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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eek2121 - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
That's actually not true. Quite a few people wait for their contract to be up (STILL). I was able to snag an HTC One M8 several months after it's release for FREE. Note that I pay $62.99/mo on Verizon for 2 gb of data (unlimited T&T). It would cost me more to NOT do contract pricing, so I keep doing the 2 year contract thing.rabidkevin - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
I bought an HTC 10, I pick up a new phone every 2 to 2.5 years. I'm not part of your statistic nor is my brother.djc208 - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Maybe, but then again I got a One M9 for free basically, and while I knew the M9 wasn't really an update it's still a great phone other than the camera, and honestly HTC has been really good about supporting software updates. Even now the One M9 is supposed to get Android N, and they were pretty quick with marshmallow even with the carrier in the middle.At this point if you can keep me in software updates for more than a few months it means more than most of this hardware gimmickry. Lost of fast, quality phones out there now as this shows, question is who will still be supporting it a year from now. It's why I didn't want another LG phone.
philehidiot - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
I've just had an M9 update. Whilst there are camera issues and it takes a lot of time and effort to get the shot you want sometimes, the results can be damned good and the updates for a good two years make a HTC phone a worthwhile investment. With some manufacturers the initial review is what you'll get even if you get the phone a few months down the line. HTC addresses problems throughout the lifecycle of the product which is one reason I prefer them. As stated in this review, the camera section is more representative of what you'll get compared to initial reviews based on early software.TheMysteryMan11 - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Also there is OnePlus 3. Excellent phone even if Pixel fails to impress.goatfajitas - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
"if your only measure of a quality of device is how many units its marketing is capable of selling, then you're reading reviews on the wrong site."That might have been true many years ago, but this site "sold it's soul" in recent years. It's kind of an "Apple rah rah" site now. Not that the volume of articles are all about Apple, but Apple products don't get the same critical analysis that competing products get. That was true a few years before Anand went to work for Apple, and still true today.
Meteor2 - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Oh shut up.JKJK - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
What? Anand works for apple?goatfajitas - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
Not sure if you are baiting or not, but in case not yes, Anand went to work for Apple a few years ago.Sand6man - Wednesday, October 5, 2016 - link
Just cause you hate Apple products you want to discredit this site, get a life. They are just stating the numbers and results.