The HTC 10 Review
by Joshua Ho on September 19, 2016 8:00 AM ESTLatency with Google WALT
One of the major points of differentiation with the HTC 10 is supposed to be smoothness. This, more than anything was something that HTC emphasized repeatedly in their initial introduction of the HTC 10. This phone is supposed to be smooth in a way that most of the Android competition isn’t. It’s really kind of disappointing to me that there isn’t a lot of information in the public domain testing HTC’s claims.
So in the interest of testing this out, I managed to get a WALT device working. What's WALT, you may ask? It's an internally developed Google toolset and hardware device combination to measure touch latency on Android (and Chromebook) products. By combining some simple external sensors connected to a Teensy board with the appropriate software to measure those sensors, WALT makes it possible to directly measure several forms of touch and audio latency of an Android device. Normally this would require a high-speed camera, but Google has developed WALT as a more practical alternative, internally validatating the product against said high speed footage.
To start we can look at tap latency and screen response time. Combining these two figures together will give us the total time it takes at minimum for the device to respond to a tap. It’s worth noting here that there is an upper bound to screen response time because devices are generally locked to 60 Hz and triple buffering means that our response time at best can be 48 ms. The screen response time figure is dominated by this latency in almost all cases, with some extra overhead for the panel’s native response time and some OS overhead can be involved as well.
In tap latency the HTC 10 performs fairly well but everything is so close here that I'm not sure it really matters. In the interest of trying to see what exactly HTC was trying to highlight I also went ahead and used the drag latency test to try and see if this was a notable point of differentiation.
While I would say that WALT's drag latency test seems to be highly unreliable and I'm kind of questionable on whether these results can really be trusted, there's definitely a noticeable difference in how quickly the HTC 10 responds to a swipe compared to most of the competition. The Galaxy S7 seems to keep up which is kind of surprising. I suspect that most of the difference in response between the two devices is the momentum given to a swipe rather than the actual latency.
Misc
With every review there are a lot of little things here and there that I end up discovering along the way that are interesting and worth discussing, but often cannot be discussed in a section of its own, but there are definitely things that have managed to grow past this section into their own as noteworthy.
One of the first places to start is the GNSS of this phone. I’m not sure what exactly HTC did here, but it’s remarkably fast and high quality. When connected to a network A-GPS through the cellular modem (Qualcomm gpsOne) allows for near-instant locks, but I managed to achieve a true cold lock in 1 minute and 6 seconds and it reached a precision of 13 feet within 10 seconds after initial position fix. Precision seems to be as high as 10 feet, which is pretty much the lower bound of what GPS can do without differential GPS systems which allow for precision down to about 10 centimeters.
In addition to GPS reception for whatever reason the HTC 10 seems to have noticeably good reception on AT&T LTE in the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles. It was not unusual for me to see the One M7 sitting on HSPA+ while the HTC 10 would still be on LTE. Of course, I don’t have any formal testing to back this claim up but generally speaking I saw anywhere from 3 to 6 dBm of difference in received power in favor of the HTC 10.
As far as design wins go, ST-M takes the design win for the laser auto-focus sensor, Synaptics is used for the touchscreen, Cypress CapSense Cy8C PSoC is used for the capacitive buttons, an NXP TFA9888 amp is used for the speakers, NXP PN544 is used for NFC, and an Analogix chip is used to enable the USB-C port. It’s identified only by the codename Ohio, but it’s fairly likely that this is the ANX7418. There’s also an ANX7816 for 4K30 over SlimPort. Looking at the SPI bus, for some reason there’s a Micrel KS8851 Ethernet MAC controller and HTC’s custom MCU which is referred to as CwMcuSensor. There’s also an Fingerprints FPC1155 for the fingerprint scanner, and an AK8789 hall sensor.
HTC claims that audio is over a separate DAC and amp, but I really can’t find any evidence that the HTC 10 has a DAC outside of the Snapdragon 820 in the system files, namely the WCD9335. Regardless, the speakers on the HTC 10 are a lot better than most other Android phones on the market. They’re still a step down from the One M9 or M8, but they do provide a fairly convincing stereo effect if you turn it on and overall quality is acceptable. I’m not exactly an audiophile but music over the 3.5mm jack didn’t have any noticeable issues like hissing or popping or anything strange like that.
