So, the HTC 10 has two loudspeakers after all, but they are not for stereo

Well, folks, after months of leaks and speculation, the HTC 10 is finally out. Unfortunately, there's not much there to surprise us, as the rumor mill and the leaksters pretty much had the phone's specs and looks nailed. However, there was some ambiguity around HTC's proprietary BoomSound speakers. The stereo front-firing grilles, which first made an appearance with the original HTC One were completely absent from all the leaked renders and photos, which led us to think that stereo BoomSound is gone, much like how the single speaker-equipped HTC One A9 foreshadowed.

Unfortunately, yes, the stereo front-firing concept is not present on the HTC 10, but the phone does utilize two speakers. Its earpiece doubles as one of the loudspeakers, while the other one is found tucked away on the bottom of the handset. Naturally, such an assymetrical placement can't possibly have the two speakers sounding identical, so HTC chose to capitalize on the differences. The bottom speaker is used more as a sub-woofer, which makes sense, seeing as bottom-mounted drivers can usually be bigger and bassier. The earpiece is tuned to sound off in the higher frequency-spectrum. HTC calls this system “BoomSound Hi-Fi edition”.

So that's settled then — the phone may not have true stereo, but just might be the best-sounding handset of 2016, if what HTC says about the new speakers is true. We are also very curious how that would sound when the phone is turned in landscape mode – would it annoy the listener? We'll have to get our hands on a unit and test it, of course. A little fun fact on the side — we do remember a time when HTC made fun of a certain phone for having its speaker on the bottom, it can be seen in the video below.