HTC Desire 820 Review

Introduction

In our review of the HTC Desire 816, we were enamored by the solid package HTC was able to deliver – easily making it one of the more noteworthy devices in the mid-range market. Even with its universal acclaim, its only area of opportunity came in its processing performance. Naturally, it suffices for basic things, but strains under the pressure with intensive stuff. Well, that’s where the HTC Desire 820 comes into mind, as it bears an impressive piece of silicon in the form of a potent 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor.

The package contains:

• microUSB cable
• Wall charger

Design

It’s seriously one of the better looking plastic phones on the market.

Historically speaking, HTC is known for the meticulous designs of its devices – and the Desire 820 surely follows in that rich tradition! For a glossy plastic bodied thing, it’s surprisingly attractive, slim for its massive size, lightweight, and solidly constructed to give it some substance. Indeed, it bears the same design language as the Desire 816 before it, but it’s been evolved to exhibit a livelier look, thanks in part to the way they’ve accented the device. It’s an effective amount on our particular review unit, which has a slick contrast due to the blue accents around its edges and camera lens.

Fashioned to follow HTC’s design principles, it features the same dual front-firing speakers of its siblings. At the same time, it’s accompanied with the usual suspect of ports and buttons around its trim – they include its power button, volume control, microphones, microUSB 2.0 port, and 3.5mm headset jack. Another unique characteristic of the Desire 820 is that it’s a dual-SIM device, a nifty offering for the global traveler.

Display

It’s the same display in the Desire 816, but it receives a few improvements.

On paper, it looks like HTC didn’t change a thing with the Desire 820’s display, seeing that its specs match the Desire 816 – so what we get is a 5.5-inch 720 x 1280 LCD display. Size is undoubtedly one of its assets, but it’s not particularly the sharpest tool in the shed with its pixel density count of 267 pixels per inch. However, we find it acceptable enough taking into account its class.

Other aspects of its display are similar to the Desire 816’s screen, like how it closely matches it in the areas of color temperature and color reproduction. However, it lays claim to several improvements as well, which all help to make this a better looking display than before. In particular, it emits a stronger brightness output of 543 nits, and has a better average gamma of 2.19, which is really close to the 2.2 reference. What's more, color temperature is pretty tolerable at 7100 K, though there's a bit of a slight cyan-ish tint that may not appeal to some. Overall, the display looks a bit colder than ideal, but it's not that big of a deviation, especially for this class of phones, so we can live with it.

HTC Desire 820 360-Degrees View