After a disappointing 2013, HTC needs to step up its game this year if it wants to remain relevant in the increasingly competitive smartphone market. The Taiwanese company already announced three new smartphones in 2014, all being included in its mid- to low-end Desire series. But at least one of them, namely the
Desire 816 (pictured above), could be mistaken for a high-end device.
The 816 will be released in China this month, and should hit shelves in Europe and North America starting April. But how much will it cost? Well, HTC didn’t provide an official price, but today we discovered that Amazon Germany is taking pre-orders for the handset, asking €379 for an unlocked unit. If you convert that to US Dollars you get $525 - which is certainly higher than what most people would pay for the Desire 816. However, we must take into consideration a few things:
- a handset costing €379 in Europe usually costs around $400 in the US, not over $500
- in China, the Desire 816 is expected to cost 1,799 CNY, which means about $294, or €212
- pre-order prices at Amazon (and most online sellers) are almost always higher than prices available at launch
So we’d say that the Desire 816
could cost about €300 in Europe, and not more than $400 in the US. It remains to be seen if we’re right on this one.
The HTC Desire 816
should run Android 4.4.2 KitKat at launch. Its features include a 5.5-inch display with 720 x 1280 pixels, LTE, 13MP rear camera, 5MP front-facing camera, quad-core 1.6GHz Snapdragon processor, and 1.5GB of RAM. There’s 8GB of internal memory, thankfully expandable via a MicroSD slot.
Amazon Germany is also taking pre-orders for the 4.7-inch
Desire 610, which was announced by HTC at the same time with the Desire 816. The 610 is currently priced at €299, and should be available starting May.
Later this month, on March 25, HTC will announce its flagship smartphone for 2014: the
All New HTC One (codenamed M8).
sources: Amazon.de
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