HTC have quite a range of different mobile devices, with their flagship One range and the lower end Desire range, the HTC Desire 10 Lifestyle is the combination of both to bring a phone to the mid levels. It might not be up there with the more expensive options but even for its price of £250, it still feels a little bit too expensive for what you actually get, being let down by a couple things.
Different colours seem to be more of a thing with the Desire range, the same can be said for the Lifestyle too, with four different colours to choose from; Polar White, Stone Black, Roya Blue and Valentine Lux which is a subtle blue they all look pretty nice. Across all the device colours there are strips of gold along the top and around its casing which is plastic. It looks nice and is probably a way to make the all plastic frame feel less like plastic but metal or glass would have been nice.
Even with the all plastic design the phone does not feel bad at all, even with the big device it has a good texture to it which stops it from slipping out your hand or off a surface. On the right-hand side, you will find all your buttons for the volume and power. There won’t come a time where you will confuse the buttons for each other, as the volume buttons are more flush making them a little awkward to use and the power button is raised, textured and gold. On the left side is where the SD card slot and sim slot are found underneath a small flap. Looking at the SD card storage, the biggest size microSD card it can take is up to 2TB but we were only able to confirm it works with a 64GB and 128GB card.
Even with the 5.5-inch screen, the bezel for the phone is a little on the larger side and could have done with some slimming down to reduce the amount of space. On top of the device you will find a trusty 3.5mm jack and on the bottom is the micro USB port and bass speaker which is the same as the BoomSound Hi-Fi speaker in the HTC 10. The speaker in the bottom works alongside the speaker in the top of the phone, which retrospectively would be the reason why the bezel is bigger around the screen at these locations.
With the big form factor of 56.9 x 76.9 x 7.7mm the 5.5-inch screen is only 720p, you probably would not notice the difference between that and another higher resolution phone but it is most likely down to a cost saving measure. The screen is clear, bright and well lit but does have some slight problems with viewing angles, starting to be a little washed out when looking from a side angle.
In lower lit conditions with a light source also made the image produces some weird tones as the sensor was picking up the light for one part of the image but not for the other.
