Gadgetory

hey what is up guys this is Bailey Stein with Android Authority and this is the HTC bolt with a premium metal unibody build large side champers and familiar color options it's fair to say that the HTC bolts is quite similar to its cousin the HTC 10 at least on the outside this is great though as we really like the HTC x design and that opinion mostly transfers over to the bolts design as expected HTC has delivered yet another solid well-built phone the large champers provide a nice transition to the flat sides and the tactile a differentiated power button helps make it more discoverable compared to the volume keys the buttons are also satisfyingly clicky just as they were on the 10 there are some notable differences though to the curved back has been flattened removing a bit of the ergonomic feel from the 10 that we've come to love the phone doesn't seem as slippery this time around though which is important it has received a size bumped to 5.5 inches from 5.2 inches on the 10 the bolt also introduces what many have been asking for a while now water resistance with the IP 57 certification the phone can be submerged and up to one meter of water for up to 30 minutes this should be enough to protect the boat from minor accidents although you won't want to intentionally submerge the phone as HTC says that liquid damage may not be covered under warranty the navigation keys on the chin of the phone are both illuminated and placed in the standard layout the HOME key will not a physical tactile button it's sort of a large cutout in order to double as a fast and accurate fingerprint reader it's not the fastest out there but it's faster than the Galaxy a7 s reader which is to say it does very well the HTC bolt features a 5.5 inch quad HD Super LCD 3 display which is quite frankly wonderful it seems to be slightly different than the HTC 10 s display but it still offers excellent contrast and nice colors while not appearing oversaturated viewing angles are good too although not exceptional our biggest complaint is with the maximum brightness well it's good enough for into youth it can seem dim when outside especially in direct sunlight on a more positive note the display is coated in Corning Gorilla Glass 5 which offers some of the best scratch protection available today under the hood the HTC bolt is being powered by three gigabytes of RAM and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 the latter is definitely a head-scratcher as this is a flagship smartphone and the 810 is now a two-year old processor with the 810 you'll be missing out on better performance or efficiency and fewer heat issues that are offered by the Snapdragon 820 and a 21 so why did HTC go with the 10 well we've heard that HTC was forced to compromise as the newer processors were not certified to Sport Sprint's LTE Plus Network during development which is ultimately the core purpose of this phone despite the older processor day-to-day performance is absolutely fine which can be partially credited to the many disabled system animations which make the experience feel a tad snappier than stock Android the problems with the 820 instead live primarily with heat output as we found the book to heat up easily especially while charging as you may already know the HTC bolt is exclusive to sprint so you won't be able to use it with any other carrier if you are in sprint though the HTC bolt has a unique selling point support for Sprint's new LTE Plus network which touts much faster data speeds unfortunately LTE plus just isn't that accessible at the moment for example sprint offers zero LTE Plus coverage within a 75-mile radius of our testing area what's worse is that even in a small but considerable city of 15,000 people normal LTE is spotty and where it does work it's limited to around 2 to 3 megabits per second this is comically bad compared to the speeds of above 100 megabits per second we've seen from Verizon's LTE Advanced Network which is widely available in the same city now obviously Sprint's network is an HTC's problem but since this phone is only available on Sprint these issues do inevitably come with the phone moving on to storage the HTC bolt includes 32 gigabytes out of the box but that can be expanded via a microSD card using the second tray on the left side of the phone unfortunately HTC's boomsound has gone by the wayside here and we're left with an average sounding side firing speaker it's definitely better than the galaxy s7 speaker but it's a bit disappointing compared to the HTC a tons higher quality speaker setup for most users though it's volume and low distortion will be good enough when it comes to external audio however the bolt is riddled with compromise although it's using the same excellent 24-bit deck as the HTC 10 there's no 3.5 millimeter headphone jack so the bolt instead relies on the USB type-c charging port for Wired audio to clarify this in particular isn't inherently bad given that it's the way of the future the problems begin with how HTC has set this up for people who are still making the transition to USB type-c audio which is virtually everyone check out our written review linked below for the full details but the main points are that there isn't an adapter in the Box third-party adapters won't work HTC is only offering a free adapter for those who purchase the phone before January 31st and HTC isn't selling adapters now to be fair the bolt does come with some pretty nice earbuds in the box they even work with the phone software boom sound adaptive audio which used to adjust audio levels based on scans of your ears and the surrounding environment this feature actually works quite well and results in noticeably better audio the bolts includes a 3,200 milliamp hour battery and although that's 200 milliamp hours more than HTC tens battery our real-world battery tests delivered some disappointing results getting through a full day was a challenge even while averaging just 2 hours and 40 minutes of screen on time however it's worth mentioning that our tests were conducted with a port network signal which may have negatively impacted our results well you might be able to get more usage in an area with better coverage we wouldn't count on more than a full day with three and a half hours of screen on time unfortunately the both quick charge 2.0 wasn't so quick in our testing in 30 minutes the phone went from zero to about 25 percent which is well below average especially at this price the HTC bolts rear camera is a 16 megapixel F 2.0 shooter with optical image stabilization and it delivers images similar in quality to those produced by the HTC 10 that is to say the camera is very good despite not beating out the galaxy s7 pictures are plenty sharp near the center and a bit soft near the corners but that's not very noticeable the colours are pleasing and most of the images showcase great dynamic range there also isn't too much saturation which can't be said for the Galaxy s7 s photos in darker environments the bolt still does reasonably well images are expectedly more grainy less punchy and softer but you can still get some really nice shots even when you're working with less than ideal lighting the bolts front-facing camera performs even better relative to competing options it's an 8 megapixel F 2.4 camera and it delivers excellent results which will please anyone wishing to capture high-quality selfies for video the bull can do up to 4k at 30 P and as you can see video looks pretty good and that's the case for software - at least for HTC's contributions we're looking at HTC's familiar Sense UI with great features like blink feed and themes as well as a number of tasteful tweeks HTC has had lots of time to hone their software experience so it's no surprise that their expertise is almost palpable when using the bolts although some will still cry for sake Android this is certainly one of the lighter and more polished Android skins that we've had the pleasure of using oh and it's running Android 7.0 new get out of the box which is the latest version of Android from Google we expect that HTC will continue to deliver OS and security updates to this phone for the foreseeable future once again however HTC's efforts are brought down heavily by Sprint our review unit arrived with more than 30 individual bloatware apps which required two separate folders to showcase more than half of these apps cannot be uninstalled which can be very frustrating to the end-user add on random and intrusive sprint pop-ups trying to upsell unnecessary services like VPN and you have an experience yet again compromised by Sprint the HTC bolt is available in both gunmetal and glacial solar and Sprint for a base price of $600 with 24 month financing available at $25 per month for those with good credit we do expect that this phone will go on sale frequently though so if you're interested in purchasing one you'll want to keep an eye out for those sales unfortunately the HTC bolt is perhaps the most compromised smartphone that we've recently reviewed we like its design display and camera but it simply has too many small issues for $600 price tag for us to make even a conditional recommendation this is the day and age of phones like the ZTE axon 7 + 1 + 3 T which cost almost half as much as the bolt and offer much better experiences if you're determined to stay with Sprint however we recommend waiting for either the HTC 11 or samsung galaxy s 8 which should be released with LTE + support within the next few months if LTE Plus isn't important to you and you need a phone now you can't go wrong with the better overall and even slightly cheaper HTC 10 thank you so much for watching this video if you have any questions feel free to hit me up on Twitter also if you liked it be sure to give it a thumbs up down below and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage as we are your source for all 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