Mobile Raptor: HTC Desire 600 - The new mid-range HTC phone falls short of the mark

Thursday, August 29, 2013

HTC Desire 600 - The new mid-range HTC phone falls short of the mark

HTC's new, dual SIM, Desire 600 smartphone is now available in the Philippines. The good looking 4.5-inch Android smartphone boasts Sense 5, a quad core processor and BoomSound tech for a price as low Php17,190, with a full HTC warranty. But, that all sounds better than it is.

The 4.5-inch display is a qHD (540 x 960), in a world where we expect HD (720 x 1280) displays from mid-range smartphones. The quad core processor is a Qualcomm S200 unit, which is much slower than the the dual core Qualcomm chipset you find on the lower priced Sony Xperia SP. Similarly, the Adreno 203 graphics processor on the Qualcomm S200 is about as slow as the come these days. The radio's are also limited to HSPA only.

Still, the Qualcomm S200 chipset has proven to be very power efficient, and the modest 1860 mAh battery on the HTC Desire 600 has been rated by GSMArena as providing 53 hours of standby time with one hour of calls, web browsing on WiFi and video playback per day. This is a very good figure indeed.

Now, the entire phone is made of plastic, but it feels nice and solid with a nice matter finnish. It wont embarrass you if you pull it out in a crowd. No cheap looking plastics here. The HTC Desire 600 is roughly the same size as the HTC One.

So, should you buy this phone? For 17K, you do not get LTE, not even HSPA+. If the dual SIM feature does not appeal to you, the Sony Xperia SP is a much better choice with its HD display and LTE radio, If you want a dual SIM phone, you will find plenty of lower cost offerings from Cherry Mobile, Starmobile, Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo which are much better value for money propositions. It is a nice phone, just one I have a hard time recommending.

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