HTC Desire 816 - $325 unlocked
- 5.5”, 1280 x 720 IPS LCD display (267 ppi)
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC
- 1.6 GHz quad-core CPU, Adreno 305 GPU, 1.5GB RAM
- 8 GB internal storage, microSD card slot
- 13 MP camera, 1/3.06” sensor, f/2.2 lens, 1080p video
- 2,600 mAh, 9.88 Wh battery
- LTE, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
- Android 4.4 ‘KitKat’
- 165 grams, 8.1mm thick
The HTC Desire 816’s main feature is the large 5.5-inch HD display, and it also packs in a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC, a 13-megapixel camera (no Ultrapixel sensor here), and design cues from HTC’s recent high-end products. All of this is available for just $325, placing it squarely in the affordable territory of the Nokia Lumia 1320, Asus Zenfone 6 and older products like the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8.
Some of HTC’s previous mid-range products haven’t been as attractive as they seem on paper, however in 2014 the company has majorly stepped up its game to offer better devices at better price points. Let’s hope the Desire 816 is one of these products.
Design
I really like the style HTC has used for the Desire 816. The rounded plastic slab looks particularly good in white with its contrasting black bezel, while the dotted BoomSound speakers and large silver buttons give some flair to the design. I would have liked to see the back panel use the same matte finish as the edges. Luckily it’s not the side of the handset you’ll be looking at most.
Despite the phone actually looking nice, when you get it in your hands you might notice some strange design decisions. The most notable and most annoying is the power button placement on the upper left edge of the handset, which is only really suited to people using the device in their left hand. For right-handers like me, attempting to power on the Desire 816 while holding it in one hand is quite a stretch.
The button placement is a slight improvement on HTC’s typical choice of placing it on the top edge, but I wish they would take note of what other manufacturers choose and place it in a more ergonomic position. Midway down the right or left sides would be perfect for a smartphone of this size.
The size of the HTC Desire 816 is much larger than necessary, due to the sizable bezel around the display. The 5.5-inch device is actually 5mm taller than the 5.7-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and is the same width, with display coverage of just 68% compared to the Note 3’s 75%.
I’m not too concerned about the width of the handset, as it’s still manageable, but the unnecessary height makes the Desire 816 a little too cumbersome for my liking. Most of the extra height comes from two black panes above and below the display: the top one only contains a small sensor array, while the bottom one is just used for branding (like the HTC One M8). Remove these two panels and integrate the components into other areas and suddenly the phone is the perfect size.
For all the good work HTC has done in styling the Desire 816, however large the handset may have turned out, the build quality lets the final product down. The polycarbonate used for the sides of the device and the glass protecting the display both feel very nice in your hands, but the glossy cheap plastic that makes up the back panel is anything but quality.
Reminiscent of some of Samsung’s past flagships, the glossy back panel is slippery and quickly becomes greasy. It also completely ruins the aesthetics of the device transitioning from a premium-style plastic around the edges to glossy rubbish on the back.
Furthermore, HTC hasn’t joined the back panel onto the rest of the device properly, leaving a small gap around the plastic that gives an illusion that it’s removable. In some places – particularly around the camera module and flash – the back audibly creaks when light pressure is applied, which is not something I want to hear from what should be a well-constructed phone.
Instead of having the back panel come off, a small flap on the upper right edge reveals the nano-SIM and microSD card slots. If you end up getting a dual-SIM model you’ll find both SIM ports are available to you, but in the model I received from HTC Australia, only one SIM slot was available for use, despite there clearly being a spot for another one. It will come as no surprise that the micro-USB port is on the bottom edge and the 3.5mm audio jack is on the top.
At 8.1mm thick at its thickest point, as well as 165 grams heavy, the Desire 816 is fairly slim and light for its footprint. Unfortunately it isn’t helped by being too large in terms of vertical height, but its slimness should keep it from being a massive brick.
Display
For a device like the Desire 816, the display is one of the key selling points. However, as we are dealing with a mid-range device, we’re not getting the latest and greatest display technology, which is completely understandable.
