HTC Desire 10 Pro Review: Capture Breathtaking Selfies and Gorgeous Lanscapes

From the very initial impressions, the HTC Desire 10 Pro is able of drawing fandom for just one aspect - its cameras. The rear has an (oddly) mighty 20-megapixel camera, along with a 13-megapixel front camera that would make you want to take numerous selfies. After getting acquainted with the HTC Desire Pro 10 on a vacation to Multhan, Himachal Pradesh, the HTC 10 Pro became our handy choice for capturing the spine-tingling landscapes and stunning selfies. Multhan is a small village, part of Barot valley which springs green along the banks of River Uhl.

View of River Uhl at Barot

Box Packages

The review package we received had the neatly seated HTC Desire 10 Pro along with red-accented earphones (more on earphones under Sound) and a matte-style 2A wall brick with USB to MicroUSB cable. While most manufacturers do away with it, the inclusion of earphones is interesting.

First Look and Build

On the first glance, the realization which arrived hurriedly was that the Polar white HTC Desire 10 Pro we received may attract the women more (spare me, feminazis!). Besides the white, it happens to be available in colours with rather jazzy names – Stone Black, Royal Blue, and Valentine Lux. The phone with a unibody chassis is comfortably light and thin. The design is principally an iteration to that of the HTC Desire 10 Lifestyle with better cameras, higher storage, and memory as well as a screen with richer resolution. The fingerprint sensor on the back is a welcomed addition.

HTC Desire 10 Pro Colours

The battery is locked away inside the body which is spruced up with a matte finish and antenna lines – golden in the case of the white colour – along with the outline of the body. The front has capacitive buttons for back, home, and multitasking-related haptic interaction. These are illuminated on touch and the duration of light can be customized.

HTC Desire 10 Pro Walkaround  

The front sports a 5.5-inch screen which is preserved under a sheath of Gorilla Glass. The resolution of 1080 x1920 pixels renders a pixel density of 401 ppi. A remarkable 13-megapixel selfie camera finds space on the front, along with primary earpiece, a multicoloured notification LED, and ambient light sensor. The rear face dons a gigantic, and bulgy camera lens with a 20-megapixel sensor, with dual LED flash, a BSI sensor (which could be mistaken for a Laser Autofocus Sensor), secondary noise cancellation microphone and fingerprint sensor.

HTC Desire 10 Pro Capacitive Buttons

The Hybrid SIM tray ejects off the left edge while the right houses Power Button and Volume Rocker keys. Power key is textured which makes the differentiating it from the volume key easier. The top contains a 3.5mm headphone jack, while the MicroUSB charging port, mono speaker veiled under a grill and the primary microphone find space at the bottom.

User Interface & Connectivity

HTC Desire 10 Pro runs HTC Sense Home interface atop a skinned version of Android Marshmallow 6.0. The only feature clearly with a vanilla android gaze is the notification panel in which tiles cannot be customized. Swiping to left draws the HTC Blinkfeed which displays results and suggestions based on your usage. The User Interface can be customized using HTC’s Theme Engine. We personally prefer a minimal look, thus keeping away from the Theme Engine.

HTC Desire 10 Pro Launcher and Blinkfeed

Meanwhile, inbuilt apps like the dialer, clock do not comply with material design styling which is a native feature of Android Marshmallow. As a result several apps, especially ones by Google do have the material design, thus conflicting with HTC’s design philosophy. This is something which can be overlooked if aesthetics of the interface don’t play a significant role for you. Else, can be modified to a certain extent using third party launchers and icon packs which can be easily adjusted using HTC theme engine to users’ liking.

HTC has included a Boost+ app which can be used to clear cache, boost RAM, optimize performance and lock apps using the fingerprint sensor and is a convenient addition to the bundle. HTC has also included a separate app for torch light which feels irrelevant. There are other apps such as Help beside third-party apps - Hungama Music, News Republic, and Fitness tracker app Record.

HTC Desire 10 Pro Boost+ with Fingerprint App Lock

The App Drawer (I love to call it menu in reminiscence of Nokia) is really convenient with several sorting options and ability to add folders within the app drawer.

It features support for 4G LTE and dual-band wifi. NFC is missing, but certainly not missed.

Display

5.5-inch screens have realized a prominence in the market. The IPS display on the HTC Desire 10 Pro sports Full HD resolution. Looked at closely, the display tilts towards warmer, more saturated hues and allows users to customize tones as per convenience. This can make objects on the screen appear more saturated in colour than they actually are. Otherwise vivid & bright, the screen is reflective and takes a beating under strong sunlight.

Battery

The Desire 10 Pro is definitely remarkable in terms of the battery, which can serve for good 24 hours on average usage with 4G and wi-fi interchangeably being used, and a lot of pictures and selfies being snapped as well as moderate gaming.

It lasted well over a day at Barot with flickering network connectivity (to our rescue was Reliance Jio, which worked at 4G speeds) and pretentious/flamboyant photography. The 3000 mAh battery pack is really robust as it lasted six hours in our video loop test. Although, HTC claims 11 hours of HD playback, six hours with full brightness is nothing short of impressive either. However, compared to the HTC 10 Pro, batteries on Honor 8 and Oneplus 3 performed better during the loop test.

