HTC ditches 3.5mm headphone jack for its new Bolt
HTC ditches 3.5mm headphone jack for its new BoltREUTERS/Tyrone Siu

If Apple did it, it should be right at some level. After the launch of iPhone 7 without the 3.5mm headphone jack, HTC is following the suit with its latest Bolt smartphone. The latest smartphone is an HTC 10 clone without the 3.5mm audio jack, a first for HTC.

HTC Bolt is also the company's first smartphone to run Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box. It is launched only in the U.S. for now and available through Sprint for $600. Another major highlight of the Bolt smartphone is the 3x20MHz carrier aggregation.

On many other levels, the HTC Bolt is much like its predecessors. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core chipset, 3GB RAM and offers 32GB onboard storage with microSD card support. While it may be surprising to see an aging Snapdragon 810 processor here, it looks like a logical move since the chipset is already certified for 2x20MHz carrier aggregation.

As for the rest of the specs, the HTC Bolt has a 5.5-inch Quad HD Super LCD 3 display with 2.5D Gorilla Glass 5 protection. It sports a 16MP primary camera with f/2.0 aperture, PDAF, OIS, dual LED flash, BSI sensor and Hi-res audio recording. On the front, there is an 8MP snapper for selfies, which supports HD video recording.

To justify the $600 price tag, even more, HTC Bolt packs the latest connectivity options including Cat 9 LTE, USB Type-C, NFC and Bluetooth 4.1. Powering all this up is a 3,200mAh battery, which comes with Quick Charge 2.0 support.

With these specs, HTC Bolt is a contender for the flagship title and competes against the likes of Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, iPhone 7 series and the Pixel series. International availability of HTC Bolt is not known at the moment.