In the Desire 816, HTC has included a 5.5-inch TFT IPS ‘Super LCD 2’ panel with a resolution of 1280 x 720, equating to a pixel density of 267 PPI. The last time we saw a Super LCD 2 panel in a flagship HTC smartphone was 2012’s One X, so it’s not surprising to see the technology filter down to the mainstream market in 2014.
There’s a lot to like about the 5.5-inch Super LCD 2 in the Desire 816, even if it’s not the latest and greatest going around. One such aspect is the color quality, which has always been a key aspect of the Super LCD line. The display on the 816 is well saturated and has a decent level of contrast, making images look vibrant, accurate and generally excellent.
The panel is seated close to the protective glass, and generally speaking the viewing angles are good, although there is a small reduction in perceivable brightness when viewing at off-normal angles. The Desire 816’s display is also easily viewable outdoors thanks to the way the IPS panel is constructed, which reduces reflections, as well as the bright backlight.
Obviously the sharpness of this 720p panel isn’t going to match the same sharpness levels achieved with a 1080p display, but nevertheless there’s little to complain about. Some devices in this price bracket and device category released last year (and even this year) use mediocre 960 x 540 panels, which can’t really compete with a true HD panel where it counts.
Images and text generally look crisp on the 5.5-inch panel, with its pixel density of 267 PPI providing a level of clarity that’s more than acceptable at this price point. There’s also the added bonus of requiring less processing power to render graphics, which can improve performance and battery life.
Performance: ARM-Based Snapdragon 400
The HTC Desire 816 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC, similar to what was found in last year’s HTC One Mini as well as the Motorola Moto G.When the HTC One Mini launched, it was stuck between fitting into the mid- and high-end segments. The choice to use a Snapdragon 400 in a nearly-$500 smartphone left it feeling a little underpowered and underwhelming for the price point. However with the Desire 816 costing over $150 less than the One Mini at launch, it’s much more suited to Qualcomm’s mid-range SoC.
The actual Snapdragon 400 model, the MSM8228, isn’t one I’ve used in a smartphone before. It’s most similar to the MSM8226 found in the Moto G in that it uses ARM Cortex-A7 CPU cores, as opposed to Qualcomm’s custom Krait cores that were used in the HTC One Mini’s MSM8930.
There are four Cortex-A7s in the MSM8228 clocked between 300 MHz and 1.6 GHz, making it the fastest arrangement of ARM cores in a Snapdragon 400 SoC. Performance from the quad-core CPU should be comparable to, if not faster than the dual-core Krait 300 CPU in the MSM8930, at least on paper. Like all Snapdragon 400 chips, the MSM8228 is produced using 28nm LP technology.
The quad-core CPU is paired with an Adreno 305 GPU clocked at up to 450 MHz, as well as a single-channel 32-bit LPDDR2 memory interface at 533 MHz, and a 1080p video encoding/decoding block. The Desire 816 has 1.5 GB of RAM, as well as 8 GB of internal NAND that can be expanded upon by inserting a microSD card.
Connectivity-wise there’s an integrated LTE modem supporting speeds up to 150 Mbps, as well as single-band Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, HSPA+, 2G and IZat Gen8A GPS+GLONASS. Unlike HTC’s higher-end products, there’s no NFC in the Desire 816.
Around the operating system in general, the Desire 816 performs just as well as HTC’s flagship products. The interface is usually buttery smooth, and the times where you notice a dip in performance are few and far between. Loading apps is quick and responsive for a mid-range product, and while it can’t match the Snapdragon 800 in providing an instantaneous feel, there’s no reason to be unsatisfied with the Desire 816.
The Adreno 305 has always been very capable at rendering Android games at 720p, and it’s no exception in the Desire 816. I tried out a few of my favourites and all of them ran fine, easily reaching playable frame rates and often hitting 60 FPS. For example, Dead Trigger 2 performs very well on High settings, despite the mid-range GPU.
Unlike the One M8, the Desire 816 does not cheat on benchmarks. It looks like HTC has heard the voices of the reviewers and has cut out the pointless practice; enough said.
The performance displayed from the HTC Desire 816’s internal NAND is very good, matching flagship handsets in sequential read and write, but falling slightly behind in random read/write speeds.
