HTC has been waiting patiently for its time in the tech limelight, to raise the curtain on its latest smartphone, the HTC 10. The third in the tech trilogy that saw Samsung unveil the S7 and LG launch its G5, HTC is proving that good things come to those who wait.
In a word, the new phone is streamlined to its very core. Even the name has lost the confusing ‘M’ moniker in favour of simply ’10’.
HTC wrapped its latest in an all-metal body, with some serious chamfering on the back. The phone – which will cost Dhs2,399 when its available come May 1st – comes in either gold, silver and dark grey. Each version has a 5.2in QHD-resolution LCD screen on the front, a fingerprint sensor (that HTC says is the fastest in the word), touch-sensitive buttons (for the first time on an HTC) and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 CPU.
The phone once again features HTC’s Ultrapixel technology. What’s an Ultrapixel? Think of it as a regular pixel, but bigger. So the theory goes, a bigger pixel can trap more light than a regular pixel, leading to better clarity and detail in low light.
There’s a 12MP sensor on the back of the phone, as well as a 5MP ‘selfie cam’ on the front. Both front and back cameras have optical image stabilisation, another first for smartphone kind. There’s also dual LED flash for punchier night shots, as well as a laser autofocus system that should make for clearer photos.
It runs off a 3000mAh battery (compared to an iPhone’s piddly 1715mAh affair) that can be rejoiced quickly courtesy of the all-new USB Type-C port. The bad news, it’s not compatible with any of your old microUSB cables. The good news, thanks to Qualcomm’s QuickCharge technology it will go from zero to fifty per cent battery in just 30-minutes.
A microSD card slot on the side of the phone lets you bump up the 32GB internal storage to a whopping 2-Terabytes (just in case you want to download 2,000 high-definition movies and store them in your front pocket). The phone also comes bundled with a pair of noise-cancelling earphones.
HTC worked with Google to make the Android operating system run faster than ever, removing its ‘bloatware’ apps in favour of Google’s native ones. The boffs at HTC even managed to sneak in to Apple HQ and steal the wireless frequencies for its Airplay – yes, this is the first Android phone to support Apple’s streaming services.
The phone is available from all major retailers in the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on May 1, 2016. The phone will hit the rest of the Gulf (including Egypt) later on that same month.
