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HTC 10 vs Nexus 6P

2016-05-13
HCC's newest and arguably greatest offering goes up against the Nexus its charge of agar from Android thority what's going on everybody and this is the HTC 10 versus the Nexus 6p now before we get going I do want to let you know that our HTC 10 and Nexus 6p reviews are available at Android authority comm and here at the YouTube channel you'll find links for them here on the video and also in the description below so if you want more of my new details and even the spec sheets for both of these devices make sure you go and check those out and yes my Nexus 6p my personal one has been skinned to have a wooden look on the back but we'll be looking at the Nexus 6p as it is out of the box metal is of course the name of the game for both of these phones as they take metal to different places in their design the Nexus 6p has metal with a top bump area which has been a little bit polarizing in terms of whether or not it's actually fashionable for the phone but ultimately here at Android authority we do think it's a nice touch that is different from other phones of its type it is a little bit bigger as well being a little bit wider and taller and also a little bit heavier than the HTC 10 but ultimately it is still a pretty easy phone to use in one hand the other thing to notice about the Nexus is that it is symmetrical you have a speaker at the top and speaker on the bottom for dual front-facing speakers that is not the case anymore with the HTC 10 which has one speaker on the top and then a Wolfer at the very bottom right next to the USBC port which brings us to the HTC 10 which brings a couple of subtle changes to a design language that we've already liked from previous HTC one devices now if you take it you look at it and it might seem like an HTC One m8 but there has been added to it a bit of girth all the way around on the edges these tranfered edges provide a silhouetted look which we think is nice subtle and it does provide just that little bit more to differentiate this phone from its predecessors even if the phone might feel just that little bit wider than probably should be the HTC 10 still provides a better handling experience because of its overall smaller size but when it comes to having metal and in this case we have grey metal for both of these phones it does still slip about quite easily in the hand even if it doesn't necessarily get too smudged up by one's fingerprints the HTC 10 now has a Super LCD 5 a quad HD resolution that adheres to the NTSC standard and it actually does so with impressive saturation and overall performance HTC does claim that the screen has low latency when it comes to your touch and what actually happens on the screen and while the may not be something you really notice on the daily it is still something nice to add to the overall performance of the phone but the Nexus 6p is nowhere behind at all it has a quad HD display that is an AMOLED display and of course with AMOLED you're going to get the deeper blacks and also much higher saturation but in this case we actually don't think that there's that much of a discrepancy between the two it is definitely more enjoyable on a larger screen if you want to have more real estate but as far as overall color and performance we think that both of these devices do a really good job at providing good media games video and even text performance is it another place where we might not find that many differences between these two phones and that's because the Nexus 6p just came out earlier in the year last year and the HTC 10 obviously won't benefit from being the later device it's a Snapdragon 820 versus the 810 not too much really different in when it comes to real-world usage because four gigabytes of RAM in the HTC 10 is pretty much the only differentiator that's not to say that the Nexus 6p will get overwhelmed with the number of applications that are running in the background but for those of you who are spec hungry the four gigabytes might be what you need the processors themselves however provide a really good experience especially when you consider how streamlined to these two versions of Android are especially in the Nexus because after all that is stock Android which brings us to the hardware offerings and both have fingerprint readers now the positions of the two are different on the Nexus 6p the finger per meter is on the back and it's pretty easy to just land a index finger on there in order to easily unlock and wake the phone at the same time but the same can be said for the HTC 10 even though it's fingerprint reader is up on the front embedded into the capacitive home key and as far as storage goes the Nexus actually falls behind against all of the different flagships this year because plenty of the flagships in 2016 including the HTC 10 now include a microSD card so you can bolster the on-board storage connectivity across the board is about the same between these two phones they provide pretty much everything you would expect though and focus on audio and streaming that audio brought airplay support to the HTC 10 but speaking of audio those dual front-facing speakers on the Nexus 6p give it the original feature that is no longer around to the HTC 10 dual front-facing speakers now you get one speaker above the display and then one on the bottom a woofer rather next to a USB C port and that means that the lows in the mid will be a little bit better on the HTC 10 but it certainly does not get as loud as the dual front facing speaker setup of the Nexus 6p but it's really when you plug in headphones into the HTC ten that the meaning of boom sound truly comes out boom sound is dolby enhancements coupled with audio profiles that can be created by entering some questions or by actually going through different frequencies inside of a more advanced tutorial but once you get your headphone set up and plugged into the HTC 10 audio sounds amazing on here a 24 bit DAC provides even clearer audio and a wider soundstage for good headphones and an amp will provide the loudness that plenty of other smart phones can't really provide and that includes the Nexus 6p a larger battery in the larger Nexus 6p does give it a little bit more longevity overall with a 34 50 milliamp power units you can get about 2 days worth of battery life especially if you stretch it out with the doze feature in which you will be able to get a lower power state by just keeping the phone on a surface and prone