No review of an HTC handset would be complete without mentioning the BoomSound speakers found on the front of the device. The speakers on the Desire 816 are just as loud as those found on the HTC One M8, but the quality isn’t quite as balanced when listening to music. Even if the Desire 816 isn’t at the same quality level as the One M8, it’s leagues ahead of other competing smartphones.
Camera
As a mid-range handset, the Desire 816 doesn't use HTC's flagship ‘UltraPixel’ sensor or Duo Camera arrangement, instead relying on a more traditional 13-megapixel CMOS. The sensor is a 1/3.06” OmniVision OV13850, which uses 1.12µm pixels and natively captures 4:3 images with a resolution of 4224 x 3136. It’s paired with a 28mm-effective f/2.2 lens and an LED flash.Meanwhile the front camera is a Samsung S5K5E2 1/5” 5-megapixel CMOS with 1.12µm pixels, paired with an f/2.8 33mm-effective lens. Both the front and rear cameras are identical to the HTC One mini 2, while the front sensor is also the same as the HTC One M8 (albeit with a different lens). It’s interesting that HTC has used a wider-angle lens for the rear camera than the front-camera, but both are wide enough for general use.
OmniVision’s smartphone camera sensors tend to be more on the budget end of the scale, compared to high-end models from Sony and Samsung. With that said, the OV13850 is a perfectly capable shooter for a mid-range product like the Desire 816, and throughout my use I found it to be quite good for everyday photography.
One of the strengths of the HTC Desire 816’s camera is the resolution. The 13-megapixel sensor captures a decent amount of detail for a mid-range smartphone, surpassing HTC’s own flagaship One M8 with its smaller 4-megapixel shooter. In the best conditions, the Desire 816 produces crisp results that look great when downscaled to 1080p or 720p, and there’s ample room for some cropping or zooming.
The OV13850 isn’t without grain though, noticeable when viewing full resolution shots captured using most of the camera’s ISO range. The Desire 816’s camera metering algorithm prefers to use ISO 125 for the majority of its shots, which doesn’t really suffer from noticeable grain. It’s odd that it never used a lower ISO though, even in the brightest of conditions, instead using progressively faster shutter speeds that easily reached 1/2000s.
The color quality seen in the Desire 816’s camera shots is good without being astonishing, often suffering from typical HTC camera problems like underexposure in cloudy situations and dodgy indoor white balance. Photos taken outside were usually fine though, with acceptable dynamic range that can be boosted using the HDR mode when photographing high-contrast scenes.
The use of a 13-megapixel sensor over the UltraPixel camera module has its downsides when shooting in dark conditions. 1.12µm pixels aren’t adequate enough when paired with an f/2.2 lens to produce bright images at night. The camera has to resort to using high ISOs to reduce blur and capture enough light, and anything past ISO 800 will cause high levels of grain and noise reduction artefacts.
I wasn’t impressed with the Desire 816’s camera preview, which uses a low frame rate that doesn’t give a smooth experience at all. If you’re moving the camera about, it can cause the preview to be blurry, even in strong sunlight. HTC also uses spot metering, adjusting for wherever you tap to focus, which has its upsides and downsides but unfortunately can’t be changed to matrix or center-weighted metering.
On a more positive note, there’s a very short capture time, allowing you to capture images almost instantly.
Compared to HTC’s flagship product line there are fewer camera features: the Desire 816 only has the basics like crude exposure and ISO adjustment, plus a range of typical scenes. Manual shooting mode is gone, so there’s no way to make fine adjustments to the camera settings, as is Zoe mode and everything related to the Duo Camera.
The 5-megapixel front-facing selfie camera is good as far as front-facing cameras go, but it’s definitely a few steps behind the rear camera. It’s surprisingly capable in low-light for a module using an f/2.8 lens, and the resolution makes your selfies quite detailed, but actual color quality leaves a lot to be desired.
The Desire 816 is capable of recording video at 1080p at 30 frames per second and with a bitrate of 20 Mbps. Quality of both the video and audio is good, with color saturation and dynamic range on par with still shots.
