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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Jigolo - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
New wifi tests and WALT tests are awesome. Should be in every review they can be in.Dennis Travis - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Excellent review Josh. Great Job. Very impressed with the Camera.137ben - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
TOTALLY UNFAIR! The GNote 7 was reviewed on the day of its release, meanwhile it's been THREE WHOLE DAYS since the iPhone 7 was released and there is STILL NO IPHONE 7 REVIEW! This is blatant favoritism of Android! Everyone knows a review is worthless unless it is posted on the same day the product is released, WHY DOES ANANDTECH HATE APPLE SO MUCH?!?fanofanand - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
This wasn't even good trolling. Back to the drawing board for you.smorebuds - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
It sums up a lot of the comments here, though. I mean there are posts with relevant criticism, but they're drowned out by the seemingly obligatory "AT loves Apple more than Android" comments. The iPhone reviews are given the exact same time and priority as Samsung phones, and other devices that have that type of impact on the mobile market.BillBear - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
This seems so familiar somehow.Nickname++ - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Hi Josh, I wouldn't care too much about the absolute RSRP reported by a device. Even in the cellular world the requirement on the absolute accuracy for RSRP are only +/- 6 dB at best (see 3GPP TS 36.133 section 9.1.2.1 for LTE intra frequency measurements for example). And cellular modem have typically stricter calibration and better accuracy than WiFi.So as a general rule, it's best not to rely on devices too much for RF channel absolute quality metrics. The reporting is still interesting, and relative changes are more accurate. But to compare different devices it's pretty much useless IMHO.
Zoomer - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Certainly could be an explanation as to why it could maintain better throughput and the connection at lower rssi than the Samsung 820.zer0hour - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Yet another months late Anandtech review. Phones, especially flagships, have a yearly refresh schedule. When you post a review 5 months past a product's launch, that's nearly half of the lifecycle.I've been coming to this site for years, but the review cycle these days is getting seriously wonky to the point where the in-depthness of the review is NEARLY not worth it anymore. Have to call it as I see it.
meorah - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
oneplus 3 owner checking in. price on the HTC 10 is a non-starter. if I'm paying $200 more for a phone and camera is important to me I'm looking towards s7 edge or iphone 7 just for pure cpu/camera performance.HTC is stuck with low brand power, no gimmicks, broken promises, and squeezed by value and performance on both sides.