HTC 10: A perfect 10

Though the camera could have been better, the HTC 10 doesn't give you much to complain about

HTC's newest offering is its flagship HTC 10. Priced at Rs 52,990, it is on the higher side and a rival to the Samsung Galaxy S7.

The phone has an all-metal unibody with the volume rocker and power/unlock button on the right. It is a bit bigger than most smartphones but is still pretty comfortable to hold. The phone comes with a fingerprint scanner below the display on the front.

The HTC 10 has a 5.2-inch Super LCD5 display with a resolution of 2,560x1,440p. The display works well under direct sunlight, albeit with brightness cranked up.

Under the hood, it houses a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor with 4GB of RAM. I decided to push the phone to its limit. I downloaded Blood and Glory, Archangel and Need for Speed Most Wanted - all of which are RAM-heavy. There were no heating issues or noticeable lags and I put in a lot of hours into it. Needless to say, it was impressive.

The phone's fingerprint sensor is pretty responsive and easy to set up. The HTC 10 offers motion gestures as well, but the fingerprint sensor gets in the way. Once you a draw a gesture on the screen, it won't directly take you to the specific app unless you unlock the screen.

On the software side, the phone comes with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with HTC Sense UI on top. I am not a fan of custom user interfaces, but the HTC Sense is non-invasive.

The HTC 10 features a 12 -megapixel (MP) primary and a 5MP secondary camera. Both the cameras come with optical image stabilisation. The output pictures were good and delivered satisfactory results even in low-light conditions. However, as far as flagships go, the camera could have been much better.

The phone comes with a 3,000 mAh non-removable battery, which is decent for moderate usage. If you're really stingy, the phone can last more than a day. On a full charge, the phone lasted me for almost a day and I used it pretty extensively. It comes with a USB Type-C charger, which seems to be the trend these days.

But the aspect that takes the cake is the HTC 10's audio experience. It comes with BoomSound, which is the trend with other HTC phones. I played Iron Maiden's Rime of the Ancient Mariner and John Mayer's Gravity. The sound output was great. But once I plugged in my headphones, I was in for a bigger treat. The phone's soundstage works best with headphones. I played the same songs again and the result was almost four times better. I tried taking it up a notch and started playing tracks by Judas Priest and Pantera and switched to classical by playing Edvard Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King. If you own a decent pair of headphones, the HTC 10 will not give you a reason to disappoint.

Apart from the camera that could have been better, HTC's flagship phone has little to complain about. With seamless Sense experience and a powerful processor, the HTC 10 is sure to give its competitors a run for their money.