The HTC 10 Review
by Joshua Ho on September 19, 2016 8:00 AM ESTSystem Performance Cont'd
Now that we've discussed how the HTC 10 performs in general purpose task we can turn our attention to tests that attempt to better test how a device performs in 3D gaming and other tasks that more strongly emphasize GPU and 3D API performance.
In the on-screen tests we can see the impact that the extra resolution has on GPU performance. Despite Adreno 530 providing a significant performance uplift the HTC 10 can actually give less GPU performance at native resolution depending upon the workload. Car Chase is fairly tesselation-intensive and uses ES 3.1, while ES 2 and ES 3 tests like Manhattan and T-Rex see parity between the two.
In 1080p off-screen rendering we see performance similar to applications that would render at non-native resolutions. Here the HTC 10 significantly outperforms the One M9 across the board and is in line with other Snapdragon 820 devices which is probably not a surprise.
Performance here shows an uplift over the One M9, but this is primarily because the scores are based upon the off-screen results where resolution is equalized.
As 3DMark relies on off-screen rendering again we can see the benefit of Adreno 530 over Adreno 430 but this can only be achieved if you use the game optimization settings in the Boost+ application. Overall this isn't particularly notable outside of simple verification that nothing is seriously wrong with the software and hardware on the HTC 10.
NAND Performance
Storage performance, while decidedly difficult to test well in the mobile space and generally not all that well covered remains a fairly critical component of overall system performance. It’s definitely possible to hide memory performance issues with caching, but if you’ve ever taken a course on these things you can see that there is an upper bound to performance when it comes to caching. As a result, being able to improve performance at each step of the memory mountain is critical to having low latency and high throughput for data in the system. In order to test storage performance on mobile devices, we continue to rely on AndroBench 4 for Android devices. In order to properly test storage performance in a somewhat realistic manner we elect to test with only one I/O thread and a 100 MB test set with 4KB and 256KB block sizes for random and sequential rather than the strange settings of 8 threads and a 32MB sequential test which seems to be geared towards generating the largest numbers humanly possible rather than any meaningful throughput figure.
In the case of the HTC 10 it’s probably not a surprise at this point but it uses iNAND 7232 from SanDisk, seemingly as a single source supplier. This uses the SLC/TLC hybrid configuration seen in devices like the LG V10, iPhone 6, 6s, and 7 as well. The SLC storage is on the order of a few hundred megabytes, so sequential writes that exceed this size will see a drop-off in performance.
These results are probably not a surprise if you’ve been following our recent coverage but it’s still worth noting how the use of eMMC 5.1 is not guaranteed to be a huge impediment, although I would say this is probably the last generation where it’s acceptable to ship eMMC in a flagship device as the eMMC spec doesn’t seem to be progressing much further and UFS/NVMe solutions really seem to be the way forward as far as the industry is concerned. The HTC 10 is not really that far off from the UFS solutions we’ve seen in phones like the Galaxy S7 and from the Discomark results you can see that the eMMC 5.1 solution used here isn’t really causing a huge difference in performance, but I suspect anything that can actually take advantage of UFS’ more sophisticated controller will really start to highlight the weakness of eMMC and SDIO. At this point the industry already has UFS as a fairly widespread standard so HTC could take this route for a future flagship or NVMe storage depending upon their logistics. It's really important to emphasize here how UFS and NVMe are not necessarily better one way or another, as these things only matter when the storage or storage controller isn't the bottleneck.
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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"