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edlee - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link
i loved my m8, nothing i got recently feels as good as that phone did.Since that phone, i have had s6, and s7 edge, but for some reason m8 will always stick with me
bennyadamo - Thursday, October 6, 2016 - link
Agreed. The One M8 was a smartphone masterpiece. I owned both the M8 and a Galaxy S5 (and numerous iphones) and in terms of design, performance and user interface you still can't beat the M8. And HTC's Sense UI absolutely blows iOS and "Touchwiz" out of the water (just an aside, but how idiotic is "touchwiz" as a name for a UI? Or for anything else for that matter? I feel embarrassed just typing it). If you think the UI doesn't make a huge difference in your phone experience, try using Sense and Touchwiz side-by-side for a week. Even just small things like the small amount of lag time it takes for the display to re-orient from portrait to landscape when rotating the phone in your hand become infuriating when you have to live with Touchwiz daily. And besides the superior UI, the One M8 just looked and felt like a premium piece of hardware. Many, many times I had people ask me what type of phone it was or inspect it front to back when I let them hold it in their hands, impressed by the solid/premium feel of it. At this point, the One M8 is still (rather unfortunately) HTC's high-water mark. Although having said that I did just order the HTC 10 to take advantage of their sale ($150 off if you buy an unlocked phone directly from HTC from 10/1/16 to 10/8/16).Also, I read some of these comments saying that it's a waste of time to review or buy a phone 7 months after it's launch - that's not true and is a really misguided/misinformed opinion. A lot of people buy a phone that long after it's come out simply because they are waiting for their current phone contract to expire. Other reasons are because some of the teething bugs have been worked out or simply because the price drops after that amount of time (read above re: HTC's current sale on the HTC 10). The average person doesn't need to buy the newest/highest-end/highest-spec phone every year, and most people probably get 2-2.5 years out of a smartphone like this.
ipaulw83 - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
certainly not dead, the HTC 10 is a far much better choice than the G5, S7 & Note 7 "Fiasco" and other flagships. the only real threat to HTC is the OnePlus 3 but overall the build quality and camera is in favor of HTC 10... i would hate to see them die or break software updates promises as recent news, nevertheless they have a great product that is more special than any other current android flagship (IMHO).i do not own any HTC product currently or stock or anything i use an iphone and an LG nexus 5x but wanted to give my opinion
repatch - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
"far much better choice" for you perhaps. Why all the generalizing?I for one went with the LG G5, for one reason: the camera. The super wide angle camera on this thing is FANTASTIC, everyone who's seen it marvels at the kind of shots you get with it. It's REALLY fun. For ME, the "far much better choice" is the G5, but that won't apply to most others.
The S7 for me was a no go due to the glass back (can't stand glass backs because they are so prone to breakage, my Nexus 4 went through 3, and NONE of those were broken due to drops). The HTC 10 just didn't have anything 'special' going for it.
Again, that's MY opinion, it's best to sit down and write down what are go/no go's, for YOU, and make a choice that way.
IMHO of course.
Impulses - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link
I really wanted to like LG's latest, I use an ultra wide lens on my mirrorless M4/3 cameras so that was right up my alley... The overall package (and uber gimmicky modules on their latest) never convinced me.If I HAD picked up a new phone last year it would've been a 10, for the better audio and lack of TouchWiz... My N5 is still trucking along tho, at least until the Pixels come out.
This breadth of choices, even in a market that's contacting, is still something I really like about the Android ecosystem.
FourEyedGeek - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
Already have the Galaxy S7...smorebuds - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
And this article is for you and only you...FourEyedGeek - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link
Its for all those people who want to make a decision on buying a new smartphone, but might have been helpful to those making a choice months ago don't you think?Freido - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
HTC 10 is a nice looking phone. But it lacks a high brightness screen. It is a tad bigger as well. Thats my personal opinion. If it was a bit smaller like 4.9", I would have bought it. I've decided to buy Sony X compact or iPhone SE. Recent Sony phones like xlX performance and XZ sports very good displays I think. Looks as stunning as of iphones IPS displays.I was wondering why Anandtech never reviews Sony flagships even though they does release good phones with less gimmicks.
Will anyone consider my suggestion?
fanofanand - Monday, September 19, 2016 - link
They have addressed this in the past, typically Sony does not give out samples to the press. In today's "give me everything for free" world, websites like this simply don't have the excess cash to go buying every cool new toy that comes out. Would it be sweet? Absolutely, but for the most part if Anandtech doesn't review something it's because they couldn't obtain one from the company.