HTC announces it’s flagship for 2016, the HTC 10

After over a month of anticipation and rumors, HTC has finally announced its flagship for 2016. The HTC 10 is the Taiwanese multinational’s flagship for this year. Yes, the HTC 10, not the HTC One 10. HTC has officially gotten rid of the ‘One’ tagline for its flagship line.

Despite the change in name, HTC still continues to work on the lines of its previous flagships. The HTC 10 has a design that is much similar to the original HTC One. It has a curved edge aluminium body that comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection on the screen. On the front, the smartphone has two capacitive buttons (for recent apps and back option) with the fingerprint sensor located in the middle of these buttons.

Moving on towards the specifications for the phone, the 10 has the most powerful Qualcomm chipset to date, i.e. the Snapdragon 820 with a duo of Dual Core Kryo clocked at 2.15 GHz and 1.6 GHz and the GPU is the Adreno 530, as expected. The screen on the HTC 10 is a Super LCD5 5.2” QHD display set at a resolution of 1440 x 2560. The smartphone will be available with 4 GB RAM and it will offer you the choice of having either 32 or 64 GB of internal storage with the option of expandable storage (up to 200 GB). The battery on the 10 is a 3000 mAh non-removable one.

Coming on to the points of interest for the HTC 10, the camera and the speaker. The HTC BoomSound is back and it comes back new and improved. Instead of ordinary speakers, the 10 will feature a two way speaker – one for the higher frequencies and one for the lower frequencies. Through the BoomSound speakers, the audio output is clearer and crispier than ever before. The camera on the predecessors of the HTC 10 have not quite been up to the mark but HTC promised to deliver this year. The HTC 10 features a UltraPixel 12 MP back camera that has laser auto-focus, optical image stabilization, and a f/1.8 aperture. It also has a dual-LED flash for the low light photos. The front camera has a resolution of 5 MP with auto-focus and HDR. The HTC 10 will also be the first phone to feature OIS in the front camera as well. HTC has certainly worked on the camera and we’re expecting better results from the leading smartphone manufacturer’s flagship this year.

HTC also announced HTC 10 evo later in 2016. It is a little bit downgraded version of HTC 10.

The Sense UI also gets a complete makeover with the announcement of the HTC 10. No more HTC apps for photos, calendar, or music. HTC has worked with Google to give its flagship a closer feel to natural Android than ever before. HTC has finally stripped off the additional applications and the 10 will feature a less customized, more natural user interface that is likely to give users more of a Nexus feel than a Sense UI feel. HTC will still continue with its messaging, email, and camera applications though.

Finally, the HTC 10 is a premium smartphone that is expected to hit the markets at an estimated price of about $700 (approximately 73,000/- PKR). As for availability, the smartphone is expected to be available in international markets in May.