HTC Desire 816 review

The HTC Desire 816 is a 5.5-inch Android smartphone with a similar stature to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, but at a fraction of the price. Available to buy for around £300 SIM-free, it’s a big colourful phone competing with handsets like the One Plus One and the 6-inch Nokia Lumia 1320. Despite its plastic body and mid-range phone specs, there’s plenty of positives that make the Desire 816 a great value phone if you prefer your phones king sized.

SEE ALSO: OnePlus One vs Nexus 5

HTC Desire 816: Design & Features

If you are on the lookout for a big phone, HTC has done a pretty good job of making this an attractive phone to own. There’s no metallic frame like the more expensive HTC One M8 or its smaller clone the HTC One Mini 2, opting instead for a combination of a glossy polycarbonate plastic non-removable back with a matte finish around the sides and the front of the phone, but it's a nice looking phone. 

It’s available in a six pastel shades, including white, black, red, dark blue and green, giving it a similar kind of finish to the Nokia Lumia 1320 smartphone, one that doesn’t feel cheap or nasty to hold despite being plastic. Helping its cause further is the slim, 7.99mm thick frame and curvy corners; combined with the featherweight 165g weight, the HTC Desire 816 isn't as arduous to carry around as its imposing size suggests. 

SEE ALSO: Best Android Phones Round-Up

There are some issues we noticed, though. For example, the on/off button and volume rocker sit up on the top left edge, making it very difficult to reach with one hand. It also becomes a problem when you are trying to take a picture in landscape mode, as it’s often easy to accidentally put the screen into standby. 

Getting the Nano SIM in place was a frustrating experience, too, and took several attempts to get it firmly in place before locking it away out of sight. You won't have to this often, though, and it's great to see a microSD card slot hiding behind the same hinged plastic flap. There's space for another SIM card here, too, though it's blanked out on our version. 

SEE ALSO: HTC One M8 vs One Mini 2

HTC Desire 816: Screen

The HTC Desire 816 has a 5.5-inch screen with a 720p HD resolution and a pixel density of 267ppi. That puts it into the same screen size territory as something like the LG G3, but with a resolution more like smaller phones like the Moto G and the One Mini 2.

It's clearly not a patch on the 1080p HD screen of the Galaxy Note 3, but the Desire 816’s Super LCD2 is a nice screen on which to watch videos, read web pages and play games. Maximum brightness is not as great as the One M8, but viewing angles are good and it's easy enough to view outdoors. Black levels are strong, too, making it ideal for films, and on the whole colours appear nice and accurate.

It's sharpness and clarity where the Desire 816 loses out to something like the 4.5-inch One Mini 2 (326ppi), but it's a tolerable difference provided you're not precious about it or used to smaller, higher-resolution phones. The relative lack of sharpness is only clearly evident on text and icons, and only when you look closely.

It's a very responsive screen, too, as it handles screen swipes and actions with no issues at all. Resolution aside, then, it's a very decent screen, particularly considering its size and the relatively cheap price you pay for it.

HTC Desire 816: Android and Apps

It’s pleasing to see HTC maintain largely the same UI experience throughout its line of handsets, with the Desire 816 running the new Sense 6 overlay on top of Android 4.4.2 KitKat. It’s not Android 4.4.3, though, and we have no word on if/when one could appear.

Much like the One Mini 2, you will have to make some compromises here with the Desire 816 missing out on Sense TV thanks to the lack of a an IR blaster, HTC Zoe video and shooting modes and a series of gesture controls that quite frankly most will be able to live without. In fact, most of the omissions will not adversely affect enjoying the still slick, fluid operating system.

What is carried over are the software keys, replacing the hardware buttons, that require a swipe up from the screen to reveal them, and the improved Blinkfeed is still the focal point. It combines all of your social feeds, news and calendar appointments into a single feed, which sounds like the perfect all in one solution. But it’s a feature that’s going to divide; we’d lean more towards swiping left to see Google Now as, while it doesn’t pull in social feeds, it does present important information in a more digestible and intuitive way.

Apps are largely the same you’d find on the One Mini 2, including HTC’s dedicated software for using the phone in the car for navigation, a Parent dashboard, Polaris Office 5 and the HTC music application. Most are likely to bypass most of these in favour of Google’s own native applications, most of which are on board. 

