The HTC 10 and Samsung Galaxy S7 excel in a number of aspects, but on the durability scale, one is way ahead of the other.
Hardware experts at PhoneBuff took to the task of checking which of the two fares better in a beating, and demonstrated the results in a YouTube video.
The HTC 10's metallic build was pitted against the posh glass design of the Galaxy S7, and the results are (only slightly) surprising.
PhoneBuff used "a professional drop test machine" to make sure both Android devices got the same treatment: the phones were dropped from 3.3 feet high on their back, side, bottom and front. Should any of the devices live to tell the tale, it would be dropped further until it became unresponsive.
At the back drop test, the HTC 10 showed more bounciness paired with more resistance. The metal-body came out with scratches, but it pales in comparison with the cracks that adorned Galaxy S7's rear side.
Testing the bottoms drop showed that HTC 10 is taking a rougher tumble than the Galaxy S7 when dropped on its shorter edge. The right side of the bottom of both devices suffered almost equally.
The side drop impact caused approximately the same damage to both smartphones. The Galaxy S7 and HTC 10 were both pretty bruised on the landing side.
One of the horrible nightmares of all handset users is to drop their device face down on a hard surface, and PhoneBuff did just that at the end of the test. The team let the HTC 10 and Galaxy S7 crash on the concrete block face on, only to reveal that both front screens got shattered. The Galaxy S7 took damage not only in the exterior glass-protection layer, but in the digital screen beneath, making the gadget unusable.
The HTC 10, on the other hand, did a lot better and was fully operational after the first full-frontal drop.
This qualified the handset for the bonus round, where testers continued to let it crash on the concrete slab until its screen stopped functioning. It should be mentioned that it took a whopping 32 drops to actually render the screen of the HTC 10 useless.
Should you be curious about hardware geeks brutalizing smartphones, check out our coverage of the iPhone 6s vs. Galaxy S7 drop, bend and waterproofing test.
You may also want to take a look at the drop test in the video below.
