Verizon HTC 10 Review

I spent the last two weeks of my life using a HTC 10 from Verizon Wireless. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not the biggest fan of HTC devices. I felt a little uneasy using it because I knew deep down, I probably wouldn’t give it a fair shake. Despite my reservations, I cracked open the box, pulled the phone out and powered it on. I’d seen a few photos of the HTC 10 and I thought the design looked pretty solid, but the review unit I got was different. It had maintained the solid aluminum look on the front, but the back had a crazy texture to it. It had a sort of brushed metal look/feel to it, which made the phone really slippery to hold on to. There’s also a physical home button that doubles as a fingerprint reader on the front of the device. HTC decided to move to a USB Type C charger for the HTC 10, giving it rapid charging capability and a leg up on other smartphones.

On the inside, the HTC 10 isn’t much more special than most other mid-level smartphones available today. There’s a 5.2 inch Quad HD (2560 X 1440 pixels, 564 PPI) display on the HTC 10. It performed pretty well, maintaining its vibrance in direct sunlight and at times actually looked more crisp than my Nexus 6P. On the performance side of things, the HTC 10 worked about as well as I expected. The battery life left a little to be desired, as I found myself scrambling for a charger often. Thankfully, the USB Type C charger allowed for a quick charge, so I’d regain about half of my 3,000 mAh battery in 30 mins. On the inside, the HTC 10 rocks a quad-core Snapdragon 820 processor, backed by 4GB of RAM. There’s also 32GB of storage available, with an SD slot that’s expandable up to 2TB of additional memory.

I found myself at odds with the camera on the HTC 10. There’s a 5MP shooter on the front of the device, with the main 12MP camera on the rear. On one hand, it definitely got the job done, but the quality of the photos could’ve definitely been better. Most of the pics I took seemed to be a bit noisy and granular, while also suffering from over saturation. The selfie camera was also decent at taking pics, but in dark or low light scenarios, you may as well forget about it. HTC allowed users the capability to record video in 4K resolution on the 10. While being an awesome feature that churned out pretty solid results, saving the file meant sacrificing a ton of precious memory.

While I can’t wholeheartedly say the HTC 10 is the best phone out now, it’s far from the worst. It’s a great mid-range device with several great features that most users will enjoy. In the eyes of the power user though, it’ll continually fall short when compared to other devices on the market. The HTC 10 is a solid device for those looking for a capable smartphone without a ton of extra punch behind it. The HTC 10 is available now exclusively from Verizon Wireless