Most of the HTC 10 reviews came out on Thursday and though it has received overall good reviews, most critics don’t think it compares to Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Edge or the iPhone 6s Plus. CNET agrees that the HTC 10 brings the noise, but is not a Galaxy killer .
“But at $699 unlocked or £569 in the UK, it fails to offer the same hardware performance and value as its Android rivals. For instance, its performance is comparable to the Google Nexus 6P even though the 6P is cheaper. Its battery doesn’t last as long as the Samsung Galaxy S7 and LG G5, and there are times when its camera exposure misses the mark.”
The review summarizes that HTC’s new flagship phone just doesn’t have all the other things that elevate a good phone into a great phone. The Verge pretty much agrees with CNET ‘s assessment.
“But if you’ve taken the position that phones are boring, HTC’s new 10 might put another arrow in your quiver. It’s not that the 10 is a bad phone — it’s actually a very good phone — but rather the $699 10 is just a phone in a world where other smartphones are trying to be so much more,” claims reviewer Dan Seifert.
The review adds that not only is the HTC 10’s design generic, but that the battery life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. However, Ars Technica believes that the HTC 10 is the best Android smartphone of 2016 so far.
“The HTC 10 is a refreshing phone that manages to be great without any nonsense or gimmicks. Compared to the Galaxy S7, you’re getting a better body, better software, louder speakers, more capable expandable storage, USB Type C, and (most of the time) a better camera. Force me to buy a phone that isn’t a Nexus device and I know what I’m picking up.”
The only things the review didn’t like about the smartphone were the placement of buttons and the fact that the camera sometimes turns pictures gray. It is highly believed that the poor camera on HTC’s previous flagship smartphone devices over the past couple of years is what turned people off, even though other features were top-notch.
“I just purchased the HTC One for Sprint a few days ago. I have been taking mostly indoor videos/pictures under normal lighting conditions. And all the pics are awful. They are blurry, not focused properly and the photo just looks horrible – like one taken from a bad camera phone,” wrote MrKool444 on the XDA Developerforums. His complaint was typical of several others.
By the time the HTC One M9 was released in 2015, the company still didn’t learn its lesson and released what was considered a stellar phone with a poor camera. Tech Times was just one of the sites that said the camera was unsatisfactory.
“The HTC One M9 is a powerful smartphone that is being dragged down due to the sub-par camera that it is equipped with.”
Tech Times added that even though the camera produced good color, the white balance was off and the colors were over-saturated in low-light conditions. In addition, the One M9 video camera featured no stabilization features like the iPhone 6s Plus and the Galaxy S6.
It appears that HTC has finally delivered a decent, if not perfect, camera on the 10, but it isn’t enough to stand out from other recent smartphones from Apple or Samsung. Are you interested in purchasing the HTC 10? Let us know in the comments section.
[Photo by Amy Sussman/AP Images]