If there’s one phone HTC is scared of, it’s surely the Samsung Galaxy S7. Samsung typically outsells HTC and the Galaxy S7 is one of the best handsets it’s made in years.
But the HTC 10 looks fit for the fight. It plays to the company’s strengths, with a strong design and impressive audio skills, while vastly improving in the areas where HTC is sometimes lacking.
It could be a tough call deciding between these two superphones, but to make things a little easier we’ve compared them across all the key areas.
- Read our hands on: HTC 10 review
Contents
Design
The HTC 10 has a fairly slim metal unibody, topping out at 9.0mm. Chamfered edges and an almost seamless design make the HTC 10 a great looking handset.
But Samsung, once the king of plastic, has really impressed with the Galaxy S7 too. Rather than being a slab of metal like the HTC 10 it has a glass back, with a metal edge. It’s ever so slightly curved, yet still slimmer than the HTC 10 at 7.9mm and it looks gorgeous, though the back can be a bit of a fingerprint magnet.
Despite a different choice of materials, the two phones actually look quite similar, especially from the front, with both sporting oblong home buttons. Appearance wise it largely comes down to whether you prefer metal or glass for your handset, though the HTC 10 feels a little chunkier than the Galaxy S7.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 also has an ace up its sleeve- it’s dust proof and water resistant, which the HTC 10 isn’t.
Display
These two phones both have 1440 x 2560 screens and they’re almost the same size, with the HTC 10 coming in at 5.2 inches and the Samsung Galaxy S7 marginally smaller at 5.1 inches.
That gives Samsung’s phone a slightly higher pixel density of 577 pixels per inch, to the HTC 10’s 564, but that’s not a difference you’ll notice.
One that you might notice though is the difference in technology. The Samsung Galaxy S7 has a Super AMOLED display, while the HTC 10 has a Super LCD 5 one. Samsung’s screens can sometimes seem a little over saturated, but colors are actually quite natural on the S7 and it also sports strong contrast.
We’ll reserve final judgement of the HTC 10’s screen for our review, but it looks impressive too with HTC promising bright colors and impeccable responsiveness.
OS and interface
The HTC 10 runs Android Marshmallow overlaid with the company’s Sense UI. This is one of the better Android overlays and it’s been further refined here, with minimal bloat and a focus on customisation.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 is also on Marshmallow, but its TouchWiz overlay is slightly more intrusive. It comes with a large number of pre-installed apps and strays further from Material design than we’d like. It’s not awful, but it’s an acquired taste.
It’s worth mentioning here that both handsets also have a fingerprint scanner, though the HTC 10’s is a bit more versatile, as it can be used to lock apps as well as securing the phone.
Power and storage
Both of these phones are packing a whole lot of power. The HTC 10 has a quad-core Snapdragon 820 chip clocked at up to 2.2GHz, coupled with 4GB of RAM.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 on the other hand comes in two different configurations depending on where you are. Either you get essentially the same set up as the HTC 10, albeit topping out at 2.15GHz, or you get an octa-core Exynos 8890 processor clocked at up to 2.3GHz, again with 4GB of RAM.
The upshot is that the HTC 10 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 are comparably powerful and both have more than enough grunt to blow through anything you’re likely to throw at them.
Storage is somewhat similar too. Both phones have a microSD card slot and both have 32GB built in, though the HTC 10 will also be sold in a 64GB flavour in some locales.
Camera
The HTC 10 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 range are sitting pretty with the joint highest mobile DxOMark scores, so you can expect a lot from both of their snappers.
In practice we’re not entirely sold on the HTC 10’s camera just yet, with early tests revealing erratic light levels and a finicky autofocus, but we’ll be putting it through a full review before we pass final judgement.
On paper it certainly sounds promising, with a 12MP sensor on the back, packed with larger UltraPixels to let more light in, optical image stabilisation (OIS) and a 5MP front-facing camera which also has OIS.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 has a 12MP snapper of its own, which again features OIS and hugely impressed us in tests, even in low light, so HTC’s UltraPixels will have some competition here.
The front-facing camera on the S7 is a bit more run of the mill though. It’s a 5MP one, but with no OIS. So if you’re serious about selfies the HTC 10 looks to have the edge there.
Battery
Both the HTC 10 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 have 3000mAh juice packs, which combined with the similar specs and screens suggests they might have comparable life.
We haven’t had a chance to fully put the HTC 10 through its paces yet, but HTC reckons it can last for up to two days on a single charge, helped in part by its ‘Boost+’ system, which runs in the background to optimize performance.
If true that gives it an edge on the S7, which we found could stretch to a day and a half at a push, but not to two days.
Another stat given by HTC is that it can last for up to 27 hours of talk time, which compares favorably to the Samsung Galaxy S7’s 22 hours. Both phones support fast charging, so when it comes time to juice them up you can do so quickly.
Audio
This is one area where HTC could have Samsung beat. First there’s the BoomSound speakers, which this time around fire out of the bottom and earpiece of the phone, rather than the front. They’re loud and bass-heavy, though not being front-firing is a shame.
Not that the Samsung Galaxy S7 is any better here, or even as good, with just a single speaker grille on the bottom edge of the phone.
When it comes to headphones both handsets excel. They both support Hi-Res audio, tailored sound based on your hearing and audio upscaling.
Release date and price
The Samsung Galaxy S7 is out now and priced at around £569/$650/AU$1,149. The HTC 10 is launching later in April and will probably land for a similar price. The exact cost hasn’t been confirmed, but it’s certainly got the tech to justify a price tag as high as the S7’s.
Early verdict
The HTC 10 looks to improve on the HTC One M9 in almost every way, with a sharper screen, more power, a superior camera and the addition of a fingerprint scanner.
Yet while it’s a clear upgrade on last year’s handset it doesn’t really have much that we haven’t seen elsewhere, such as on the Samsung Galaxy S7. On paper these are very similar phones, with just a handful of substantial differences, such as the S7’s waterproofing and the HTC 10’s OIS-packing selfie snapper.
We’ll let you know how the HTC 10 really stacks up once we’ve put it through a full review, but on the evidence we’ve seen so far it should be mentionable in the same breath as the S7, but probably won’t topple it.
- Not sold on either of these? You could always wait for the iPhone 7.
[“source-Gadgets”]