Battery Life
Behind the Desire 816’s rear cover is a 2,600 mAh, 9.88 Wh non-removable battery: identical in size to the HTC One M8. The less powerful SoC and lower display resolution should result in similar battery life between the two handsets, considering the Desire 816’s larger screen.
During my time using the Desire 816, I found the battery life to be pretty good. The handset appeared to last especially long on Wi-Fi networks, but wasn’t as strong when I took it out of the comfort of my house. At the end of a typical day’s usage I was left with around 40-35% of the charge remaining, although this can fluctuate depending on usage patterns.
Like other recent HTC products, the Desire 816 comes with both a basic power saving mode that downclocks the CPU and dims the display, as well as Ultra Power Saving Mode. When you put the device in Ultra Power Saving Mode, all the non-essential features are disabled and the homescreen becomes a grid of six icons, leading to the most critical features like the phone, messages and calendar.
Essentially in this mode a smartphone turns into a featurephone, allowing the device to last for hours longer when the battery is at critical levels.
Software, Wrap Up
Out of the box, the HTC Desire 816 runs Android 4.4 with HTC’s custom Sense 6.0 skin. The vast majority of the software is identical to what was found on the HTC One M8, so if you want to get an idea of what this smartphone is like to use, head over and check out the software section of my One M8 review.While many of the One M8’s software features have made the jump to the Desire 816, including BlinkFeed and the pleasantly-skinned standard applications, some haven’t made the cut for hardware reasons. One such app is Sense TV, as the Desire 816 doesn’t have an infrared LED to control home entertainment devices.
The keyboard on the Desire 816 is the same HTC-made keyboard that I’ve come to love in past devices, and thanks to the large display, it’s even easier to use. Some manufacturers reduce the size of the keyboard on large-screened handsets, often making them less usable, but I’m glad this hasn’t happened with the 816.
Many of the settings from the HTC One M8, such as Do Not Disturb mode and HTC Connect have made the transition to the mid-range Desire 816, although you don’t get Motion Launch. With the One M8, Motion Launch allowed you to turn on the device by simply double-tapping the display, which negated the issues associated with the poor button placement. The Desire 816 suffers from poor button placement, which is where Motion Launch could have helped.
There’s also still the issue of having duplicate apps for some things, such as having both Chrome and Internet for web browsing, or having the Gallery and Photos apps for viewing images. This is more an issue with Google’s restrictions on OEMs and the GMS package, and something I hope will be addressed in future Android versions, as constantly having to select which apps to use detracts from the overall experience.
Wrap Up: A Solid Mid-Range Contender
Despite some flaws, the Desire 816 is a very capable large-screened smartphone for its decidedly mid-range price. HTC hasn’t skimped on optimization or hardware in a number of departments, resulting in a handset that’s more compelling than what the company has dished up in this market segment in the past.It may be powered by ‘only’ a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC, but the performance around the OS and in games is great, often matching it with the top-end phones. Most of the software found on the One M8 has made the transition as well, so you largely get the same basic experience as HTC’s fantastic flagship.
The main reason to buy a Desire 816 is its large display, and HTC has really delivered without breaking the bank. The 5.5-inch Super LCD 2 panel is bright and looks great from every angle, displaying images with decent color saturation and contrast. The panel’s 720p resolution is quite good as well, as not all smartphones of this size and class pack HD displays.
Both cameras on the Desire 816 are more than serviceable, being able to capture fairly good images when the conditions are right. There’s no Duo Camera or UltraPixel sensor to create cool effects or improve low-light photography, but the basic camera application gets the job done. And what you do get hardware-wise from HTC’s high-end phones is BoomSound, which as always delivers a top-notch smartphone sound experience.
The one area that, surprisingly, has let the Desire 816 down is the design. The phone is simply too large for the display, with unnecessary bezel bulking up the handset and causing it to be more cumbersome than it should be. The build quality isn’t great either, thanks to a glossy, cheap plastic back panel that isn’t joined to the rest of the body as well as it could be.
Regardless, for $325 unlocked and outright, the Desire 816 is worth considering if you want a large display on your smartphone but don’t want to spend as much as a Galaxy Note 3 or LG G3.
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