The 8GB of built-in storage doesn't leave much space for apps, but the microSD slot makes up for that.

HTC Desire 816: Performance

The Desire 816 is powered by a 1.6GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core CPU with 1.5GB RAM and the same Adreno 305 GPU found inside the One Mini 2. While its all undeniably mid-range, it’s fast enough to keep things running smoothly with very few signs of a struggle. 

It does miss out on the Motion Launch processor and the Snapdragon 801 CPU featured in the One M8, although most will be able to live without the benefits of a dedicated processor for tracking movement. It handles gaming like Real Racing 3 with few problems and doesn't strain when running multiple apps.

For reference, in the Geekbench 3 benchmark it scores 1,111 in the multi-core test, which is in the same ball park as the Moto G (1,155) and the One Mini 2 (1,120). That’s no real surprise when you realise how similar the specs are and in all instances it’s the ideal amount of power needed for the Desire 816 to cope with most tasks.

HTC Desire 816: Sound Quality

The good news is that the front-facing Boomsound stereo speakers included with the One M8 and the One Mini 2 are present, so there’s no sound muffling issues here and they are still head and shoulders above other smartphone speakers for listening to music or watching a film.

They are by no means perfect and sound a tad erratic at the top-end, but for power, loudness, bass response and richness they offer satisfying audio and are without doubt a standout feature for the Desire 816.

HTC Desire 816: Camera

The camera set-up is pretty much identical to the One Mini 2 with a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 5-megapixel front facing camera, both of which are capable of filming in Full 1080p HD.

It also uses the same camera app, with an interface that can be fiddly to switch between modes when you are trying to take a picture. This also means, that another new HTC handset misses out on the Duo Camera technology featured on the M8, but as you’ll see from our One M8 review, it’s far from a perfect feature on HTC's flagship phone anyway.

So the decision to go for more megapixels instead of larger ones is not necessarily a bad move and in the right conditions you can capture reasonably sharp, colourful images. Unsurprisingly, it’s on par with the One Mini 2’s camera in most departments, particularly in HDR mode and in Macro performance where it excels.

While low-light performance on the One Mini 2 particularly stood out, the Desire 816 finds it more of a struggle with the focus and sensor slow into action, which often leaves images overexposed.

It’s a similar story with the front-facing camera, where selfies are generally accurate but lack a little vibrancy,

The main video camera, meanwhile, is not the best performer, producing quite juddery, blurry footage. Audio capture is reasonably decent, but on the whole it's a little underwhelming.

HTC Desire 816: Battery Life

Keeping the Desire 816 going is a non-removable 2,600mAh capacity battery, which compared to batteries on similarly sized phones like the One Plus One (3,100mAh) and the Nokia Lumia 1320 (3,400mAh) is on the small size. 

But you do get the same Power Saver Modes and extreme power saving modes featured on the One Mini 2, and the former is crucial to getting a day’s use out of it. In general use for browsing, gaming and streaming content, it's largely fine but it can't match the impressive stamina levels of other big phones. 

In video testing, running a standard definition video downloaded from the Google Play Video app with 50% brightness, it managed on average 9 hours and 30 minutes, so it’s good but not the best you can get. When you need to quickly charge from a fully flat battery you can expect around 15% of life, so it’s a slow charger and takes roughly 3-4 hours to fully restore the phone’s life.

HTC Desire 816: Call Quality

The performance here is not too different from the One Mini 2, where calls are audible and don’t suffer from any signal dropouts but clarity is not fantastic and calls can sound slightly muffled. But it’s fine speaking in busy environments, like pubs our outside busy tube stations, and the microphone puts in a strong performance making it overall good, but not excellent.

Should I buy the HTC Desire 816?

If you want a big phone on a budget there are very few ways to fault the Desire 816. The plastic body is surprisingly attractive, the 720p HD screen and speakers make it a great place to watch video and the overall performance from gaming to camera quality is solid. Our only real gripes are with some of the design decisions, particularly the positioning of the buttons, while the battery life is not in the same league compared to similarly-sized handsets.

For the same £300, its nearest competitors for size and specs are last year’s Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and the Nokia Lumia 1320, while the much talked about One Plus One has far superior specs. This puts the Desire 816 in a slightly awkward position. It's a solid, enjoyable phone at a decent price, but it doesn't stand out in particular way to say you should go out buy it without further consideration.

