Sprint’s HTC Bolt unveiled with lightning-fast LTE Plus support

As expected, HTC has officially launched the HTC Bolt. The device is a Sprint exclusive in the US, but there are still rumors floating around that the Bolt will be making its way to other markets around the globe as the HTC 10 EVO.

The images show that the HTC Bolt shares the same basic design as the HTC 10, but the two devices are dramatically different. Besides its 5.5-inch Quad HD display, the Bolt has more in common with flagship devices from 2015 than it does with the HTC 10, Samsung Galaxy S7 or the new Pixel phones. On the inside, the Bolt is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor with 3GB of RAM. The 32GB of storage is quite acceptable, especially since it comes with a microSD card slot which supports 2TB of expandable storage.

What sets the HTC Bolt apart from the HTC 10 is the fact that it does not have a 3.5mm headphone jack. Audio on the HTC Bolt is delivered over its UBS 2.0 Type-C connector. The included USB Type-C headphones feature HTC BoomSound Adaptive Audio which “scans your ears and the ambient noise around you to adjust audio output to suit your personal hearing capabilities.” The headphones are also Hi-Res Audio certified, delivering 24-bit audio to your ears.

On top of that, the HTC Bolt is one of the few devices which supports Sprint’s new LTE Plus network. Sprint and HTC claim that the phone is lightning fast – thus the Bolt name and the use of Usain Bolt in the promotional material. The Bolt comes with support for 3×20 MHz Carrier Aggregation and has the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X10 LTE modem.

The HTC Bolt is also water and dust resistant with a rating of IP57. This means that the phone can survive being dropped into 1 meter of fresh mater for up to 30 minutes. That’s not as good as the IP68 rating of the Samsung Galaxy S7, but it’s better than nothing.

“For HTC Bolt, we took everything that was so great about the HTC 10 and made it even better. We took the award-winning design and made it water-resistant. We took the awesome audio and made it more personal. And, of course, we took the wireless speed and supercharged it with Sprint, turning HTC Bolt into a smartphone unlike any you’ve ever experienced.”