HTC had introduced some interesting devices this year, and the HTC Bolt is one of their newest smartphones. This smartphone was introduced earlier this month, as HTC partnered up with Sprint in order to release it. Now, the HTC Bolt is exclusive to Sprint in the US, but HTC released an international model of this smartphone as well, though it carries a different name, it’s called the HTC 10 evo. That being said, the HTC Bolt comes with Qualcomm’s flagship SoC for 2015, and the device resembles HTC’s 2016 flagship, the HTC 10, quite a bit.
HTC and Sprint have actually advertised this smartphone with some help from Usain Bolt, as the device supports Sprint’s LTE Plus network, and is capable of hitting 450 million bits per second download speeds. Now, according to a Strategy Analytics analyst, Linda Sui, says that the HTC Bolt probably won’t help HTC get back to its feet in the smartphone world. Mr. Eddie Han, an analyst over at Taipei’s Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute, said he doesn’t think HTC will ship many HTC Bolt units. He also thinks that HTC utilized the Snapdragon 810 in this phone in order to lower its inventory cost. Now, one of the reasons why Mr. Han thinks this phone won’t sell well is its price, the HTC Bolt has a retail price of $600 over at Sprint, and that seems quite steep considering that the device is running Qualcomm’s flagship SoC for 2015, and is inferior to other 2016 flagships in terms of specs, basically. “For consumers, while we believe display size and resolution play more important roles than processors in purchasing behavior, the heating issue of the 810 processor would be a big drawback for tech savvy segment and affluent buyers. Hence we don’t think Bolt will lift up HTC significantly. HTC is still under the falling track,” said Mr. Han.
So, it seems like various analysts agree that the HTC Bolt is not the best solution for the company, while the Snapdragon 810 and the phone’s price are the biggest obstacles for this smartphone. Aside from the Snapdragon 810, the HTC Bolt sports a 5.5-inch QHD display, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable storage. The device comes with a 16-megapixel OIS main camera, and packs in a 3,200mAh battery with fast charging. Android 7.0 Nougat comes pre-installed on the device, with the company’s Sense UI on top of it. If you’d like to take a look at a more detailed HTC Bolt spec sheet, click here.