HTC Desire 10 Pro charging - Test via Ampere App

It comes with Fast Charging at 2A and charges completely in less than an hour and a half. Power saving and Extreme Power Saving mode ensure that you make the most out of each drop of battery juice. The last one percent (1%) lasted for nearly 30 minutes.

Camera

Note: None of these pictures is edited or tweaked.

Cameras on the 10 Pro are charming. We were blown away by the amount of detail there was in nearby objects, both in the case of the front as well as the rear camera. The camera on the back, a 20-megapixel shooter (the camera bump is something which may take time getting used to) take landscape shots with great detail. Focus is quick, however, lost equally easily if the phone is shaking.

Camera interface on HTC Desire 10 Pro

You cannot expect DSLR-level details despite that it has DSLR-like manual controls which can be used to meter the amount of light in any picture, especially when auto mode cannot achieve that. The feature of saving RAW files of manual mode snaps can be a peeve for a few. The shutter action is swift, clicking non-HDR pictures in the blink of an eye. There are other modes like Panorama and Zeo Camera - for making 3-second snippets. The camera is capable of some really detailed macro shots.

Photography using HTC Desire 10 Pro  

This brings us to our only complaint with the camera - the exposure or the amount of light in a picture does not change with the focus; it changes on the basis of the center of the picture frame.

Macro Shots using HTC Desire 10 Pro  

Manual Mode on HTC Desire 10 Pro

The front-facing camera, a 13-megapixel shooter will definitely compel you to snap, not just some, but a lot of selfies. It has diverse features, unseen on any other phone in this price segment such as selfie panorama and HDR selfie. The colours on the front camera are vivid and nearly as rich as the rear camera. The front camera feaures retina flash which significantly adds to low-light selfies, but it really hates pairs of spectacles.

Time for some selfies using HTC Desire 10 Pro  

Both cameras are equipped to record 1080p videos electronic image stabilization. But, there is a lack of support for 4K video or slo-mo. This can be attributed to the Mediatek Processor on the device.

Storage and Processing

With the inbuilt 64 GB of storage, you can easily store thousands of pictures, audios and videos as well as a couple of hundred apps without worrying about running out of storage. Additionally, you can use the Hybrid SIM slot to insert MicroSD card with storage as huge as 2TB. HTC did get a little carried away with the storage, and it means well. Benchmark scores were moderate, below any noted phone in the segment. We used Antutu for 3D, processing, and RAM as well as Geekbench for single-core and multi-core core performance.

Benchmark Scores

At its heart, Pro 10 uses a 64-bit MediaTek Helio P10 Octa-core processor clocked at 2.2 GHz which we have seen in the Oppo F1 Plus, Xperia XA and Yu Yuniorn. This is backed by 4 GB of RAM which makes multitasking something you won’t have to fret over, save a few minor lags. The processor is not necessarily the fastest processor for the price but it does daily chores without feeling out-of-breath. 4K video is not supported on the 10 Pro owing to lack of capabilities of the Helio processor.

Fingerprint

HTC Desire 10 Pro Fingerprint Reader double as a Shutter button.

The fingerprint is placed on the rear face of the 10 Pro, meant to be accessed by the index fingers. The waking up of the screen is zippy and the fingerprint can be used to click pictures as well as secure sensitive media and information using HTC’s Boost+ App. It is rarely that the fingerprint misses any scan, and most of the instances when it does are due to incorrect alignment of the finger.

Gaming

Suicide Squad: Special Ops Game

Gaming is an area where the HTC Desire 10 Pro will fail to awe users. The on-board Mali-T860 GPU feels a little weak as the game graphics feel somewhat sketchy and graphics-heavy games are rendered with slight shuttering. While testing, we played Alto’s Adventure, Badland 2, Mekorama, Asphalt Xtreme, Vector 2 and Modern Combat 5. During gameplays, minor seizures could be easily observed and although there were no episodes of hanging, these seizures can cause ripples in the gaming experience. You may be disappointed if you take mobile gaming seriously (SERIOUSLY?).

Sound

The HTC Desire 10 Pro doesn’t flaunt itself as a phone with great audio performance. The single speaker at the bottom feels frail as the volume is dreadfully low, resulting in missed alarms on most of the days this phone was used as a daily driver. Audio via the bundled earphones sounds rich and clear, but lacking towards the low frequencies. Using HTC’s Boomsound Audio profile, sound can be enhanced with sufficient bass and treble. Mids are slightly weak.

Coupled Altec Lansing’s Bluetooth over-the-ear headphones, the duo works better than included pair of earphones.

Pricing

The phone is priced at Rs. 26,490 and faces counteraction from the Honor 8, Oneplus 3 and Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016). (Check out similarly priced selfie-centric phones in India.) While standing tall with its camera and battery, it feels a little feeble in front of the competition, mostly when looked from a perspective of performance and processing.

Verdict

You cannot clearly expect a slayer performance from the HTC Desire 10 Pro. It doesn’t, however, displease at any point. The camera is good enough for your social media usage, and the manual mode makes you feel that you have a little more control. However, If clicking great landscape pictures is what you utilize the phone mostly for, you may want to spend some extra bucks and buy the Oneplus 3, instead, which has a better rear camera. With the Desire Pro, you will be clicking an endless number selfies, and appreciate the performance in all lighting conditions. Fast Charging and a long lasting battery are great supplements. The device has a sleek design and the golden accent lines on the Polar White model add a sense of panache.