Yesterday, HTC launched its latest upper mid-range phone HTC Desire 10 Pro in India. For the price of Rs. 26490, this phone looks overpriced. This phone will be available starting December 15. This phone looks good in terms of design and boasts a lot about its camera, but specifications on paper disappoint a lot.
I had a chance to spend few hours with the phone and here is the hands-on impressions of Desire 10 Pro
Build and design
The design of the phone is attractive This phone looks much similar to Desire 10 Lifestyle. Golden lines around edges and back panel look very attractive in ‘Stone Black’ variant. While most of the phones in this price segment have adopted metal build, HTC is giving a plastic build with a matte finish at the back.
This phone has volume rockers and power button at the right edge. The power button is textured while the volume rocker is flat. It looks good and contributes in the looks.
At the left edge, it has dual SIM card tray. It has 3.5 mm audio jack at the top and microUSB, speaker and primary microphone at the below edge.
At back panel, you see the rear camera, dual LED flash, and laser autofocus sensor. The camera sits on the top left corner offering a slight bump.
Back also houses fingerprint sensor. At the center of the back panel, it has HTC branding with same golden color. This is a unique kind of design pattern to beautify a phone. But the build is not as solid as you will expect after paying this much of amount.
Display
HTC Desire 10 pro comes with 5.5-inch Full HD display with 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 3 glasses. It measures pixel density of 401ppi. The display didn’t disappoint and offered great color range and good viewing angles.
Software
It runs on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) with HTC Sense UI. The Sense UI comes with few interesting features and bloatware. Android 7.0 Nougat is already available but the company got no idea why they are using Marshmallow.
In the few minutes of usage, the UI felt smooth and stable with no noticeable lag.
Processor, RAM, and Storage
This phone comes with MediaTek Helio P10 octa-core processor with 4GB of RAM. This is the same process that was used in Meizu M3 Note and that phone was priced around Rs.10000.
This phone offers large storage. It comes with 64 GB of storage with an option to expand the storage up to 2TB.
Camera
This phone claims to offer good camera experience and the camera setup looks good on paper. It features 20 megapixels rear camera with f/2.2 aperture, Laser autofocus and a BSI (Back Illuminated) Sensor for low-light photography.
On the front side, it has the 13-megapixel shooter with f/2.2 aperture, Auto HDR Mode, EIS and BSI Sensor. The front camera also boasts of offering the world’s first front facing camera with a 150-degree field of view wide selfies.
Both cameras offer good photography experience. I couldn’t check the camera in detail, but the first few hours with the phone were good. I also liked the HTC’s camera interface that is simple and full of options.
The only thing I missed was the 4K recording capabilities.
Music and Fingerprint sensor
This phone comes with HTC’s trademark BoomSound mode for headphones. This offers good music experience if you have good earphones to enjoy.
The fingerprint sensor of the phone is located at the back and it performs quite well. I also want to note that the fingerprint sensor is not one of the fastest, but it does a good job. Best thing is that you build-in option to lock apps.
Connectivity and Battery
It comes with 4G LTE, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 4.2 and GPS connectivity options. This is a dual SIM phone with Hybrid slots. So, you can either use two SIM cards or One SIM card and microSD card at the same time.
This phone comes with 3000 mAh battery that claims to offer full day usage but I doubt on the claims. Well, I am 100% sure and will only be able to say anything after using the phone for few days.
Final Words
HTC Desire 10 Pro looks attractive but the pricing disappoints. While we have yet to measure its performance, we still think that the phone as no chance when OnePlus 3 is already attracting customers. HTC Fan boys can go with this and the only reason should be its camera.
