HTC and OnePlus spruce up flagships for Santa's sack Phone makers used to "refresh" their annual flagships by flinging out one in a new colour. But in today's hyper-competitive market, where flagships are forgotten almost as soon as they appear, apparently that isn't enough. HTC and OnePlus have each given their ranges mid-year revamps with new specs, cases, and fancy new names. …
Don't forget the Pixel is now up there with Apple silly prices.
With Samsung on the ropes gives everyone else an excuse to have hefty "next tier down" prices.
.. Though obviously flailing squid exchange rates does mean new shiny is far more costly.
Does look nice I'll stick to my cheap phone which at least manages dual SIM and separate SD card plus removeable battery so it can be "properly" powered down if required
"The 3T does look nice, but 400 squids?"
Indeed. I wish people would stop pretending phones at this sort of price are mid-range bargains, that's the same price as my Galaxy S6 was just a month or so after release. When you're no cheaper than the flagship Samsung and Apple phones, you lose any right to pretend to be a bargain.
As for the rest of the article, it seems somewhat incoherent. A mid-year refresh is happening at the end of the year, except in HTC's case we don't even know if it will happen this year and it isn't a refresh anyway just a re-release of an existing phone. Also their website clearly says it has a 5.5" screen, not 5.7" as claimed by the article. Throw in the usual typos, grammar mistakes and clear lack of editing and I really don't understand how someone can actually get paid to write this crap.
The HTC 10 has a SD slot, but no removable battery, I'm assuming this revision is the same.
FWIW, I have one, and am happy with it.
The battery life is excellent, and will easily last a couple of days unless you're constantly using it to hunt pokemon, so the lack of a removable battery is less of an issue than it used to be, with for example, the One X.
Oh, and the camera is surprisingly good, even in low light - it's the first phone I've had where the camera is actually better that the wide aperture SLR my partner drags around to gigs.
Yes, this is daft - the HTC 10 has one in the top, this new version appears not to.
So, the HTC 10 Evo would appear to be a worse phone than the HTC 10 it is supposedly 'refreshing'. Coupled with the choice of processor, it's almost like HTC are trying to copy Microsoft Windows and Star Trek films with the idea of every other one being crap.
@ Ralph B "Also: 3.5mm audio socket: yes/no HTC has none, so no sale there."
FTA: "HTC re-emphasises it again here, bundling USB Type C headphones. ...So it's another phone that drops the traditional headphone jack."
This is the start of the fall out from Apple dropping the 3.5mm jack. Apple may have a relatively small market share* compared to Android in general but they get a lot of coverage, not least from the launch day queues which show how iPhones are so deeply desirable* and aspirational*. So when Apple does something quite ludicrous as dropping a de-facto standard connector (it might be old but it's not *obsolete*) they normalise this change when made to other phones. I seem to recall a Reg article years ago which noted Apple pushing the keyboard back on laptops to make wrist rest spaces either side of the trackpad would likely propagate to other manufacturers and that came to pass in various cases. Unfortunately in this case Apple's courageous shitty decision threatens to infect non iOS ecosystems. Samsung may have taken a swipe at Apple, noting their latest handset still has a 3.5mm jack, but that could change next year when the marketing narrative has moved on.
* All of these terms are very much YMMV.
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