By HTC this morning announced yet another Desire device, and this one focuses on the selfie experience nearly as much as the HTC Desire EYE does. It’s being called the HTC Desire 826, a mid-range phone that utilizes an UltraPixel camera sensor on the front of the device for enhanced selfie performance. Because selfies make the world go ’round, right?
That’s not the 13 megapixel LED flash-laden front shooter on the EYE, but still enough to make us happy. The rear shooter does have that 13 megapixel sensor, though, and beneath it rests a lone LED flash.
Under the hood, the Desire 826 sports Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 615, a 64-bit octa-core SoC that uses a total of 8 Cortex-A53 cores — one set of four is clocked at 1.7GHz for intense performance, while another set of 4 come in at 1GHz. Graphics performance is handled by an Adreno 405 GPU. Other specs include 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and the ability to expand storage using a microSD card.
While the device may not be positioned as a premium option such as the HTC One M8, our hands-on time with it revealed a build that felt very solid. The most interesting aspect of the build is a grippy outer ring to make sure the phone doesn’t accidentally slip out of your hands. The rest of it is a nice-looking glossy hard plastic.
HTC has some funky things going on with the color, too, with the aforementioned outer ring and things like the ring around the camera being accented with alternate colors. You can see bits and pieces of that in the pink model we had our hands on above, though there should be a few more color options on the way.
The device, which is coming to market with Android 5.0 Lollipop, will be on its way later this month in select markets. Take a look at our early hands-on with the thing above.
Mid-Range? Having trouble looking at those specs and calling this a mid-range. Can’t wait to see what next flagship is sporting then :).
HTC, as always, you impress :)
I agree, its hard to believe we’re finally here…we have the Nexus 4, Moto G, Xiaomi, and OnePlus One to thank for this revolution of low cost, high spec devices.
Regarding the 826 being mid tier…I think 3-4GB ram configuration best suits a 64bit OS (Especially with a heavy layer like Sense), so corners were cut here. Expect that combo to be theme for this years crop of top tier phones.
Once we see an official announcement for M9, I’m sure this thing will REALLY look mid tier. :)
2 GB does pretty well on the One M8, so for a lower priced phone, that seems pretty fair in this case – especially because the Cortex-A53 supports 32 and 64-bit code. Until we hear further I don’t think we’ll know if HTC is going with a 32-bit or 64-bit Android on this model.
with this out no one will actually buy the desire eye