HTC Desire 500 Review

Introduction

HTC indicated it wants to go down market with its Android phones, risking to be crowded out of the exploding mid- and entry-level segments otherwise, and phones like the Desire 500 are a good indication of its strategy.

The handset sports a youthful, catchy design, with internals that are a mixed bag of midrange to low-end components, all for a decent price. Will the Desire 500 succeed in its market-expansion mission the way it is built? Read on to find out...

Design

For the most part, HTC’s designers have done their job very well. There is one bit that they have somehow managed to mess up, but we’ll get to that later. Now onto the good stuff: the HTC Desire 500 looks great in white, complemented by contrasting color accents – a scheme that will surely attract the younger crowd. For those who prefer something a bit more conservative, a black variant is also available.


While the HTC Desire 500 is made of glossy plastic, it lacks the “cheapo” feel often associated with that material. In fact, the smartphone is well-built, has no squeaky or slippery parts, and fingerprints are barely noticeable on its shiny surface, at least with the white model. Most impressively, the Desire 500 does have a removable back cover even though its seamless construction implies that it doesn’t. Lifting the lid off – a procedure that takes nerves and patience to execute – reveals the user-replaceable battery, the microSD card slot, and the micro SIM card slot.

The HTC Desire 500 fits nicely in the palm thanks to its curvy back side and its touchscreen can be operated single-handedly without much effort. Its buttons, however, are rather uncomfortable to feel and press. No, we’re not talking about the capacitive ones below the screen; those work fine and are easy to reach, though not backlit. It is the smartphone’s power key – situated on the top – that we’re frustrated with. It is way too flush with the side rim, with little tactile feedback, and feeling it with a finger is close to impossible. The volume keys on the right are a bit better in the feedback aspect, but HTC has gone design-fancy, introducing them as parts of the blue side rim endings, so finding a key with your finger without looking takes quite a bit of getting used to.

Display

The HTC Desire 500 has a 4.3-inch LCD screen of acceptable quality. Its resolution is 480 by 800 pixels, which is okay given the smartphone’s class, but the 217 ppi count is unimpressive when compared to something a bit more pixel-dense. Fuzzy edges in graphics are easy to spot with a naked eye, regardless of whether you’re surfing the internet, reading an article, or just looking at the icons on your home screen.

Other than that, the screen on the Desire 500 is pretty decent, actually. The viewing angles are wide and colors are represented accurately. The display is sure bright enough to be usable outdoors, as long as the sun is not shining straight at it, of course.

Interface

The Sense 5.0 user interface is loaded on the HTC Desire 500, coating Android 4.1.2. We get the HTC BlinkFeed news and status aggregator, as well as the HTC Zoe artsy collage maker that come standard with this UI as well. Granted, the visuals don't run as smooth and seamless as on the powerful HTC One, so prep yourself for some lag while swiping and scrolling, although it's nothing you can't live with.


Sense 5.0 is pretty uniform-looking and functional interface, with a lot of helpful features, but the default on-screen keyboard is not one of those. The keys are squished too tight to one another, with little distinction, making you tap two or three at once. At least the 4.3” screen size means you can do it with one hand without having to prop the phone with the other as is the case with so many big-screen handsets these days.

Processor & Memory

An uneducated buyer would go “wow” when they are told that the HTC Desire 500 comes with a quad-core processor. But in reality, its SoC is far from the speediest out there – a low-tier Snapdragon 200 clocked at 1.2GHz is in use, paired with 1GB of RAM. We’ve been playing with it for a while now and while we can confirm that the phone is responsive most of the time, we are annoyed by the laggy process of switching between apps or interface elements. When it comes to gaming, most games run fine, but some of those heavier 3D titles might run at unimpressive frame rates.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	GFXBench	Vellamo (HTML5 / Metal)
HTC Desire 500	5046	11211	1348 / 12 fps	1650 / 390
Sony Xperia SP	7866	16413	4970 / 44 fps	2013 / 755
Samsung Galaxy S4 mini	6783	13341	3762 / 33fps	2088 / 685
LG Optimus L7 II	2823	6674

HTC chose to put only 4GB of native storage on the Desire 500, and most of it is occupied by system files, so in reality, the user has only a little over 1GB at their disposal. Thankfully, you get a microSD card slot, so that paltry storage amount can be extended quite a bit.

