Meet the HTC Desire 616: HTC's first octa-core Android smartphone

We’ve been hearing about a possible octa-core HTC handset since last year. Today, we can finally confirm its existence, its name, and some of its features. The smartphone is called HTC Desire 616 (or 616w), and it’s just been approved by Chinese authorities.

Obviously, the Desire 616 is nothing like the HTC One M8 flagship - which was officially introduced yesterday, and can already be purchased in select markets (including in the US).

It seems that this new Desire is made specifically for China, where there is high demand for octa-core smartphones, although these usually aren’t more powerful than quad-core units.

The Desire 616 is made out of plastic, coming with an octa-core 1.7GHz MediaTek processor and 1GB of RAM. It runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, weighs 150 grams, and measures 142 x 71.9 x 9.1 mm. The handset sports a 5-inch 720p display, and has an 8MP camera with LED flash on the back. It should be available in five color versions: black, blue, white, red and yellow. Exact details on its release and pricing aren’t known at the moment.

The Desire 616 won’t be HTC’s first handset to use a MediaTek SoC. Earlier this month, the Taiwanese company announced the low-end Desire 310 (which features a quad-core 1.3GHz MT6582M processor). Moreover, a Desire 516 is also supposed to be released in China soon.