Since they are almost the same size, it's not surprising that the HTC 10, HTC's latest flagship, and the One M9, its 2015 offering, are being compared with one another. But what advantages does the new one have over the older model?
Many would agree that the HTC One M9 is a superb-looking phone, and not surprisingly, so is the HTC 10. Metal plays a big part in the Taiwanese tech giant's premium phones, so both units bring in a lot of metal.
However, the HTC 10 sports a redesigned body. It is slimmer, less rounded with its chamfered-edge design, and weighs heavier. Aside from being taller, the company logo on the front was taken out, and the black strip at the bottom of the screen is nowhere to be seen. Coincidentally, the dual speaker grill that fans have been accustomed to seeing is not present anymore. Android Authority reported that a BoomSound High Fidelity speaker is located at the top of the screen, while a low-frequency speaker, the bass, is placed at the bottom portion of the phone.
"Here comes the new boom. You'll hear it," HTC posted on Twitter, referring to the effect of the new speaker system.
The latest smartphone sports a bigger screen than the year-old model, but not really that much. The previous one came with 5-inch screen with a 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution and a pixel density of 441 ppi. The latest is 5.2 inches with 1440 x 2560 pixel resolution as well as higher pixel density of 564 ppi. This means that the HTC 10 is able to produce better quality and more pixel-dense images. Adding more to the quality is its QHD S-LCD 5 screen.
The HTC 10 also brings in a newer processor, the 64-bit quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC. It is then paired with 4GB of RAM and an Adreno 530 GPU. Storage variants of 32GB and 64GB are available, expandable up to 200GB. The HTC One M9 came with the Snapdragon 810, 3GB of RAM and only 32GB of storage space.
The camera was toned down on the latest model. Instead of a 20MP main camera, it is now just 12MP UltraPixel, equipped with laser autofocus and image stabilization. MobilePhones said that there is no loss in the quality of the photos being captured by the rear-facing camera even though it has a lower megapixel count. The front snapper stayed the same at 5MP
The battery has also been bumped up on the latest HTC flagship smartphone, rated at 3,000 mAh. The HTC 10 is estimated to bring 456 hours or 19 days of standby time and 27 hours of talk time on 3G and 4G, which is a few hours more than its predecessor.
The HTC 10 also comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and HTC Sense version 8 for its UI.
U.S residents can now pre-order their unlocked HTC 10 32GB variant from its official website for US$700, either in carbon gray/black or silver/black. No release date is available at the moment.
