This week HTC announced their latest handset, the Desire 626. This smartphone redefines the mid-range, with a powerful octa-core processor, front-facing stereo speakers and a five inch 720p display. It’s an incredibly compelling package, particularly when the Desire 626 will cost just £150 sim-free! Let’s take a closer look.
Clever design
The Desire 626 is an attractive and surprisingly stylish smartphone, with a smart two-tone design. The white option we’re looking at here has a gold frame, while the blue variant has a turquoise frame – both look great to my eyes.
The ‘caps’ above and below the 5-inch 720p display remind me of the One M8, while the back is a little more generic with a corner-mounted camera and inlaid HTC logo.
One of the best design elements of the Desire 626 has got to be its front-facing stereo speakers. These worked fantastically on the One M8, and should prove equally great inclusions here. Having two speakers facing toward your ears (instead of back into your hand) is an entirely logical move, and I’d love to this trait adopted by more phones in the future.
This 5-inch phone is thin and light too: it’s just 8.2mm thick and weighs 140 grams. Compared to HTC’s own 5-inch flagship, the One M8, you’re looking at a Desire 626 which is 1.2mm thinner and weighs 20 grams less.
Powerful internals
The Desire 626 comes with a mid-range but recently released processor: the Snapdragon 410. That’s a quad-core unit running at 1.2GHz, and it’s also one of the first 64-bit processors to be released. Backing this is 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, expandable by micro SD cards. The phone has a moderate-sized 2000mAh battery to keep all of this going.
In terms of cameras, the Desire 626 is still very impressive for what is ostensibly a mid-range unit. You’ll find a massive 13-megapixel camera on the rear and a respectable 2-megapixel unit on the front. This combination performs better in good light than HTC’s current One M8 flagship, which is incredibly good for a £150 smartphone.
Crunchy KitKat
The Desire 626 runs Android 4.4 KitKat, the second most recent version of Android to be released. HTC have done well to upgrade their phones to the latest version of Android promptly, so expect the Desire 626 to reach Android 5.0 soon too.
On top of this Android 4.4 base, you’ll get HTC’s Sense UI which provides a unique look for the OS. This increasingly light skin offers a few great new features too, like a clever camera and the handy Blinkfeed social media / news app.
Conclusion
The Desire 626 seems like a strong mid-range option for 2015 – the phone has a solid design, good specs and a tasty flavour of Android. For £150, it’s a damn competitive option.
For more information or to place a pre-order, please visit the product page linked below. You can also see our range of accessories for the phone.
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