14 DAY TRIAL // It’s only been a few days since HTC officially introduced the Desire 616 mid-range Android handset in China and now the smartphone is available in Singapore as well.
Android enthusiasts and HTC fans alike can now grab the Desire 616 for only $240 (€175), which seems like a great price for a smartphone with such decent specs sheet.
The folks over at BGR report that the HTC Desire 616 will also be launched in India later this week, but there’s no info on price tag yet. However, considering the phone’s price in Singapore, it shouldn’t cost more than Rs 15,000 in India.
The Desire 616 is not the only mid-range smartphone HTC plans to bring in India, as One E8 has been confirmed to arrive in the country as well.
Unfortunately, there is no clear date for the release of the HTC One E8 for the moment, but we will keep an eye out for any new details that might surface in the coming days so stay tuned for more on this one.
Back to HTC Desire 616, the smartphone comes with lower specs than the HTC One E8, but they will also be priced differently.
The main downside for the Desire 616 is the fact that it will ship with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean operating system out of the box. If HTC offers the smartphone for Rs 15,000, it might not sell that well given the multitude of other cheaper handsets running a newer version of Android and with somewhat similar specs.
Nevertheless, HTC Desire 616 is a solid alternative for those looking for a good mid-range Android smartphone. The handset is equipped with an octa-core MediaTek MT6592 processor clocked at 1.7GHz, which is complemented by a Mali-450MP4 graphics processing unit and 1GB of RAM.
The smartphone also sports a more than decent 5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports HD (720p) resolution. Sadly, HTC Desire 616 packs only 4GB of internal memory, but users will be able to further expand storage up to 32GB via microSD card slot.
On the back, the mid-range handset boasts an enhanced 8-megapixel photo snapper with autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording, while in the front there’s a secondary 2-megapixel camera for video calls and selfies.
Last but not least, the Desire 616 is powered by a 2000 mAh battery and offers multiple connectivity options, including dual-SIM, HSDPA (21Mbps), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS with A-GPS support.