HTC Desire 816 Review

HTC Desire 816 Review

Another day, another phablet. Just a couple days after reviewing the Sony Xperia T2 Ultra, I got my hands on another mid-range huge phone, the HTC Desire 816.

HTC describes the Desire 816 as their ‘flagship midrange’ phone, and it’s easy to see why, Not only does this thing look freakkin gorgeous, it also strikes a pretty good balance between features and pricing. There’s a 5.5 inch display, quad-core processor, 13 megapixel rear camera, stereo front-facing BoomSound speakers, and Sense 6.0 UI, all for just $400 (or Rs Rs 23,990 here in India for the Dual-SIM version). Worth the pricetag? Read on for our HTC Desire 816 Review, to find out.

The Design:-

The HTC Desire 816 has a gorgeously minimalistic design with straight lines and subtle curves, making it easily one of the best looking phones in this price-range.

Sure, it’s mostly made out of plastic, but it feels very solid and sturdy, and is comfortable to hold even with the flash front and back. That being said, the glossy plastic back is quite the fingerprint magnet, but a quick wipe with a soft cloth usually fixes that well.

Along with the reliable-feeling build quality, the trims around the sides of the phone have a rubbery matte finish which help the Desire 816 feel more grippy.

With the Desire 816 measuring 156.6 x 78.7 x 7.99 mm, it can be difficult to operate single-handed or even fit into a pocket. I know, I know, I just said it was comfortable to hold, and it is, but operating it can be challenging with one hand, mostly because it’s a rather tall phone because of the BoomSound speakers. It weighs a light-ish 165 grams.

Coming to the front of the Desire 816, you’ll find the large, gorgeous 5.5 inch Super LCD2 display which puts this phone in phablet territory. A few of y’all might be disappointed that it’s “only” a 720 by 1280 pixels resolution panel, but I was more than happy with the 267 ppi of pixel density, especially after using the same resolution on the 6 inch screen of the Xperia T2 Ultra.

While it might not be as sharp as the HTC One M8′s display, I thought the resolution was very acceptable and viewing angles were wide. Website articles are very comfortably readable, and watching videos, viewing photos or just playing games are all very pleasant experiences on that giant screen.

Color reproduction is mostly great, and never over-saturated, except that whites have a bit of a cold tone to them sometimes. The screen can also get really bright, which makes it easier to use in outdoor sunlight. That being said, the display tends to catch fingerprints and grease rather easily.

Above the display, you’ll find the much-appreciated 5 Megapixel front facing camera (which can record 1080p video), and a top BoomSound speaker which also acts as the earpiece.

Below the display, you’ll just find the HTC branding on a useless black bar, and the lower BoomSound speaker which hides a microphone within. The Desire 816 uses on-screen navigation buttons, so you wont find any capacitive navigation keys here. The result is a device that looks really clean and minimalistic from the front.

Moving on to the rest of the phone, at the top of the Desire 816, you’ll find a lone 3.5mm audio jack, with a tiny pinhole for the secondary noise cancelling microphone.

On the left side, you’ll find the power/screenlock and volume rocker keys.

The power key has decent tactile feedback, the volume keys not so much. They’re also hard to reach with the right hand.

On the right side, you’ll find a large, flush, plastic flap which covers a nano-SIM card slot and a microSD card slot.

Since we have the dual-SIM Desire 816 in to review, you’ll see two sim card slots.

One is for a GSM nano-SIM card slot while the other is for a CDMA nano-SIM.

At the bottom you’ll find a lone microUSB charging and connectivity port.

All in all, the HTC Desire 816 is one gorgeous looking smartphone. It might be a mid-range phone but HTC has really excelled at design here.

The Hardware:-

The HTC Desire 816 is powered by a 1.6 Ghz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC, with Adreno 305 graphics and 1.5 GB of RAM.

As a result, the 816 is still powerful, but benchmarks arent as impressive as any of today’s flagship phones.

Performance is still more than satisfactory, with a responsive UI that does not lag, and multi-tasking is never an issue. You might occasionally see a dropped frame now and then, if you’re using a cpu-intensive app or game.

Still, the ARM Cortex-A7 based cpu does a good enough job, and can handle any games you throw at it. But like I said, graphically intense 3D games will see performance drop.

Apart from that, there’s 8GB of internal memory (out of which only 4.2GB

Coming to video quality, the HTC Desire 816 can capture 1080p video at 30 fps, 720p videos at 60 fps, and slow-motion videos at 120 fps at a resolution of 768 x 432 pixels.

The camera locks focus in videos so you’ll need to tap to change focus in a video or enable continuous auto-focus in the settings menu. Videos look good overall, with sufficient details and fast auto-focus, though things can sometimes seem to have a bit too much contrast. Ofcourse, just like with images, low-light videos have a bit of noise and can tend to get blurry.

Here’s a camera video sample from the HTC Desire 816 to give you a better idea:

The Call Quality:-

Call quality on the Desire 816 is decent enough, and voices through the earpiece sound natural without any distortions.

That being said, it definitely could have been louder.

On the other end of the line, callers said my voice sounded loud and clear.

The Battery Life:-

The HTC Desire 816 is powered by a 2600 mAh non-removable battery, which is pretty decent considering the size and specs of this phone.

According to HTC, the Desire 816′s battery is rated at up to 21 hours of 3G talk time and almost a month on standby. In my tests, I was still able to come back home with some battery percentage left on the Desire 816, after a day of heavy usage. Under moderate usage you could easily get a day and a half or even two days worth of usage out of that battery.

There’s an “Extreme Power Saving” mode that greatly helps in emergency situations, like if you’re outside and low on battery. It’s definitely a bit extreme, as it shuts down all of your phone’s connectivity features, reduces the screen brightness, and switches to a simpler, less cpu-intensive user interface. The result is surprisingly hours of extra standby time even if there’s just 10 percent battery left.

The Conclusion:-

Wahey! The HTC Desire 816 turned out to be a pretty good mid-range smartphone for that pricetag. There’s solid build quality, a large 720p display, loud front facing stereo speakers, decent performance and a good camera, with a 5 megapixel front facing camera making it perfect for #selfies. There’s not much in this price range that can give you all of that.

To be honest, the only thing I would have improved on the Desire 816, is the quad-core Snapdragon 400 SoC. Sure it’s good enough to handle day-to-day tasks and keeps the UI moving along smoothly, but very demanding video games will definitely see things slow down.

The only phone I can compare it to, is the Sony Xperia T2 Ultra which we reviewed yesterday, which boasts a larger screen at the same resolution, the same processor (but clocked at 1.4Ghz instead), almost the same build quality, and better battery life. But the Desire 816 looks better, is much easier to use, has louder stereo speakers, and the software UI just generally looks cleaner as well. That being said, the Dual-SIM Xperia T2 is GSM+GSM while the Dual-SIM Desire 816 is GSM+CDMA.

At the end of the day, you pretty much know what you’re getting with the HTC Desire 816 and I was very impressed by it. Personally, it’s between this and the Sony Xperia T2 Ultra. In my opinion, they’re the only two phones worth checking out in this price-range.