HTC finally announced the highly anticipated HTC 10, the company's latest flagship, after 12 months of working behind closed doors.
The company touts the HTC 10 as a device that lives up to the expectations users have on a flagship, and has made customer feedback a major component in the handset's development process.
"With customer feedback an integral part of the development process combined with an obsessive attention to detail, the HTC 10 delivers everything that you would want from a flagship device," says HTC.
The new HTC 10 comes with a 5.2-inch Quad HD LCD 5 display and runs on a Qualcomm chipset, with the U.S. version said to have a Snapdragon 820 variant. It comes in storage options of either 32 or 64 GB, which can both be expanded up to 2 TB through the handset's microSD card slot.
Other specs and features include a RAM of 4 GB, a pair of BoomSound speakers with Dolby Audio, a trio of noise-cancelling mics, woofer plus tweeter, 3,000 mAh battery, HTC Sense 8 UI, Android 6.0, USB Type-C, fingerprint sensor and four color options that include Camellia Red, Topaz Gold, Glacier Silver and Carbon Gray.
Photo enthusiasts will surely love the HTC 10's 12-megapixel UltraPixel 2 rear camera and its 5-megapixel front camera that has OIS, ultra wide lens, 1.34um pixels and an aperture of f/1.8.
"With HTC 10 we've delivered what we believe to be the best smartphone camera available on the market today," adds HTC.
For the past two years, HTC's camera has always been heavily criticized. This time around, however, the HTC 10 is bound to turn things around with a better performing camera that features optical image stabilization, laser autofocus, and the ability to capture images even in low-light situations.
"This smartphone delivers brilliantly sharp, low light and high-resolution photos whether behind or in front of the lens," says HTC.
HTC also simplified the user experience in the HTC 10 by making sure that the handset's Android OS has fewer duplicate apps that are otherwise common among manufacturer-optimized devices. For instance, past HTC flagships would come equipped with two gallery or camera apps - one from HTC and the other one from Google. However, HTC deviated from placing duplicate apps on its handset with the new HTC 10.
Soon enough, HTC's effort seemed to have gained admiration from benchmarking outfit DxO Labs, which particularly praised the HTC 10 for the handset's level of detail in every type of lighting conditions, where it has slightly pulled ahead from the Galaxy S7. The new HTC 10 is "a great all-rounder for stills and video," as described by DxO Labs.
The HTC 10 also has an impressive LCD 5 display that is a huge improvement from the disappointing display found on the One M9.
"The display of the HTC 10 is probably one of the better displays I've seen this year," wrote Joshua Ho of AnandTech. "Like the LG G5, the display has high color stability under viewing angle changes and when appears painted on to the display because of how close the panel appears to be the glass."
The HTC 10 will have a launch price of $699 and will be available on major carriers such as Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. Users can also snag the unlocked version at the company's official site. Preorders kicked off on April 12, while shipping is slated to commence in early May.