Verdict

The HTC Desire 816 is big phone that’s offers some of the best qualities of the One M8 in a cheaper but still attractive plastic body. It lacks a standout feature, but it's a good phone that won't let you down.

iPad Air 2 dummy with Touch ID shown in many leaked images

The leaked iPhone 6 dummies are everywhere these days, smiling for photo shoot after photo shoot. Now though, it's the iPad's turn to get its very own dummy out there.

Starting a possible onslaught of iPad-related dummy leaks is today's trove of images purportedly depicting the iPad Air 2 (or iPad 6). This comes after a previous leak portrayed the upcoming tablet'sfront panel a while back.

As you can see, the successor to the iPad Air from last year may weigh around 484g (at least in one specific iteration), which is just a bit more than the original iPad Air - coming in at 469g for the Wi-Fi model, and 478g for the LTE-capable one.

The next iPad is apparently set to come with the Touch ID fingerprint sensor built into its Home button.

  

    
iPad Air 2 dummy

The sources for these images claim that what we have here is the final design for the iPad Air 2, perfectly replicated in dummy form.

The new tablet should come with Apple's next-gen A8 chipset, which will bump up performance compared to its predecessor.

The iPad Air 2 will probably be announced this fall alongside the iPhone 6.

Motorola Moto E

The Moto G continues to be a huge success for Motorola. It's a fantastic phone that sets the bar for budget phones, and Motorola has confirmed it has no intention of taking it off the market any time soon.

It seems therefore strange that the company is now releasing an even cheaper 3G smartphone in the form of the Moto E. At just £90 SIM-free at the time of writing, the Moto E is much cheaper than a SIM-free Moto G, and if you don’t want to spend over £100 on a smartphone the Moto E is the phone to buy.

The Moto E may be a chunky 12.3mm at its thickest point, but its smooth, soft-touch chassis curves and tapers to a slim 6.2mm at each edge, making it supremely comfortable to hold in your hand. At 142g the Moto E is also a gram lighter than the Moto G, and it feels just as sturdy and well-made. As with the Moto G, you'll be able to remove the rear of the phone and swap it for a range of colourful snap-on shell cases to give your Moto E a little more personality.

The Moto E has 4GB of storage, but you can expand its storage with a microSD card, letting you add an extra 32GB of space for your apps and files.

One of the most impressive things about the Moto E is just how smoothly it runs Android 4.4.2 KitKat. It's unusual to see KitKat on such a cheap handset, as most budget phones are often lumbered with older versions of Android that don't require much memory. The Moto E, on the other hand, has 1GB of RAM. That’s not a lot, but is enough to make the Moto E responsive when swiping through our home screens.

SMART AND SAFE

Like the Moto G, Motorola has left the Android user interface largely untouched in terms of design, but the Moto E does come with a few exclusive apps that help the phone seem smarter in everyday use. The newest app is Moto Alert, which is especially handy if you're a parent buying the Moto E for a child. There are three ways the app can alert others. The first is Emergency, which can send a text alert to certain contacts during an emergency, sound an alarm automatically or auto-dial your chosen emergency contact number. It works surprisingly well, and worked happily with both landline and mobile numbers. Moto Alert can also keep track of when you leave and arrive at places you visit regularly, such as school or work, and automatically alert your chosen contacts when you do so.

The second feature is Follow Me, which sends your current location to select contacts at specified intervals so that concerned family members know where you are. It’s also handy for helping your friends track you in busy, crowded areas. Meet Me, meanwhile, can send a text to your contacts telling them where to meet you.

The other main Motorola app is Moto Assist, which can affect your phone's behaviour at specific times of the day. It can automatically set your phone to be silent at night but still ring if a specified contact calls, or if someone calls twice within five minutes. It can also access your calendar and make your phone silent during meetings as well as send callers a text message saying you're busy. It’ll also read text messages and let you know who's calling while you're driving.

SCREEN

The Moto E's 4.3in screen has a resolution of 540x960 pixels, giving it a pixel density of 256ppi, which is much lower than the Moto G's 1,280x720-resolution screen and 329ppi pixel density. Even so, text still looked sharp and crisp on the Moto E’s screen. The screen also has an anti-smudge coating to help keep fingerprints at bay, and uses Corning Gorilla Glass 3 to protect it from scratches.

