It’s been about a month since the HTC 10 started shipping out to the fine folks who bought an unlocked model. Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile eventually followed suit, which hopefully means that the majority of people who wanted to buy HTC’s latest flagship smartphone, and were able to, have picked up the handset.
The HTC 10 is a return to form for the company, as far as I’m concerned. Not only is it one of the best built handsets, it’s also just a refined smartphone. HTC focused on what mattered, improving the audio while also ditching the front-facing speakers (something I wish it still had, though), and even managed to make the camera much better than what’s been previously put out there on the market.
The HTC 10 is a flagship without any real gimmicks, too. There’s no curved display. There’s no modular design. It’s just a flagship, with a ridiculously good specs sheet to show off to the world. It’s a bit of a sobering reality, right? When gimmicks are so prominent, such a huge focus, the HTC 10 just wants to be a great smartphone.
And it succeeds! The HTC 10 really is a fantastic device.
But of course the reviews are only part of the equation. Now that the device is out there in the real world, in the hands of real consumers and being used as true daily drivers, HTC can get some real feedback. We’ve seen HTC launch a good phone in the past, and, despite the accolades and reviews, follow that up with less-than-stellar successors.
One can hope that isn’t the case this time around.
Still, the HTC 10 isn’t perfect, right? For me, personally, I’d want a slightly smaller screen — with the same resolution it has. A 5.2-inch display isn’t egregious by any means, not compared to other flagship smartphones out there, but at 4.7 inches I’d be a ridiculously happy camper.
There’s a part of me that wants to say I’d prefer having stock Android on the HTC 10, but I don’t even know if that’s really the case. HTC’s Sense UI on the 10 is pretty great, and I could always just put the Google Now launcher on there if I really wanted that stock feel.
Could the battery be bigger? 3000mAh seems like it might be “big enough,” and I haven’t had any real issues with battery life in general. 4GB of RAM seems more than enough, even for a flagship Android phone. And the 64GB of built-in storage is great, but the microSD card slot should be plenty appealing to the majority of potential buyers out there.
But this is where you get to chime in. Of course, as usual, I want to hear from the people who not only bought and kept the HTC 10, but also the ones who picked one up but ultimately decided to return it: What would you change about the 10? And if you thought about picking up the 10, but ultimately went a different route, what about the phone made you opt out? Let me know!