HTC Desire 820 Hands-on, Photo Gallery

HTC has been lesser known for using polycarbonate material for its high-end or mid-range smartphones. It has been the beautiful metallic designs which have been attractive and good with the build quality, but the recent few launches from HTC has seen the company trying out even the polycarbonate material. One of them is the HTC Desire 820, a large phablet with a polycarbonate body, although HTC has put in all efforts to make this look attractive enough.

The Desire 816 was one powered by Snapdragon 400, but HTC has replaced that with an octa-core processor, i.e. 64-bit Snapdragon 615, and that is supported by Adreno 405 and 2GB RAM.

First look with the Desire 820, mixed feelings. Although it looks good and is attractive, the 820 isn’t really the best with build, thanks to the polycarbonate body. And the glossy back isn’t helping at all because it is very reflective, and attracts fingerprints, thus taking away the feel of this being a standard product from HTC. With the looks, though, HTC has rarely failed and this is no exception, as the device looks premium with the roundish edges and the cool earpiece and speakers on the front.

The personality to the device is given by the borders around the screen, buttons and camera. They stand out and change the way the device looks, by a great extent. There are several color options, and the White one with blue band looks the best, though the one we reviewed looks classy too.

Size of HTC Desire 820 vs. the OnePlus One

On the left side, there are power and volume buttons. On the right, is a single pop-out strip that exposes three slots – two for SIM cards and one for MicroSD card. The MicroUSB port is in the bottom, and the 3.5mm headset jack is located on the top. On the front, there’s the earpiece and front-facing camera above the display, and a dark strip just below to them hosts the sensors and a little LED notification light. Below the display is the microphone grill and HTC branding, and the navigation buttons are a part of the display.

HTC’s Sense 6 is layered over Android 4.4.4 KitKat, and this for sure would be one of those HTC devices to receive Android Lollipop update. This is a 64-bit architecture with Octa-core CPU from Qualcomm (Snapdragon 615) and Android 5.0 is the version that would support 64-bit chipsets. But for now, the KitKat OS looks brilliant.

Few of HTC’s apps are pre-installed, including Zoe camera app, Car, HTC Help, Kid Mode, Stocks, Auto forward, HTC Backup, HTC Dot View, Power to Give and the Google apps package is there as well. The interface is really smooth, swift and there are loads of options, as HTC has not done any compromises in this aspect.

Out of the 16GB internal storage, about 9GB is available, and there is an SD card slot for storage expansion.

For the initial impressions, this for sure looks like a brilliant smartphone with swift UI, though the design has one big flaw – the polycarbonate back with a glossy reflective surface which doesn’t really look good.