These are some of my quick impressions of the HTC 10 vs the S7e. I would like to emphasize this is my personal assessment and your impressions could be different from mine.
1. Design - I don't quite like the chamfered edges at the back. I felt HTC had over done it. Well users who like all metallic phone will love the feel. I much like the jagged lined power button. Design wise I prefer the S7e. However feel in the hands I much prefer the HTC 10 as it feels more solid and comfortable
2. Audio quality - even though it is different from its previous dual front boom speakers, the audio quality and sound volume is very good. The S7e cannot match it especially in a noisy environment. The S7e has only one speaker which due to its waterproof nature I supposed the speakers had an additional membrane and this do muffled the speakers . However in a quiet environment, I do find the S7e speakers still acceptable to me
3. Battery life : it could be too early as I only had the phones 2 days . But with similar usage the HTC 10 battery life falls short vs the S7e. Even though the S7e battery capacity is 20% higher than the HTC 10, the SOT I recorded on the S7e is about 40- 50% more ( pro rated out already). S7e my SOT was 7-8 hours vs 4-5 hours on the HTC 10. I guess one of the possible reason for the HTC 10 scoring lower is due to its operating temperature. The phone warm up very fast within just a few minutes of solely surfing - battery temperature average in range 38 to 41 degree C. The S7e recorded average 36-38 degree C generally. It is rare that the S7e will even hit 40 degree C while is common for the HTC 10 and* at some times I even see up to 42 degree C
My phone usage mainly on internet stuffs ( browsing, youtubes, several newsfeed, tweeter, mail, whatsapp etc) and NO gaming at all
4. Smoothness - both S7e and HTC 10 are about similar. However as in previous HTC M7, HTC One Max I simply doesn't like the built in blinkfeeds which I find is not smooth at all and is slight jerky at most times. I don't like the Samsung mews feed too
5. Original UI : HTC 10 has less bloatware and uses many Google app unlike Samsung which has another of their own set of app. Anyway I had never like both Samsung and HTC ( and other phone too) default UI and I always replace them with NOVA launcher. On Nova , HTC 10 has a very minor problem - few of my widgets doesn't shown up immediately after each reboot. The phone needed up to 1-2 secs to display it fully. On the S7e it was always instant
6. Camera- tested numerous shots ( all point and click using default settings). Overall I deemed the S7e is slightly better especially in low light. However I believe most users will still love the HTC 10 camera. It is easily one of the best within the top 5 ?? I would still rate the LG V10 as my preferred camera
I am still exploring the phone and will post more impressions later