HTC Desire 10 pro first impressions: seemingly a good proposition for shutterbugs

The Desire 10 pro packs in a 20MP BSI primary shooter, and a 13MP BSI front snapper with a 150-degree field of view

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HTC has just added another mid-ranger to its Desire series smartphones, dubbed the Desire 10 pro. With specs that sound tempting on paper, the Desire 10 Pro has been launched in India for Rs 26,490… a price segment dominated by the third iteration of the “flagship killer”, the OnePlus 3 (review). We got some time to play with HTC’s latest offering at the launch event and here are our first impressions.

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The Desire 10 Pro looks a lot like the HTC Desire 10 Lifestyle (review) which was launched recently. The only difference you will find is the dual tone LED flash module on the back that gets a laser autofocus module placed adjacent to it. The defined trims and accents in the colour gold, in our opinion, complement the Polar White and the Royal Blue variant only. The Valentine Lux, which is a powder blue-hued Desire 10 Pro, does not harmonise that well with the gold, and the accents stand out way too much on the Stone Black variant. We missed metal. For the price, we expected a more premium build and feel. That said, the Desire 10 Pro does not feel cheap to hold. It fits in the hands well, and for the most part, you will be able to use it with a single hand.

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You will find all the ports and the buttons in their usual places. The phone also sports a fingerprint reader at the back. Flipping the phone over, you’ll be greeted by a 5.5-inch touchscreen panel which gets full HD resolution. Colours, viewing angles, touch response… everything was good. The screen brightness was great. On top of that, a non-reflective display should ensure that using the Desire 10 Pro under the bright sun is a breeze.

Moving on from the exteriors to the innards. The smartphone is powered by a MediaTek Helio P10 chip coupled with 4 gigs of RAM. Sure, while the Oneplus 3 has 6GB of RAM in comparison, even 4 gigs should be enough to handle every day use smoothly. About the processor, the chip delivered impressive performance on the OPPO F1 Plus, so the performance on the new Desire should be decent too.

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The device ships with Android Marshmallow and might get the Android Nougat update soon. Tweaks in the icons, HTC’s Blinkfeed along with the good old app drawer collectively sum up the user interface on the Desire 10 pro. Nothing fancy here. We saw some preloaded applications… Facebook, Messenger, Instagram to name a few.

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Out of the 64GB of built-in storage, you will be able to use around 52 gigs.

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Now about the highlight. The Desire 10 Pro packs in a 20MP primary shooter equipped with a BSI sensor. On the front, it gets a 13MP BSI snapper with a 150-degree field of view. In a nutshell, it indicates great low light images. And there’s auto HDR as well, so the users can create the best output that can be created in all lighting conditions. However, that is what the statements and the numbers claim. We’d like to reserve our final comments until we review the Desire 10 Pro.

A 3,000mAh battery is there to keep the smartphone running. Considering the specs, the phone should be able to deliver around a day of use. In terms of connectivity, the offers usual features like support for 4G LTE, dual-SIM slots, dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, micro-USB, and A-GPS.

As we mentioned earlier, the HTC Desire 10 pro competes directly with the OnePlus 3 which is a critically acclaimed smartphone. The Moto Z Play (review) which is in a league of its own, being the most affordable modular smartphone. Whether or not does the HTC Desire 10 pro deserve your pennies, we’ll be telling you in our full review which will be out soon.