HTC teases new BoomSound tech in its upcoming ‘HTC 10’ flagship phone

HTC seems to be having a lot of fun teasing its next flagship smartphone. The HTC 10 will be unveiled officially at a virtual event on April 12, and is expected to compete directly with this year’s biggest smartphones. While the company has been pushing out its own teasers, leaks and renders have given us a pretty clear image of what to expect from the Taiwanese tech company this year.

One consistent rumor that’s been running since the beginning is that the next all-metal high-end phone won’t include BoomSound front-facing speakers. While that maybe true, it might only be half-true.

It appears HTC is planning to keep the BoomSound technology, but implement it in a different way. In its latest tweet in a long series of #powerof10 teasers, the smartphone maker states “Here comes the new boom. You’ll hear it.”

If that’s not a way of indicating we’ll get some kind of BoomSound technology, I don’t know what is.

Here comes the new boom. You’ll hear it. #powerof10 pic.twitter.com/Ln3XxWZ9BO

— HTC (@htc) March 23, 2016

Perhaps most interesting is what the subtle imagery seems to be hinting at. Clearly, the row of five pill-shaped holes on the bottom of the image is the speaker grille on the bottom edge of the device. It’s the collection of familiar-looking individually machined holes on the top of the image that has me a little puzzled.

They (the holes) look exactly like the speaker grilles on the current, and previous, HTC One smartphones. Could this be a simple way of suggesting that the 5 pill-shaped holes will form a grille to replace the old sea of holes? Or, is it indicating we’ll still see this old grille somewhere on the device, and that it works in conjunction with the bottom edge speaker to form a stereo effect of some kind?

My initial feeling is that it indicates a transition from the old speaker holes to the new edge-mounted ones. But, if HTC has found an innovative way to double the earpiece as a loudspeaker and combine it with the edge-mounted speaker for stereo sound, I’m completely down with that.

The HTC 10 (note: not One M10) is rumored to feature a 5.2-inch or 5.15-inch Quad HD display. Until recently, it was expected to be an AMOLED panel, but a more recent claim suggests HTC has developed a new Super LCD panel and will use that instead. It’s also expected to feature the same 12MP camera found inside the Nexus 6P, meaning it should take fantastic images, especially with the Snapdragon 820 processor and its advanced ISP onboard. It’s claimed it’ll also feature an HTC One A9-like fingerprint sensor on the front, and a 3,000mAh battery inside.