14 DAY TRIAL // We reported yesterday on the imminent launch of the HTC Desire 516 mid-range smartphone in India, but at that time, we did not have any estimates on the arrival of the handset.
Well, it looks like the smartphone has recently gone on sale in India, though HTC has yet to officially announce the availability of the Desire 516 in the country.
As Maktechblog points out, HTC Desire 516 is only available for purchase via eBay India and aside from that, it has been priced higher than we have anticipated.
Instead of offering the smartphone for under Rs 10,000 ($165 / €120) outright, HTC Desire 516 is now selling on eBay India for no less than Rs 13,302 ($220 / €160) upfront.
At this price, there are lots of other alternatives available in India, which have much better features than what Desire 516 has to offer.
Although the smartphone’s build and design will certainly make the Desire 516 stand out from other devices in the same price range, there are many variables that you should take into consideration before making your investment.
For example, HTC Desire 516 ships with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean operating system out of the box, which is older than what most of the new mid-range smartphones launched by multiple Indian OEMs in the last couple of weeks have.
The good news is that the smartphone offers dual-SIM capability with dual standby support and packs a decent 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor inside.
It’s also worth mentioning that the HTC Desire 516 has an Adreno 302 graphics processing unit (not even Adreno 305?) and 1GB of RAM. The Desire 516 comes with only 4GB of internal memory, but users can further expand storage up to 32GB via microSD card slot.
Furthermore, HTC’s mid-range Android smartphone sports a large 5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports qHD (540 x 960 pixels). It also features a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus, LED flash and HD (720p) video recording.
The main camera offers lots of advanced functions like 60 degree Sweep Panorama shot, Video Pic mode only while video recording, Face Beautify, HDR, BSI and f/2.8 aperture.
There’s also a secondary 2-megapixel camera in the front for video calls and selfies. HTC Desire 516 is powered by a 1950 mAh battery, which is rated for up to 9 hours of talk time in 3G mode.
It also provides users with various HTC features like BlinkFeed and Video Highlights. Keep in mind that the Desire 516 runs HTC Sense 5.1 UI (user interface).