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You're watching an episode of the HTC 10 30-day challenge. In this video, we discuss the display. Believe it or not, the HTC 10 display has changed a lot in the last 12 months or so. In the build video, we talked about how HTC removed the HTC banner underneath the display in their previous flagships and added capacitive touch buttons. This results in a display that takes up most of the front of the device. It's a 5.2-inch display which is 0.2 inches larger than the HTC One M9 and HTC One M8 and 0.5 inches larger than the 4.7-inch One M7 display.
For the average user, the only goal in mind is display size between 5.1-inch and 5.3 inches, any bigger would be too big for a lot of users and any smaller it would be too small. Another important factor when talking about display size is the bezels. The thinner the bezels, the bigger the display a manufacturer can add without taking up a bigger footprint. Thankfully, the HTC 10 managed to trim down the bezel size, which is one of the reasons they added a larger display.
So how about that display? It's a 5.2-inch Super LCD5 capacitive touchscreen. It features curved edged Corning Gorilla Glass to protect the phone from various falls and scratches. And unlike any other HTC flagship, the display now features a Quad HD resolution 2560 x 1440. Whereas the HTC One M9 features a 441ppi, the HTC 10 features a 564ppi index. Some people may not notice the difference but personally, I can. Mostly because I use my smartphone too closely at times; maybe lying in bed or on the couch I tend to hold the phone closer to my eye so the denser the resolution, it's technically appreciated even though I shouldn't be holding it that close to my eyes.
Now there's a heated debate between AMOLED or LCD displays. Basically, it comes down to how color accurate you want your display to be or how vibrant the display you want. AMOLED displays tend to create over saturated and ultra contracting colors while sacrificing brightness and visibility in direct sunlight. Each pixel can be individually lit up. Black pixels aren't dark at all, which creates a super contrasty effect and does also save some battery life. LCD displays, on the other hand, tend to create more color accurate panels that are usually brighter so visibly outdoors isn't generally a problem or at least it's not as bad of a problem as AMOLED displays. But since it relies solely on a backlight, pixels cannot be individually controlled. Even though LCDs tend to produce a color gamut similar to the standard FVG color gamut used by image and various media, it's not all perfect as the white light is synthesized with blue lights so whites generally aren't as true color whites as high-end AMOLED displays.
But with that all said and done and behind us, how does the HTC 10 display honestly look from a casual user's perspective? I've always preferred AMOLED displays. My first smartphone was the Galaxy Fascinate. But this was one of the first LCD displays that I would gladly use over an AMOLED panel without feeling like I'm missing something. That might be because I'm using the Vivid mode which is set at default. In the display settings, you can choose a more color accurate appearance or you can choose a vivid experience similar to AMOLED displays, which is what I have running right here. You can even tweak the panel to display a more warm or cold look, which is very neat. The display can get very bright and look surprisingly good in direct sunlight. However, it could be a smidge brighter. And at night, I wish it would be a smidge dimmer because it's still a little bit too bright at its lowest brightness for my eyes.
There are some Motion Launch gestures. There's the standard double tap to wake up and sleep. There's a swipe up to unlock so when your screen's out, you can pick up your phone in portrait orientation and swipe up to unlock. A swipe left to go to the home screen mode, a swipe right to launch BlinkFeed if you're running the default launcher and then a double swipe down to open the camera. The HTC 10 doesn't have a built-in Always On screen mode that the Galaxy S7 or LG G5 features.
But overall, I'm impressed with this panel. It's bigger, more pixel-packed and more vibrant than the past LCD panels of HTC flagships. For all the HTC 10 owners out there, let me know how you like the panel in a comment below.