HTC has added some new smartphones to its Desire line of smartphones and the latest is the Desire 816: phablet which falls in the mid to high price segment. It sports a 5.5-inch 720p Super LCD2 display, Snapdragon 400 clocked at 1.6GHz featuring four cores, 1.5GB of RAM, Adreno 305 GPU, 8GB of internal memory and microSD card expansion, a 13MP rear camera with f/2.2, BSI sensor, 1080p Full HD video recording capabilities, and a 5MP front camera. The smartphone also features HTC’s dual-frontal speakers and HTC BoomSound. It has HTC BlinkFeed to keep a tab on the latest news and social updates and to juice up the smartphone there is a 2,600 mAh battery.
HTC has always been ahead of others when it comes to designing its smartphones and the design of the Desire 816 is quite neat giving off a nice premium finish. The back has a glossy plastic finish (which is a fingerprint magnet) which also houses the 13MP camera with an LED flash with a metal ring around it. Even the power/lock and volume keys are made out of metal offering a nice feedback. The stereo speakers which are above and below the display are pretty loud and clear thanks to the BoomSound technology.
On the software side the handset runs on Android 4.4.2 with Sense 6 which runs very smooth and offers almost all the new features seen on the HTC One (M8) except the active-lockscreen gestures.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 compared to the HTC Desire 816
The display is pretty sharp and the brightness levels also seem decent. The touchscreen is responsive and offers a good feedback. Overall, the Desire 816 is a good attempt by HTC. It is also one of the best looking phablets that one can get in the market today.