HTC 10 hands-on: First play

Software

HTC has rethought the way it does software with the latest Sense. It's easier to adapt to users' needs and it's also leaner.

The HTC 10 UI can be customized with one of the thousands of available themes, and you can create your own by mixing and matching parts you like or just using a photo as a base.

Latest HTC Sense offers many themes and free-form layout on the homescreen

The "Freestyle Layout" does away with the familiar grid of icons and lets you place each icon, widget, and even stickers wherever you please, even overlapping each other. Hey, your desk is messy, why not your homescreen?

Homescreen and app drawer

Something we appreciate is that HTC looked at the app package and removed duplicates by picking the best app for each function, whether it was an HTC-made app or it comes from the standard Google package. Google's apps have significantly improved in quality recently, but some maker apps still offer additional features.

You'd think that having fewer apps will use less storage, but on the 32GB phone you get about 23GB available (and 52GB on the 64GB version).

Anyway, the streamlining continues with a secret auto-optimization algorithm that launches apps twice as fast as the One M9. Boost+ helps by limiting power use by background apps and balancing performance and power draw for games.

Notification area and settings

The fingerprint reader can secure the lockscreen, obviously, but App Lock gives you finer-grained control by letting you lock individual apps. The fingerprint reader needs just 0.2 seconds to do its job.

By the way, HTC has improved the responsiveness of the touchscreen by as much as 50% compared to the One M9. This makes the HTC 10 more adept in tracking your finger across the screen.

Benchmarks

HTC 10 is powered by the latest Qualcomm chipset - the Snapdragon 820. It has a quad-core Kryo processor by Qualcomm design, an Adreno 530 GPU, and 4GB of RAM. Naturally, the processor allows two Kryo cores to tick at 2.15GHz and the other pair to work at 1.6GHz.

We've already seen the Snapdragon in action within the Xiaomi Mi 5 and the LG G5, and we know it performs great. Regardless of the screen resolution used (1080p or a 1440p), the S820 chip delivers flagship performance.

Yesterday, at the HTC 10 announcement, we didn't have enough time to run some tests, but now that we have the device at our disposal, we ran all sorts of benchmarks.

Indeed, a single Kryo core is a beast, and currently it's one of the best solutions on the market together with Apple's Twister CPU. The single-core performance is crucial for smooth OS operations, and the Kryo cores are up to the task.

GeekBench 3 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  2542
• HTC 10
  2368
• LG G5
  2328
• Xiaomi Mi 5
  2305
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  2170
• Huawei P9
  1819
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  1490

The multi-core score isn't as impressive, because there are four Kryo cores inside the Snapdragon 820, while the Kirin 955 in Huawei P9, or the Exynos chip inside the Galaxy S7 feature octa-core processors. Still, considering the number of cores, we could easily consider those points as an excellent grade.

GeekBench 3 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei P9
  6558
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  6360
• LG G5
  5362
• Xiaomi Mi 5
  5358
• HTC 10
  5257
• Apple iPhone 6s
  4427
• Sony Xperia Z5
  4017
• HTC One M9
  3761
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  2923

The HTC 10 easily aced the AnTuTu 6, and it bested the rest of its siblings by a huge margin. Since the HTC 10 has similar hardware to the LG G5, we guess some software optimizations are the reason for the great performance.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• HTC 10
  154031
• LG G5
  134541
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  132084
• Xiaomi Mi 5
  131758
• Apple iPhone 6s
  129990
• Huawei P9
  98069
• HTC One M9
  73021

The BaseMark OS II compound bench outed an oddly low score, which makes us believe there might be some problem with the app itself and the new Sense UI. We'll redo this test when possible.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  2195
• Xiaomi Mi 5
  2180
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  2128
• Huawei P9
  2068
• LG G5
  2065
• HTC 10
  1839
• Sony Xperia Z5
  1482
• HTC One M9
  1365
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  1186

HTC 10 uses the latest Adreno 530, which is the best GPU on the market right now. The offscreen GPU benchmarks below prove that.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC 10
  47
• LG G5
  47
• Xiaomi Mi 5
  45
• Apple iPhone 6s
  39.5
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  38
• Sony Xperia Z5
  24
• HTC One M9
  23
• Huawei P9
  18
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  12

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC 10
  31
• Xiaomi Mi 5
  30
• LG G5
  30
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  28
• Sony Xperia Z5
  18
• Huawei P9
  10

GFX 3.1 Car scene (offscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC 10
  18
• Xiaomi Mi 5
  17
• LG G5
  16
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  15
• Huawei P9
  6.5

Running the GPU test on the native 1440p resolution takes a serious toll on framerates, but they remain flagship-grade. The Mi 5, which has the same GPU but runs on 1080p, expectedly does better here.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  53.6
• Xiaomi Mi 5
  43
• HTC 10
  28
• LG G5
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  27
• Sony Xperia Z5
  25
• HTC One M9
  24
• Huawei P9
  19
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  13

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 5
  29
• Sony Xperia Z5
  19
• HTC 10
  15
• LG G5
  15
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  15
• Huawei P9
  11

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 5
  17
• HTC 10
  9.9
• LG G5
  8.8
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  7.9
• Huawei P9
  7.1

In the BaseMark X GPU test the HTC 10 scores on par with its chipset sibling - the LG G5.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 5
  33110
• Samsung Galaxy S7
  32345
• LG G5
  29456
• HTC 10
  28882
• Sony Xperia Z5
  23923
• HTC One M9
  19848
• Huawei P9
  16942
• HTC One (M8) Lollipop
  12257

The HTC 10 scores speak for themselves - the new flagship delivers a stellar performance, and we expected nothing less from a Snapdragon 820 smartphone. The chip is sure to serve the HTC 10 hassle-free for the years to come.