The display is excellent for such a cheap phone. With a measured sRGB colour gamut score of 90.7 per cent, colours looked bright and accurate, and its measured contrast ratio of 923:1 is close to the Moto G's contrast ratio of 1,116:1. Black levels were also good, and we measured a black level of 0.38.cd/m2. We also measured a pretty good peak brightness of 354cd/m2, and we could use the phone outdoors in bright sunshine with no problem. Viewing angles suffered when we put the phone down on a table, with whites turning a dull shade of blue, but this is typical with budget phones.

We also had to zoom in to read news headlines on desktop-based sites, as we found them difficult to read otherwise. In general, though, web browsing was a very smooth experience thanks to the Moto E's 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor. There was a very small delay when scrolling through image-heavy web pages such as The Guardian's home page, but its performance when zooming and panning proved much less frustrating than that of other budget phones we've tested. Indeed, the Moto E’s performance in the SunSpider benchmark is very close to that of the Moto G, with the Moto E completing the SunSpider benchmark in 1,658ms and the Moto G completing the benchmark in 1,410ms.

Linksys WRT1900AC

The Linksys WRT1900AC’s angular blue and black chassis harks back to the company's popular WRT54G, which could be customised thanks to the use of an open-source operating system. The WRT1900AC is also promoted as being compatible with third-party Open WRT firmware, although open source drivers for the router's Marvell 802.11ac wireless chipset are not currently available.

Even you’re not interesting in customising your router, the WRT1900AC has plenty of other features to justify its high price. As well as the expected bank of four Gigabit Ethernet ports and a Gigabit Ethernet WAN port, there's a USB3 port and, unusually, a dual-function USB-cum-powered eSATA port. This increases your options for adding external storage if you want to use the router as a simple NAS device, but we suspect many people would find a second USB3 port more useful for this. There are also plenty of ventilation holes in the chassis, and it’s raised up on sturdy legs, so you shouldn’t have any problems with cooling. There’s even an exhaust fan inside the WRT1900A, just in case the router is put under heavy load.

LOG IN CONVENIENCE

Linksys has developed a unified login system so that you can connect to your home network, monitor it and control it remotely using mobile apps. If you have no intention of accessing your router remotely you can log into the WRT1900AC’s web interface with a local username and password.

The interface looks good and is easy to navigate

The main interface is designed to look slick and friendly, and has a number of widget panels that let you see if you're connected to the internet, view any external storage that might be plugged in and see if parental controls are enabled. You can also see if the router's Media Prioritisation feature is enabled. This feature ensures priority is given to applications or devices that need low network latency to work smoothly, such as online games, smart TVs with streaming features or video chat clients.

The router's built-in parental controls are very simple. There's no content filtering here, just settings to block internet access from specific devices at certain times, or to block any URL you put in the blacklist.

HYPERSPEED

The WRT1900AC router is dual band, so you can set up wireless networks on the less congested 5GHz band as well as the 2.4GHz band. However, you’ll only experience the WRT1900AC’s fastest speeds on the 5GHz band, as that’s the band used by the faster 802.11ac standard. The WRT1900AC’s 2.4GHz-band networks conform to the 802.11n standard.

The 802.11ac standard is built for speed, and is designed for users who play games over a network, or who stream media from the internet or their local network. We expected the WRT1900AC to perform well, but weren’t prepared for just how well it would perform.

When we connected to the WRT1900AC’s 2.4GHz-band network with our laptop, we recorded an average throughput of 60.6Mbit/s at 1m, 32.7Mbit/s at 10m and 13.5Mbit/s at 25m. These are excellent results. With our laptop connected to the router on the 5GHz band, we recorded truly phenomenal average throughputs of 181.8Mbit/s at 1m, 167.8Mbit/s at 10m and 72Mbit/s at 25m. Even if you don’t have an 802.11ac compatible device or PC, you’ll still experience high speeds.

To test the WRT1900AC’s 802.11ac performance we used a Netgear A6200 Wi-Fi dongle and connected to the 5GHz band, where we saw an astonishing average throughput 209.7Mbit/s at all distances. This is supremely fast.

The Linksys WRT1900AC is an excellent router, with a clear user interface and remarkably high performance, making it a clear Best Buy award winner.

