HTC 10 UK

HTC 10 UK release date, price, pre-order, new features, specifications and photos:

HTC 10 looks awesome. Sounds awesome. Is awesome. Price awesome for just £512.99.

HTC has today unveiled its new flagship smartphone, the HTC 10. The Successor to the HTC One M9, the HTC 10 is a beast of a phone with the gorgeous design, Quad-HD display, fingerprint sensor and awesome performance and multimedia features it needed to get back in the running for best Android phone 2016. We reveal the HTC 10 UK release date, price, new features, specifications and photos.

How good is the HTC 10? Podcast discussion

HTC 10 UK release date, price: When is the HTC 10 coming out? How much does the HTC 10 cost?

The HTC 10 costs £569 and can be pre-ordered directly from HTC. Use the promotional code HTC10 and you'll get it for just £512.99, including Express delivery. (We have no idea how long this code will remain active for, but thanks @JamesRWP for the tip.)

Carphone Warehouse has also confirmed it is now taking pre-orders for the HTC 10 and offering £50 cashback on pre-orders. The Gold option is exclusive to Carphone Warehouse.

As for a release date, we were told it would be available in April by the press release, and in May during our pre-brief; HTC has since clarified it should be available early May. According to our friends at Clove it should go on sale the week commencing 9 May. We’ll update this article as soon as we have more exact details.

You can expect the HTC 10 to be available from the four major UK operators, Vodafone,Three, EE and O2. EE has now been in touch to say it will offer the HTC 10 in Carbon Grey with Wi-Fi Calling and 4G Calling, as has Three, which will sell the HTC 10 with 4G at no extra cost, Feel At Home roaming in selected countries, and a six-month free Deezer subscription.

HTC 10 new features: Key features in the HTC 10

HTC builds arguably the best-looking smartphones in the Android world, so last year upon the launch of the HTC One M9 we were disappointed to find not much in the way of new hardware that could help it to compete against its rivals Samsung and LG, which have already unveiled their 2016 flagships in the form of the Galaxy S7 and LG G5. Thankfully, it’s all change for 2016. Also see: Best smartphones 2016.

HTC has been building up hype around the #powerof10 for some time - but what does it actually mean? According to the company it represents a decade of building smartphones, and is all about perfection.

No longer will you hear us criticise HTC for shunning a Quad-HD screen or a fingerprint scanner, for example. The screen is both larger and higher in resolution, a responsive 5.2in Super LCD 5 2K panel with a 564ppi pixel density. And the new fingerprint scanner responds to the touch in just 0.2 seconds.

The HTC 10 has a crazy-fast processor in the form of the Snapdragon 820 (as seen in the LG G5), which it pairs with a massive 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (plus microSD support up to 2TB). Performance should be very good. Also see: Best Android phones 2016.

The design has changed somewhat, but the HTC 10 is just as attractive as previous One-series smartphones, a diamond-cut, chamfered-edge, two-tone metal unibody device with a single sheet of 2.5D curved glass at the front. In common with the Galaxy S7 the IR blaster has gone, while the familiar front-facing BoomSound speakers have been replaced with a new version that sees the tweeter at the top and woofer at the bottom, with a dedicated amp for each. A pair of Hi-Res earphones is supplied in the box, and a world first - optional JBL USB-C headphones - will be available in some territories.

The HTC 10 boasts 24-bit Hi-Res audio (for both playback and recording), with a powerful headphone amp, the ability to upscale 16-bit- to 24-bit audio, and a high-performance DAC that delivers 10 times lower distortion than rival devices. A Personal Audio Profile can be created to perfectly suit your personal listening style.

There’s also an awesome 12Mp UltraPixel 2 camera - “a world-class camera” in HTC’s words - that has a dual-tone LED flash, 1.55um pixels, OIS, a laser autofocus, and support for 4K video and RAW files. Two awesome cameras, in fact, since the 5Mp UltraPixel UltraSelfie front-facing camera is the first selfie camera to come with OIS. HTC cites a DxOMark score of 88 for the HTC 10, one of the highest camera-quality scores of any phone to date.

The non-removable battery is now higher in capacity, rated at 3,000mAh and, although it doesn’t support wireless charging, a combination of Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 and HTC’s own Rapid Charge tech means you can charge the battery up to 50 percent in just 30 minutes. Boost+ tech is designed to make the HTC 10 faster, consume less power and to provide effective security and application management features, such as automatically optimising the phone’s memory and boosting battery life during gaming.

The Software has been improved, and notably so, now more simplistic and user-friendly with less duplication between Google and HTC apps. The material design is applied throughout, and HTC has completely ditched the home screen grid in favour of a freestyle layout - you can arrange your app icons however you like. HTC has also tweaked the software to make it more responsive and claims that apps launch twice as fast. We’re looking forward to watching the camera launch in 0.6 seconds - our one issue with the HTC One M9’s performance. See all smartphone reviews.

HTC 10 full specification

Operating system: Android Marshmallow with HTC Sense

Screen: 5.2in Quad-HD (2560x1440, 564ppi) Super LCD 5 with curved-edge Gorilla Glass

Processor: 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 64-bit, quad-core

RAM: 4GB

Storage: 32/64GB, microSD up to 2TB

Primary camera: 12Mp HTC UltraPixel 2, 1.55um pixels, laser autofocus, BSI sensor, OIS, f/1.8 aperture, 26mm focal length, dual-tone LED flash, 4K video recording with Hi-Res Audio, slo-mo video at 720p/120fps, camera modes: Auto-HDR, Panorama, Pro mode with manual control and 12-bit RAW format support Hyperlapse, Zoe capture, Video Pic, continuous shooting up to 8fps

Front camera: 5Mp, 1.34um pixels, autofocus, BSI sensor, OIS, f/1.8 aperture, 23mm focal length, 1080p video recording, camera modes: Auto-HDR, Auto Selfie, Voice Selfie, Live Make-Up

Audio: HTC BoomSound Hi-Fi Edition, Dolby Audio, Personal Audio Profile, Hi-Res Audio certified, Hi-Res Audio earphones, Hi_res Audio stereo recording, three mics with noise cancellation

Connectivity: 4G LTE (Nano-SIM), dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS and GLONASS, NFC, DisplayPort, Miracast, Google Cast, AirPlay, HTC Connect, DNLA, USB-C

Sensors: Ambient light, Proximity, Motion G-sensor, Compass, Gyro, Magnetic sensor, fingerprint sensor, Sensor Hub for activity tracking

Battery: 3000mAh with Quick Charge 3.0 support (up to 50% in 30 minutes), extreme power saving mode, up to 19 days on standby or 27 hours talk time

Extras: Display colour personalisation, Ice View case, Motion Launch, Quiet ring on pick-up, Pocket mode

Dimensions: 145.9x71.9x3.0-9.0mm

Weight: 161g