14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like HTC is determined to flood the Android market with lots of mid-range smartphones. Even though the Taiwanese company announced a few years ago that it would exclusively focus on high-end devices, it appears that its marketing strategy failed.
Starting this year, the company announced that it would start launching budget-friendly smartphones globally and for that HTC signed partnerships with various chipset providers such as MediaTek.
The first mid-range Android smartphones announced earlier this year by HTC, the Desire 610 and 816, will arrive soon on the market. The latter has already scored at least 1 million pre-orders in China, which proves that not focusing on the mid-segment was a bad move for HTC.
Anyway, it looks like HTC is readying yet another mid-range handset for the Chinese market, even though the Desire 816 has yet to hit shelves.
The folks over at Phonearena report that the next device in the Desire family will get the moniker 516, which suggests that this might be a slightly less-featured version of the Desire 816.
HTC Desire 516 has recently been spotted at Chinese regulatory commission TENAA and it is likely to be officially introduced in the coming weeks.
There will be two HTC Desire 516 variants available on the market: Desire 516t and Desire 516w. They will be different in terms of software and hardware, so here it goes.
HTC Desire 516t, which has recently appeared at TENAA, will ship with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system out of the box, which makes it rather an entry-level smartphone.
However, the handset is powered by a more than decent 1.3GHz quad-core processor, possibly provided by MediaTek. It will support TD-SCDMA connectivity and it will sport a large 5-inch capacitive touchscreen display that supports qHD (540 x 960 pixels) resolution.
The Desire 516t will also pack 512MB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus and LED flash, as well as a VGA front-facing camera for video calls.
HTC Desire 516t has been tagged with China Mobile’s branding, so it goes without saying that it will be launched in China through this carrier.
On the other hand, the Desire 516w will ship with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean platform onboard. Hardware-wise, it will include 1GB of RAM and a 1.2GHz quad-core processor. No word where the Desire 516w will be launched.
We expect more details on the HTC Desire 516 mid-range smartphone to emerge in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more updates on the matter.