Apple finally allows Bitcoin transfer apps on iOS app store

Apple has backtracked on its policy of refusing to accept Bitcoin transfer apps into the iOS app store, signalling a shift in policy that should eventually pave the way to more digital currency apps on iPhones, iPads and iPods. The first app, Coinpocket, has already appeared on iTunes and app stores around the world.Coinpocket lets users send and recieve Bitcoin funds from any iOS device, the ability to check conversion rates to US dollars, encrypt their wallet keys and includes a QR code scanner for quickly sending funds to another account. It has appeared on the iOS app store before, but Apple removed it before updating its policies. In the interim, developers have been providing basic HTML5 versions of their apps which run in a mobile browser, but now we expect the floodgates to open and a host of new apps appear in the app store.According to TechCrunch, Apple has also been allowing Bitcoin transfer apps with options to purchase bitcoins directly from the app, which bypasses Apple's 30% share of in-app purchases when users pay for the transactions using Bitcoin.Although the move is great news for Bitcoin owners, anyone that has invested in other forms of cryptocurrency or digital currency won't be quite so lucky. When Apple updated its store policies, it only mentioned "approved" currencies - meaning it has final say over which ones make the grade. With Bitcoin being the first of its kind, and the largest of all the currently traded cryptocurrencies out there, it's something of a no-brainer for Apple, but smaller names like Dogecoin may need approval before iOS apps appear.Apple has also said that it will only accept virtual currency transmission apps "as long as they comply with all state and federal laws", although given the fact that many currencies already operate in a legal grey area we'll have to wait for the company to de-list apps before we know what exactly falls foul of the new guidelines

You can now buy OnePlus One sans invites but with caveats

Last week, the OnePlus One should have started shipping to the first people who got invites to buy it. But there's now a way to get a One without the need to wait for an invite.The Chinese online retailer Oppomart claims to have OnePlus One units in stock and ready to be shipped - worldwide, no less. Oppomart however isn't affiliated with Oppo as its name might imply, so how trustworthy ordering from there might be is up for debate. There are also a few caveats you should know about.

First and foremost, you're going to be paying $399 for the 16GB version of the phone, which is currently the only one in stock. That's exactly $100 more than what OnePlus itself is asking for.Furthermore, the devices you buy this way won't come with CyanogenMod 11S preinstalled. Rather, they ship with... Color OS, which is essentially Oppo's interpretation of what an Android skin should be. There go any doubts you might have had whether the two manufacturers are actually affiliated.That's because the OnePlus One is being sold in two different ways across the globe. Everywhere but China you have to go through the dreaded invite system to get one. In China, though, it's available from time to time in batches - a sales model pioneered by Xiaomi.However, the main difference between the Chinese OnePlus One and the international model is the software inside. That, and the 4G LTE band support.So before you order a OnePlus One, do check whether this Chinese stock will play nice with your particular carrier's bands. The units sold by Oppomart work on 1800/2100/2600 MHz for 4G, and 850/900/1900/2100 MHz for 3G.

Samsung Galaxy S5 Broadband LTE-A to launch this week?

Info on a premium version of the Galaxy S5 keeps coming in but it fails to be consistent. The latest tidbit says Samsung will repeat the Galaxy S4 Advance / S4 LTE-A trick it did last year and release its flagship with a newer chipset.The device will reportedly be called Samsung Galaxy S5 Broadband LTE-A (note that this name has been Google Translated and may not be 100% accurate). The new chipset updates both the CPU and GPU cores to Krait 450 and Adreno 420 respectively. It also ups the RAM to 3GB. The LTE speed also goes up from 150Mbps to 225Mbps for downloads.

The Galaxy S5 Broadband LTE-A will have a 5.1" QHD screen and not a 5.3" QHD screen (with super thin bezels) like we heard earlier. We've also seen the screen listed as 5.2" QHD.

Note the text next to the Super AMOLED logo. It pretty clearly says WQHD (which is equivalent to 

The back is reportedly brushed metal (at least it has the texture) and we've seen in gold and silver.

This might be a different device than the Samsung Galaxy F / S5 Prime which at least some of the rumors detail, but the source claims the Broadband is indeed the Galaxy F.

The new device will be unveiled on the June 19 for SK Telecom so it remains to be seen if it will be an international device or a localized device like the Galaxy J.