14 DAY TRIAL // HTC India officially introduced the Desire 816 high-end Android smartphone in the country in late April and promised that device would go on sale in early May for around Rs 23,990 ($395 / €285) outright.
Unfortunately, weeks have passed since HTC said the Desire 816 would be available for purchase and the smartphone is nowhere to be seen on shelves.
It’s unclear why HTC India wasn’t able to deliver on its initial promise to release the Desire 816 in the country in early May, but it may have something to do with the smartphone’s popularity in all regions where it already went on sale.
The good news is HTC Desire 816 has finally arrived in India and customers can purchase it for Rs 24,450 off contract, which is about $415 or €305. That’s slightly higher than HTC’s suggested retail price, but the Desire 816 will probably be cheaper in the next couple of weeks.
For the time being, the only retailer that offers the HTC Desire 816 is Infibeam, but we can safely assume the smartphone will hit shelves at other authorized resellers as well.
Potential customers should know Infibeam offers both Gray and Black versions of Desire 816, but HTC announced the smartphone would also be available in White and Red, though it’s unclear whether or not these colors will arrive in India anytime soon.
For those out of the loop, the Desire 816 is one of the most popular Android smartphones launched by HTC this year. The Taiwanese company might have sold more Desire 816 units than its One M8 flagship smartphone.
The Desire 816 ships in India with Android 4.4.2 KitKat operating system out of the box and Sense 5.5 UI on top. According to HTC, the smartphone will receive an upgrade to Sense 6.0 UI in the next couple of weeks.
On the inside, the handset is armed with a 1.6GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, an Adreno 305 graphics processing unit and 1.5GB of RAM.
Although it comes with only 8GB of internal memory, users will be able to further expand storage up to 128GB via microSD memory card.
HTC Desire 816 boasts a stunning 5.5-inch Super LCD2 capacitive touchscreen display that supports HD (720p) resolution. It also packs an impressive 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p), as well as a no less impressive 5-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls.