The affordably mid-range HTC Desire 816 (eight-sixteen) has hit Australia, exclusive to Telstra. Retailing for just $398 outright, this big phone is hundreds of dollars less than the flagship One (M8). Of course, there are a few trade-offs, but the 816 is still attractively affordable compared to its specs.
It’s a big phone, sporting a 5.5 inch 720p display. The CPU is a quad-core 1.6GHz snapdragon 400 processor backed up by 1.5GB of RAM. That should translate to an easy and smooth experience that handles just about anything on the market, although you may have trouble with some of the more hardware-hungry games out there.
Like the rest of HTC’s current line, it rocks BoomSound speakers and HTC’s BlinkFeed news amalgamator. Unlike the One series, the casing is made of plastic and not of beautiful brushed metal.
While this is a shame, it’s one of the main reasons why HTC can offer this phone at its low price. Unfortunately, Optus is only offering the phone in white. There are many other attractive alternatives overseas, so hopefully the range of colours will improve over time.
It’s 4G LTE capable, has a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front-facing one. That means none of the fancy depth-sensor stuff you can get from the One (M8), but it should provide sharper photos in daylight thanks to its higher resolution. The front-facing 5MP shooter is a nice touch. If it’s anything like the one found on the One (M8) then we’re big fans of this inclusion and can see it being a hit with the young crowd.
Availability and pricing
If you’re after a Desire 816, or simply want to check it out, it’s available on Optu’s site starting at $40 per month. That’s $35 for the plan and $5 per month in handset repayments for 200MB of data, 300-minutes and unlimited standard national text messages.
If you’d like to go a little bigger, you can get it on the $50 plan for 500MB. Don’t feel too restricted by the data, however. Optus doesn’t charge overage fees. Instead you’ll just get a $10 charge and be given an extra 1GB of data until the end of the month.
Alex Angove-Plumb
Digital Content Editor
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