HTC Hopes Powerful HTC 10 Will Return It To Smartphone Relevancy

HTC hopes the added power and media capabilities of its new flagship smartphone, the HTC 10, will help the company re-establish itself among Android heavyweights such as Samsung and Huawei.

The HTC 10 boasts the most powerful audio and camera capabilities ever included in one of the Taiwanese manufacturer’s smartphones, including what it claims to be the world’s first optically-stabilised front facing camera and 4K video with first stereo 24-bit Hi-Res audio recording.

Fire it up

The device is cased in an all-metal unibody and has a 5.2 inch HD display, capable of a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution (564 pixels per inch), and protected by Gorilla Glass. On the rear is a fingerprint scanner that promises to unlock the smartphone in just 0.2 seconds.

Inside, the HTC compares favourably with its peers thanks to a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 64-bit processor that can be clocked up to 2.2GHz, backed by 4GB of RAM and either 32GB or 64GB of storage (which can be boosted up to 2TB via microSD)

Weighing in at 161g and just 9mm across, the HTC 10 features an impressive 3000mAh battery that the company says can offer over a full day’s heavy usage, and thanks to Quick Charge 3.0 technology can generate up to 50 percent life in just 30 minutes.

There’s also Android 6.0 Marshmallow topped by HTC’s own Sense UI, and USB 3.1, Bluetooth 4.2 and NFC for connectivity.

Snap happy

The HTC 10’s imaging features are being pushed heavily by the company. On the rear of the device is a 12 megapixel camera that can launch in just 0.6 seconds. Unlike some competing devices, such as the Huawei P9, there is no dual lens technology, but users can still take 4K video and shoot slow motion video at 720P and 120fps.

This is paired with a 5 megapixel front-facing camera with the aforementioned optically stabilised lens. What this means in real terms is better selfies, especially with the ‘UltraSelfie’ function which boosts image quality in low light.

HTC has struggled to compete in the smartphone market in recent years despite a period of sustained success during the early years of the Android platform and a string of critically acclaimed devices like the HTC one. The company has also looked towards the fledgling virtual reality (VR) market for growth, with its HTC Vive headset.

The HTC 10 will be available from April 2016 in four colour combinations, however there’s no information on prices just yet.

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