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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asfletch - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link
Preach! Removable battery is big reason why I narrowed my choices recently to Note 4 or LG G5/V10, and only the fear of bootlooping (again a longevity issue, seems to happen to many people after several months of ownershup) put me off the LGs. I will only buy sealed-battery phones in future if I absolutely have to, and I would love to know how hard it'd be to change their batteries.Impulses - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link
1. Agreed... But I can easily imagine logistical reasons why AT isn't allowed to open (and potentially destroy) review samples or personally bought devices, so we'll probably have to find this info elsewhere. I'm glad my N5 was easy to open even tho I never thought I'd keep it for 3 years.2. This is subjective, how hard is it to occasionally do some cleanup? Yeah, I know people actually toss phones over things as simple as full storage but c'mon, this is AT. I can see how a couple of comments about SD removal would be useful, tho I rarely took mine out when I had phones with them (specially after USB OTG and faster Wi-Fi came of age), phone has never been my primary camera either tho.
3. This is actually way too much of a moving target, and Samsung has actually been amongst the best at keeping non-carrier hobbled flagship models updated. HTC has probably been more consistent if you go farther back than the last 2-3 years tho... AT's forte has never been on the software side anyway.
4. Even more of a moving target with different carriers imposing different policies... And probably less relevant to the mass market. I don't think having a rooted Android device is nearly as attractive as it used to be, various drivers issue tend to make user/dev ROMs a dice roll when you're talking about unsupported Android versions.
If you care that much about that stuff you'll either research it at a place like Xda or you'll just get a Nexus, IMO. FWIW I think HTC still has far more user friendly policy regarding bootloader unlock than Samsung does.
AT phone reviews have always seemed to straddle an enthusiast/mass market line... They dive deep into hardware but only so much as in how it directly affects the user, and I don't think any big time site will ever cover things like how easy it is to repair, mod, etc. Just the nature of the beast, it's post because of the manufacturer relationships but also logistics. There's places like iFixit, XDA, and forums for that...
Zoomer - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link
The SD tray is similar to the nanoSIM tray. Use a paperclip. It's more of a install once and forget kind of thing. Just pop in a 128 or 256 fast SD and forget about it. Far easier to transfer files by connecting a USB cable, which incidentally charges it.sevenmack - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
Additionally, on the matter of two MicroSD ports: Most people barely use the one they have, often using a 32gb or 64gb card that is plenty for them. Enthusiasts such as myself would love two MicroSD ports, but I would also rather have a 500gb MicroSD card that would work for all my needs.As for teardowns to see how easy it is to replace a battery: Again, most people (including many enthusiasts) would never bother doing that. They would just buy another phone when the two-year update period comes up. Besides, iFixit provides ample enough information on that.
Fidelator - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link
You should be hired for this site, your thoughts are above and beyondVagabondjonez - Thursday, October 6, 2016 - link
I definitely agree with you 👍eclectech - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link
I've had my HTC 10 for months but I learned a lot reading this review. Thanks to your review, I also disabled Chrome and Google Photos, once I found the APKs for HTC Internet and HTC Gallery.Gunbuster - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link
Let me just type this out: Six.Hundred.DollarsJust got a BLU R1 HD today. $60, the end of ridiculous phone prices is nearing the end. It's not sustainable. I'm a techie and this phone is good enough. What makes a $600+ phone 10 times better?
ACM.1899 - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link
Most buyers aren't techie....most of them are 15-30 years old that want to play HD games, watch FHD videos, listen to hq music...they want the best (based on Media or Gsmarena) and don't care that much about the money...they go to a store and all they can see is SAMSUNG and APPLE or let's say huawei...huawei used to be cheap, but now?...not much.
i think the only factor that would make a phone 10 times better (for "ordinary" buyers) is that it lasts 10 times(or whatever time that compensate the money).
look at HTC HD2 ,recently i saw one that could run Android 7...but NOT that good or smooth or enough ram left to run something else and it's a 7 years old phone. and we know that those who flash a custom rom or even root their phone is nothing compared to "ordinary" buyers.
btw in some countries you're stuck with whatever your carriers sell you.
ACM.1899 - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link
And let's not forget about "Capitalism"