a bit of compute power and memory in general. As mentioned in previous reviews a major focus for this year has been trying to make our benchmarks more focused on real-world performance, so we’ll be better able to show how the HTC 10 actually performs relative to other devices on the market.
In the basic browser benchmarks, we can see that the HTC 10 is pretty much on par with all other Snapdragon 820 devices. This shouldn't really come as a surprise given how much of an optimization target all of these benchmarks are for the OEMs and SoC vendors, but performance in general on Snapdragon 820 is not necessarily great for web browsing with Chrome.
PCMark is very sensitive to DVFS changes in most cases so it's interesting to see how closely it performed to the Galaxy S7 and G5. What is notable here is the poor showing in video playback, which persists even if you use HTC's CPU cheats which are still accessible from the developer settings. The average scores that PCMark records is significantly higher than what I can achieve with the HTC 10 unless I enable high CPU performance mode. Determining what this means has been left as an exercise to the reader.
Looking at the HTC 10 overall results it might be tempting to simply suggest that overall performance is comparable to the Galaxy S7 with S820 but when you look at the individual breakdown the main reason why the HTC 10 seems to be so slow is because the location provider in Maps is causing its launch time to be significantly higher than most phones I've seen before. In just about every other situation the Galaxy S7 is significantly behind the HTC 10. Overall, I think the HTC 10 performance is in line with what I'd expect for a Snapdragon 820 phone here.
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kmmatney - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Sounds like my experience a few years ago. I switched to a "high end" LG phone because I got tired of Apple not having larger screens. I loved it at first, but had a lot of the same issues - keyboard didn't work well, battery life sucked, and other annoying issues. Tried a few different ROMs (everyone seemed to have their favorites that was the "best" one), but that just made things worse - would fix a particular issue, but create several others. Stuck it out for 18 months, and then finally just sold it, took a $50 hit (hey, I'm cheap!), and bought a used iPhone 5 to tide me over for 6 months until next upgrade cycle. I guess it was all "user error" on my part.fanofanand - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
You are absolutely right, expecting your SOT to match the "call time" numbers is totally normal. /sMorawka - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
if this review is getting this many comments then HTC is doing something right here.StrangerGuy - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Yeah they doing a great job if market success is solely determined by how much comments the vocal tiny minority generates.Oh and BTW I'm sick of hearing trite being called "innovation" at every single corner. That buzzword is so debased to the point of uselessness.
JKJK - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Long time htc fan. Ordered one this weekend + a 200GB SD card.Good review, even thought it's a bit late. But finding bugs like wifi and such that MIGHT give it enought focus to make HTC look into it, is worth it. Even tought it has a few sore spots, I suppose it will be a nice upgrade from my M9 either way.
A friend of mine has one, and one thing I really don't like about it, is that is a bit unergonomic when you have small hands, like I do. And the edge on the back makes it uncomfortable to hold compared to the M9 because of this (edge).
JKJK - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Another weird thing ... It doesn't seem possible to find original norwegian / european charger for the HTC 10. I'm speaking of the Rapid charge / Quick Charge 3.0 with USB Type C. You actually have to buy another phone (!) at this point to get a charger. For now, I'm stuck with the M9's rapid charger / Quick charge 2.0 adapter and a belkin USB C cable. Very frustrating.It took almost a year before a Quick Charge 2.0 charger hit the market for the for the M9, and it hit england about 3 months before norway. According to Scandinavian (swedish) support, It's supposed to hit market "within 2016". Not good.
Vagabondjonez - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
thats harsh man. I have so many qc 2 adapters lolfanofanand - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
Google "Anker" they make fantastic QC 3.0 with Type C bases.JKJK - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
Yes, but not with norwegian/european plugs?However. Found another qualcom certified qc3 chargers with europlug and usbc.
Compared with some high quality belkin cables with 3A suport and correct resistance, I think I'm gettig there.
I think it wad Aukey/Auky chargers
JKJK - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
Err.. paired with the belkin cables.However. Original htc qc3 charger is said to be coming in sale this year (Htc tc p5000-eu/uk/etc.)