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HTC has announced that the Desire 530 will be making its way to the US. Originally unveiled at Mobile World Congress back in February, the HTC Desire 530 is a low-end Android device with a unique design. The highlights include a 5 megapixel front-facing camera, 8 megapixel main camera, a microSD card slot which supports cards up to 2TB, front-facing BoomSound stereo speakers with dedicated amplifiers and a micro splash effect on the polycarbonate shell which makes each phone completely unique.
Unfortunately, the the 5-inch display only has a resolution of 720p, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 SoC isn’t extremely powerful, only 9.8GB of the 16GB internal storage is usable, there’s only 1.5GB of RAM and the battery is quite small at 2,200 mAh. The phone does run on Android Marshmallow, but it doesn’t have the latest version of HTC Sense which is used on the HTC 10. As far as pricing and availability goes, the HTC Desire 530 will be available through HTC’s website for $179.99 later this month. T-Mobile has announced that it will be selling the phone for $159.99 starting on July 13th. The Desire 530 will be heading to Verizon as well, but Big Red has yet to disclose when the phone will be going on sale or how much they plan on charging for it.
Having used the phone at Mobile World Congress, I can say that the Desire 530 is definitely a well-built smartphone that stands out from competing smartphones. The problem is that there are devices on the market which have faster processors, more RAM and higher resolution displays which sell within the the $170-$200 price range.
Do you think HTC will have any luck getting the Desire 530 into people’s pockets at $160-$180?
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