Can HTC 10 take on Samsung Galaxy S7?

HTC surely has armed its latest flagship to teeth, and with Samsung Galaxy S7 already having a head start, all this firepower bodes well for HTC. Having said that, it will be interesting to see how the HTC 10 is priced, says Himanshu Juneja

After much speculations, HTC confirmed that it will indeed be the global variant of HTC 10 that is headed for India.

Officially launched on April 12, HTC's president for South Asia, Mr Faisal Siddiqui said: "We are pleased to announce that global flagship HTC 10 is coming soon to India. Stay tuned for the announcement and the availability date."

Ear;ier, disenchantment had followed when HTC's Indian website indicated that a truncated version, the 'HTC 10 Lifestyle', would be launched in India. This would have meant Snapdragon 652 with 3GB RAM model seeing a release instead of the much powerful global variant.

The HTC 10 carries a metal unibody, complete with chamfered edges. The 5.2-inch QuadHD display, rendered in Corning Gorilla Glass 4, will be a 2k variant. With a resolution of 1440 x 2560p, not opting for an AMOLED display would mean that it loses out on the deep blacks, but thankfully, LCD panels have come a long way since the days when they were introduced and one can expect a differently enabled class leading display here.

HTC seems to have posed faith with Qualcomm and decided to power their latest flagship with Snapdragon 820 SoC, along with Adreno 530 GPU. 4 GB of RAM makes it quite future proof, and 32/64 GB storage capacity should come in handy. As a cherry on top, users will be able to expand the storage space by another 200 GB, via microSD card. The expandable memory slot feature is definitely back in vogue.

The flagships this year seem to be jousting for top honours especially in the camera department, and looks like HTC has enough gas in the tank to rival Samsung's Galaxy S7 mobile phones. HTC 10 comes with 12 MP (ultrapixel) camera with f/1.8 aperture on the rear, fully armed with optical image stabilisation (OIS), laser autofocus, and dual LED flash. HTC did not stop here, and provided the 5 MP front facing camera with its own OIS, autofocus and a screen flash. The cameras carry 1.55µm and 1.34 µm pixel size respectively.

The much acclaimed BoomSound HiFi dual speaker setup has been included on the HTC 10. The Dolby Audio equipped speakers have separate woofer and tweeter designed for them, and if that was not enough, they have their dedicated amplifiers as well.

All the mind boggling configuration is backed up by a non-removable 3,000 mAh battery. HTC promises around 27 hours of talk time. The battery supports Quick Charge 3.0. HTC decided to include the latest USB Type C connector with their marquee product of the year.

Moving on to the operating system, HTC is again not cutting any corners here and will bring the handset running on Android Marshmallow (6.0) as the underlying OS, while the acclaimed HTC Sense UI sits atop. HTC has promised to keep the skinning to a bare minimum, even going to the extent of promising that there will be no duplication of apps.

There is also HTC's pledge going around, promising the latest Google updates within 90 days of receiving them. It is expected that the latest flagship will be covered under this scheme.

On the connectivity front, HTC 10 comes equipped with a fingerprint scanner, LTE, WiFi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac), and Bluetooth (ver 4.0). HTC again beefed this section up by providing support for streaming via Chromecast, Miracast and Airplay.

HTC surely has armed its latest flagship to teeth, and with Samsung Galaxy S7 already having a head start, all this firepower bodes well for HTC. Having said that, it will be interesting to see how the HTC 10 is priced. The base price for the handset has been pegged at USD $699, which translates to about Rs 46,413. Even if HTC goes beyond the price tag of Samsung S7 (Rs 49,000), the sheer amount of features may well justify the move. How the Indian consumers lap it up, remains to be seen.

It will also be interesting to see if the HTC 10 Lifestyle variant is launched as well, as a more pocket-friendly option.