14 DAY TRIAL // Over the weekend, HTC announced the upcoming availability of its Desire 816 mid-range Android smartphone in India. HTC Desire 816 is one of the most popular handsets launched by the Taiwanese company, even though it was only released in a few countries.
The number of pre-orders received took HTC by surprise, which is probably one of the reasons that the smartphone will not make it to other markets until late April or early May.
Anyway, it looks like customers in India will be able to buy the HTC Desire 816 beginning the first week of May, AndroidOS reports. The mid-range handset will be available for purchase for only Rs 23,990 outright, which is about $395 or €285.
Indian customers will be pleased to know that HTC will launch the dual-SIM version of Desire 816 in their country, so they will be able to fit in up to two SIM cards into the phone at the same time.
Another major selling point of HTC Desire 816 would be the fact that it ships with Android 4.4.2 KitKat operating system out of the box, which rarely happens for mid-range smartphones launched these days.
Given the large 5.5-inch Super LCD2 capacitive touchscreen display, HTC Desire 816 can be tagged as a phablet. The phone’s screen supports HD (720p) resolution, but no Corning Gorilla Glass coating.
Software-wise, the Desire 816 runs HTC Sense 5.5 UI on top of KitKat, but it won’t come as a surprise if the handset maker offers an upgrade to Sense 6.0 in the not so distant future. However, this has yet to be confirmed by HTC.
On the inside, the smartphone comes equipped with a powerful enough 1.6GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, an Adreno 305 graphics processing unit and 1.5GB of RAM.
It also packs 8GB of internal memory, as well as microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 128GB). HTC Desire 816 has an impressive 13-megapixel rear-facing camera which features autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording.
In the front, there’s a secondary, no less impressive, 5-megapixel camera for video calls, which can also capture HD (720p) videos.
The Desire 816 offers a wide range of connectivity options, including LTE, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS with A-GPS support and GLONASS. The smartphone is powered by a 2600 mAh Li-Polymer battery, which has yet to be rated by the manufacturer.
“The HTC Desire 816 is the start of the mid-tier performance smartphone. Taking the best technology and putting it into the Desire 816 challenges everything people will expect from a mid-tier smartphone with performance,” said Jack Yang, president of HTC South Asia.