The HTC 10 Review
by Joshua Ho on September 19, 2016 8:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
One of the major areas worth discussing when it comes to mobile devices is computing performance. As much as OEMs try to not talk about this, ultimately what distinguishes a smartphone from a featurephone or simple flip phone is dramatically improved compute. Running a web browser, running a full Linux OS with apps that require JIT or AOT compilation are all tasks that demand large amounts of system memory and compute. Similarly, any kind of 3D game is going to require quite a bit of compute power and memory in general. As mentioned in previous reviews a major focus for this year has been trying to make our benchmarks more focused on real-world performance, so we’ll be better able to show how the HTC 10 actually performs relative to other devices on the market.
In the basic browser benchmarks, we can see that the HTC 10 is pretty much on par with all other Snapdragon 820 devices. This shouldn't really come as a surprise given how much of an optimization target all of these benchmarks are for the OEMs and SoC vendors, but performance in general on Snapdragon 820 is not necessarily great for web browsing with Chrome.
PCMark is very sensitive to DVFS changes in most cases so it's interesting to see how closely it performed to the Galaxy S7 and G5. What is notable here is the poor showing in video playback, which persists even if you use HTC's CPU cheats which are still accessible from the developer settings. The average scores that PCMark records is significantly higher than what I can achieve with the HTC 10 unless I enable high CPU performance mode. Determining what this means has been left as an exercise to the reader.
Looking at the HTC 10 overall results it might be tempting to simply suggest that overall performance is comparable to the Galaxy S7 with S820 but when you look at the individual breakdown the main reason why the HTC 10 seems to be so slow is because the location provider in Maps is causing its launch time to be significantly higher than most phones I've seen before. In just about every other situation the Galaxy S7 is significantly behind the HTC 10. Overall, I think the HTC 10 performance is in line with what I'd expect for a Snapdragon 820 phone here.
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Badelhas - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
Very well putJKJK - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
Anand actually started to measure sound quality of phones before he left, but it ended up dead in the water after 2-3 models.I think GSM Arena has audio measurements. This is important for me, and the reason for buying M7, M8 and M9. Not sure about the pre/dac in HTC10 thought. But I just ordered the HTC10, so I'll find out soon!
Zoomer - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link
Tested with my AKG K550. Drives it pretty easily. Quite transparent, and the boomsound profile can act as a EQ to cure deficiencies.Haldi - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
There is definitely a separate DAC in the HTC10, it's called Aqstic.From the official Qualcomm website.... https://www.qualcomm.com/news/snapdragon/2016/06/0...
If you take a look at some tests HTC10 vs G5 or S7 you can see a huge difference.
Oh yeah, and Talking about PowerBiotics.... HTC's TaskScheduler which reduces the Load on Big cores when the phone gets too hot sucks. Really. 4th core is going almost offline if the phone gets too hot. Welcome to Triplecore world!
And charging from 1% to 100% Takes roughly 90 Minutes. Charging from 1% untill it stops/constant current is 150 Minutes. Anandtech's "using the time it takes for the device to drop to a certain level of power draw from the wall" is somewhat inbetween this.
P.S if you think the EIS in video recording works fine, go into a pineforest and take a video of the Peaks. Slowly paning from left to right. 1080p only.
ACM.1899 - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
if it's integrated within SD820 why don't other smartphone such as mi5 sound as good.unless it's another chip...
ACM.1899 - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
and i think Mi5 SD820 chip is not the same as in other flagship.philehidiot - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Just a thought but as you quite rightly said the OEMs don't pay attention to anything you don't test.... My HTC M9 seems to be very dodgy when placed in an area known for consistent 4G signal and will sometimes take ages to switch from "G" or "E" to "4G" - sometimes it will do it briskly and sometimes it will take an age and some prodding. Is there anyway you can test how the modems cope and adapt to various data signals being available?Unhappyhtc10 - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Bought it 2/3 weeks ago!At first it looked good with the quality of pictures, great sound, organiser (pictures, music etc...) and of course on paper make you want to give a try!!
After taking some time to get my hand around it (i had an iphone) i noticed that a lot of the functionnalities are not even close or inexistant than on a samsung. For ei you can have skype BUT can't even use the video! Can only take the voice. Then i am told to have another app that no one who use skype will have... I mean really?? And their is other stuff suche as the keyboard sensitivity, battery life which advertise lasting 27 hours on phone call supposedly but after about 45mins on the gps google map it drained it from 100% to circa 55% (you better not be traveling far...)
Conclusion: i have past the 14 days exchange at the store so if i can't exchange it i will be stuck with this crap!! (have it for 20days)
fanofanand - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Considering you created a profile just to make that comment, I'd say you seem like the typical Apple customer, and that's where you would likely be happiest. Everything you wrote screams of "user error". Go back to your shiny gadget and be happy.Zoomer - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
I have the ten and can say that I've not noticed the battery issues with navigation. Besides, what does talk time claims have to do with gps?Sounds like a troll since the organizer is play music and Google photos. A stated in the article.