and not used at all the same can be said for the HTC 10 but it's 3000 milliamp hour battery provides about a day and a half worth of longevity and in our case we haven't really had any problems getting through one full day's worth of work and play with any issues at all fewer pixels but bigger pixels for the Nexus 6p it was a move towards an improvement in low-light but for the HTC 10 is just another day for the ultra pixel but other companies have done it with less branding and less fanfare and in the Nexus 6p you get 12 megapixels at 1.5 5 micron sizes at F 2.0 with optical image stabilization and laser focus when compared to the HTC 10 which has 12 megapixels at 1.5 5 micron sizes with an F 1.8 aperture optical image stabilization and laser autofocus both of the applications opt for more simplicity as the HTC 10 app has been streamlined to make it a little bit easier to use but it's not as easy to use as the Nexus 6p which doesn't include that many modes and lacks a pro mode which you can use on the HTC 10 as a manual mode to change a lot of the settings but optical image stabilization is available on the front-facing camera of the HTC 10 which is a first for pretty much any camera on a smartphone now generally this does mean that lower light situations for selfies might be a little bit better on the HTC 10 but it also might help with some video overall we don't think that it's really that much of an improvement but it is a very subtle and very small change and we do applaud HTC 10 for having OAS in the front-facing camera first the HTC 10 did get a few updates to its camera recent and we're going to explore that in a future video again however up until then you can have these verses videos and comparisons to see if the HTC 10 now is going to be really on par with the competition but since both of these cameras are actually quite similar the pictures were actually a bit of a toss-up in terms of quality the Nexus 6p does opt for a little bit brighter exposure now that the HTC 10 has dialed it back in its updates but it's really just in low-light situations that we found some true differences mostly in the color temperature the HTC 10 still opts for a warmer color temperature in low situations and that makes it a little bit distinguishable from the Nexus 6p but really in low-light situations both of these cameras do their best but still provide some pretty grainy some pretty noisy photos but the car that the HTC 10 does have to play is for sound and high res audio recording is available no matter which of the cameras you're using on the phone but that doesn't mean that processing the videos from it requires some tinkering as we did find after our camera shoot out that the mkv files that the HTC 10 puts out have to be unwrapped and tinkered with before they're actually recognized by most video editing software's and finally we can talk about the software and it's about stock versus HTC Sense but really the two aren't very radically different especially when you compare them to the Samsung synergies of the world currently using the N beta on the Nexus 6p will make this a little bit difference but basically that is one of the main stories for the Nexus line is the fact that you'll get all of the updates and be able to try out some of the new versions of Android before pretty much anybody else and any Android purists will know exactly what to expect from stock Android it has everything that you would expect it to including the DOS feature and a couple of extra features like Google now on tap in order to provide some easy searching no matter where you are in the phone but ultimately stock Android is what a lot of Android users enjoy because it keeps things simple and it prioritizes function which brings us to HTC Sense or rather Android with HTC Sense which is actually a skinned version of Android that doesn't add too much to the formula and that might be the best part about it since it's still more utilitarian when compared to TouchWiz or the LG UX and it doesn't prioritize eye candy as much and besides the blinkfeed it keeps everything pretty familiar there aren't too many extras like multi window or even any small overlay applications that go on top of the workspace and because of a close relationship with Google HTC has eliminated redundancies in the apps so if you have Google photos you're not going to have HTC gallery if you have HTC messages you're not going to have Google messenger HTC Sense also makes everything a little bit darker maybe a little bit easier on the eyes even because it's not trying to go too cartoony with things but it does still have a themes engine in order to change the look of everything so if you do want that change HTC Sense does provide it but overall it's about utility and function is definitely king no matter which of these two versions of Android you use there are a couple of extras and cents but they don't really change too much of the general Android formula so one way to put it is that while we do love our stock Android if we had HTC Sense we don't really feel the need to actually replace it right away out of the box with a third-party launcher the HTC 10 is available for the premium price on carriers but it will also cost about $700 if you want an unlocked version compare that to the Nexus 6p which currently is going for 399 dollars in the Google Play Store now that does make the Nexus 6p especially when it's considered unlocked a pretty good prospect because you're able to get a full device for a lower price that provides a lot of the same features and so there you have it for the HTC 10 versus the Nexus 6p these two phones actually have quite a bit in common and if you're looking for a metal clad smartphone you probably can't get any better than these two right here the Nexus 6p is still a bit of a better steal because of its lower price but the HTC 10 has prioritized a couple of main features in order to really entice the user and the main one is definitely the audio experience it's camera is a little bit improved by now and we will explore that like I said again in a future video but for now you can see how the HTC 10 stacks up to other devices when we bring you more verses and you can stay tuned to Android thority for all of that keep it tuned to Android 34 even more and remember to check out all of our coverage of both of these devices and you there is going to be more to come on the HTC 10 because we are your source for all things Android
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