Internet & Connectivity

The stock web browser on the HTC Desire 500 is okay, but we have definitely seen better. In terms of speed, it loads web pages in a timely manner and then we cannot complain about lack of responsiveness while interacting with them. However, the zooming gesture behaves weirdly, causing the page to shift to the side when you zoom in. Having the text reflow feature turned off eliminates the issue.


Also, the browser seems obsessed with reloading web pages when you switch between tabs. Even pages that we had opened a minute ago were loaded from scratch when we switched back to them. It is minor details like these that spoil the overall user experience. We must mention that the web browser comes with built-in Adobe Flash support, but don't expect it to work perfectly on all pages.

The phone sports European/Asian setup for its cell modem, and is not a 4G device, capped at mere 7.2 Mbit/s download speeds only. It also features Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and DLNA connectivity, which is a pretty decent laundry list for the category.

Camera

The 8 MP camera is joined by an LED flash on the back and managed by HTC's Sense camera app, with its extensive list of scene modes and color effects. These include HDR shots, as well Panorama, Macro and Night shooting modes. Launching the app and taking the first pic from the lock screen takes about two seconds, while shot-to-shot times are almost instantaneous as it is customary with HTC phones lately.


The pictures exhibit accurate color representation and an amount of detail we'd expect from the 8 MP camera resolution. The scene exposure and white balance measurements are also correct in most situations, so you'd have a helpful little snapper on you with the Desire 500 most of the times you'll need a picture.




The video capture situation is less impressive than the stills, as the phone records with HD 720p resolution, and the frame rate of our sample couldn't hit 30 fps even outside, but hovered around 24 fps instead. The phone's single mic picked quite a lot of wind noise while filming, drowning our narrating voice in the process.

HTC Desire 500 Sample Video

Multimedia

Editing capabilities are a staple for the HTC Sense gallery, and the photos can be shared through multiple venues, including directly to your social networks. Alternatively, you can make an HTC Zoe collage out of them, which glues them automatically with video clips, color effects and adds music for short, artistic collages that you can upload on HTC Share for the world to marvel.


Music playback with the stock player is aided by automatic download of album art, artist info and lyrics, where available, and you have SoundHound track recognition functionality built right into the app's interface. The built-in speaker is average – it's okay in terms of sound quality for a cell speaker, but it's strength is not enough to hear it in noisy environments.

The phone plays MPEG-4, Xvid and MKV video files up to 720p resolution with no issues, though for some reason the player isn't licensed for DivX video support, so you'd have to resort to the Play Store and install 3rd party apps for that.

Call quality

Phone calls made with the HTC Desire 500 stand out with above average quality. Voice tones sound very loud and natural both through the earpiece and on the other side of the line. There is no secondary mike for noise cancellation, however, so speech might get a bit more difficult to understand when in noisy environments.

Battery

We get a removable, 1800 mAh battery with the Desire 500, and the capacity is enough for cited 12 hours of talk time in 3G mode, an above average value. With this processor and screen the handset isn't a power hog, so it should easily get you through your daily routine with it.

Conclusion

The Desire 500 is a pretty good shot at the booming lower midrange market for HTC, fusing together an entry-level screen and processor, which, however, do their jobs fine, with some more upscale features like a good 8 MP camera and an eye-catching, youthful design lines.

There are some hiccups here and there, like the lousy power key, but overall the handset's performance is solid in most aspects that matter. HTC has priced it adequately in the $300 segment, too, so it has every chance to become a popular choice.

This niche is crowded with pretty strong competitors, but fortunately for HTC you can't get anything much better for this price. Shopping around for alternatives, the well-rounded LG Optimus L7 II pops up, with a tad weaker specs, but lower price tag and larger battery. Sony's Xperia L also deserves your attention here, with a cool design and more internal memory, but weaker processor and camera worse than the Desire 500. The Sony Xperia SP gets you a larger 4.6” HD screen, but you have to shell out a bit more for it.

Things get a bit more hairy for the Desire 500 when you consider last year's LG Optimus L9, which can be had for less now, and records 1080p video, though at 4.7” it is not a direct replacement for your pocket.

Software version: 1.10.401.3