HTC Desire 626 quick look and hands on

HTC just introduced a slew of affordable smartphones to the market under the Desire series of smartphones. What these devices bring is some of what we love about HTCdevices at an incredibly affordable price point, in the company’s attempt to gain some traction in a segment of the market that is becoming increasingly competitive. The Desire 520, Desire 526, Desire 626S, and the Desire 626 have a lot in common, especially in terms of design and build quality, with the latter being the most heavily-spec’d of the bunch. We got to spend some time with this device, and this is our first look, as we go hands on, with the HTCDesire 626!

From a design perspective, the Desire 626 retains a lot of the elements of the last few entrants of the Desire series, with a body made entirely of plastic, and featuring a two tone color scheme. There are a number of color combinations available, with some coming with a glossy look, while others feature a matte finish. Available color options will vary from carrier to carrier, and there are many more to come, beyond the ones you’ll see in the video above.

A lot of HTC’s signature design cues return, such as the HTClogo set squarely at the center of the back panel, the black HTCbar on the front, and the dual speaker grills above and below the display. Unlike some of the more expensive devices in HTC’s portfolio, the Desire 626 doesn’t come with BoomSound speakers, and in fact, it isn’t even a dual speaker setup, with only one of the speaker grills housing a speaker, with the other one included for the sake of aesthetics.

The device comes with a 5-inch display with a 720p resolution, resulting in a pixel density of 294 ppi. It’s obviously not the highest resolution and pixel density out there, but at this price point, it certainly more than gets the job done. With its 5-inch size, the device also allows for some comfortable one-handed use, which is very refreshing, especially if you are coming from a larger handset.

Under the hood, the Desire 626 packs a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 processor, backed by 1.5 GB of RAM, which kept things running smoothly in our short time with the phone. It won’t be surprising if the device did start to show signs of lag and stutter under heavy loads, but that is to be expected. You will get 16 GB of storage on-board, but that is further expandable via microSD card by up to 32 GB. Keeping things powered throughout the day is a non-removable 2,000 mAh battery, that should be good enough for at least a full day’s worth of usage, considering the overall specs.

The device packs a 8 MP rear shooter with an LED flash, which is capable of 720p video recording, and comes with the typical suite of HTCSense camera settings. The front-facing camera is of the 5 MP variety, which should provide some decent selfies.

On the software side of things, the Desire 626 ships with Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box, with the HTCSense 7 UI on top. A good chunk of the Sense 7 features have made its way over to the Desire 626, including BlinkFeed, for aggregating all of your news and social media, the brand new home widget that curates apps based on your usage and location, and the themes engine, to alter the look and feel of the interface. However, due to the lack of sensors, motion launch gestures like double tap to wake or swipe to unlock are unavailable. Otherwise, this is the same software experience you can expect to find even with the company’s flagships, except in a much more budget-friendly form factor.

The Desire 626 will make its way over to every network carrier in the US, as a postpaid phone on Verizon and AT&T, and a prepaid device from T-Mobile, MetroPCS, Cricket, Sprint, and other Sprint subsidiaries like Boost and Virgin Mobile. So far, pricing and availability has been confirmed only from Sprint, with the device available to users from July 19, with an impressive price point of just $129.99. The price point should be quite similar across the board, and we will keep you posted as we find out more.