In February launched HTC a couple of the perhaps most unique phones in 2016, in terms of the new Desire series. This is Taiwan ‘search budget series, and in this year’s portfolio, we find three models: Desire 530, Desire 630 and Desire 825.
Everyone has unibody design in plastic, and the plastic has been adorned with the HTC calls “micro splash.” Or individually applied paint stains, for good Norwegian.
The result is stunning and unique (literally; each unit has unique spots), so we have been looking forward to getting these phones later.
HTC Desire 530
Size: 146.9 x70,9 x 8.3 mm
Weight 140 grams
Display 5 inch Super LCD, 1280 x 720 pixels, 294 ppi
hardware: Qualcomm Snapdragon 210, 4 x 1.1 GHz Cortex-A7, Adreno 304 GPU, 1.5GB RAM
Storage 16GB space for memory cards
Operating System: Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow + HTC Sense 7.0
Technology 4G, BoomSound
Camera 8 megapixel main camera, backlit, f / 2.4 + 5 megapixel front camera, backlit, f / 2.8
Battery 2200 mAh
Price: From 1990 million
for Norway, however, only little brother Desire 530 that have found their way, and our test model is unfortunately the variant black – and spotless. We therefore stains aside, but have in mind that they are out there somewhere.
This is basically a phone we’re very excited about. HTC’s development in recent years has in many ways been like one long funeral process, where both bankruptcies, leaks, sluggish sales and several unsuccessful products are aptly keywords. The date last battle in the face of HTC was disaster figures from the first quarter of this year, where turnover was more than halved. Can this year’s mobile portfolio sure to reverse this trend?
Desire mobiles is hardly the company earns most, but after several years of questionable budget models they can undoubtedly raise its reputation a few notches. And first impressions are certainly not too bad – Desire 530 is neat and clean in the laundry, while it is also distinctive, urban and cool in a way no other mobiles are right now. Build quality seems also inspires confidence and looseness and squeaking is completely absent.
Meanwhile, mobile bend quite far if you take in a bit, but we doubt that it will be a problem in practice. Unlike metal has namely plastic tends to spring back to its usual position after some bending, then the problem is probably less here than in such as Apple’s iPhone 6.
virtually all angles stand Desire 530 from Rokle. In front we find two semi-transparent plastic panels on the top and bottom, with distinctive speaker grills with seven holes each. Over the bottom panel we find the HTC logo, while the top panel has front camera. Simple and easy.
On the back there is a huge HTC logo in the middle of two recessed holes to a (supplied) tether strap and – of course – a camera with a flash. The camera has a large black metal ring that is raised slightly from the phone while the flash also has received a small ring in the plastic.
The overall impression is attractive and appealing – not to mention unique. This is also supported by the power button on the right side, which is rough and bright red. Over sits a thick volume button, and on the left we find a long slot for SIM and memory cards. Headphone jack sits at the top, while the power connector is shifted to the right at the bottom. In some cases the latter is inconvenient and therefore not something we applaud so loudly.
Poor processor, poor performance and poor user
It’s not just the design since Desire 530 stand out. Also inside is the rather unique, albeit not in a positive sense. As the only manufacturer in this price range, HTC has chosen to go for a processor from Qualcomm’s 200 series, specifically Snapdragon 210. Not only is this an absolute bottom processor, but also an aging one as such. It involves some restrictions, something we will return to.
the software is at least of the recent battle. Here runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with HTC’s Sense 7.0 smeared over. This is a pretty heavy overhaul, and unlike in top model HTC 10 has not approached the standard Android in particular. HTC Sense is in this form rather peculiar, something special options menu and apps menu is influenced by. Here we are talking sharp edges and a somewhat more “mechanical” design direction than most competitors.
on the Home screen pops newsfeed Blink Feed up if you scroll left. Another news feed, News Republic, is also pre-installed – without quite see the point. Sense Home also gives you some other functionality, including suggestions for nearby attractions with distance and reviews right on the lock screen. A number bouncy themes are also along for the ride, including a “Freestyle” variation that replaces all the icons with, tja, whatever. Would you prefer that Facebook will be represented by a turtle, you say? Well, zero problem!
Otherwise there is plenty of other small tweaks here and there – for example, “fades” all items on the screen out to gray when the screen is turned off. Both dropdown and appveksleren are very close to the original from Google itself.
As to perceived performance, so it mildly nothing to brag about here. It took barely more than one day before Desire 530 began lugge, and in common use has been particularly unruly. Even after two full back positions and deletions result is the same: to navigate the Desire 530 is like trying to race walking through a pool of syrup. Sometimes it’s okay, but all too often – and often every single time – get the phone hiccup and have to think about. Long.
To illustrate: in GIF right we open the app Snapchat and tries to take a picture and write a bit. From before was all processes completed, the phone cold and did not drive with any kind of download. As you can see, it takes all the more or less exactly 15 seconds – an exercise a top model would clear in under two seconds.
So it is mostly no matter what one does, and even in normal menu swiping it happens that one have to wait two or three seconds for something to happen. Also when to open the phone, it may take some time. One of Desire 530s habits are in fact taking a few seconds just to turn on the screen when you press the power button. And then we have not even opened the phone. Also home screen should look and increasingly drawn all over again when you come out of an app. Blegh.
The synthetic numbers tell the same story. Four low clocked A7 cores – which is often the power-efficient everyday toilers in expensive, åtterkjernede processors – everything Desire 530 has to spend. Combined with the graphics chip Adreno 304 – nor the right freshly made – it will look like this:
None of the others in the graph has a piece of 200-series and all perform better in all tests. Especially in Geekbench it becomes apparent that there is a class distinction.
Display, audio, entertainment and conversation
we’d love stopped complaining no one in the paragraph above, but also with the screen we have a bone to pick. Not only is the viewing angle rather lamentable, but the colors are rather faded (adjustable anything) and contrast only medium quality. Combined with a very lyssvakt panel gives it an exhausting use experience outdoors, in sunny surroundings makes the screen virtually useless. You must of course also have the brightness of full stick around all the time, which drains the battery.
We made an unofficial test at the office, where we let Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Edge beside Desire 530 and adjusted brightness down to about the same level – or about one quarter of the total brightness. Compared with the panel recently tested (and directly competitive) Xperia E5 is HTC’s screen simply bad.
The resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels spread over 5 inches is completely work involving, but also a kind of minimum in a phone around 2 000.
On the audio side there are better off. Not that the front-mounted speaker is nothing special to boast (keyword: treble astray), but the headphone jack there are plenty of pep. Combined with HTC BoomSound function becomes very pleasant, and Desire 530 runs even quite bulky headsets well. There are volume galore, good bass pressure and generally a fairly detailed and balanced sound. This is something HTC has been good for a long time.
Thanks to the insides are not Desire 530 especially fun to play with. Here we talk both choppy and comp play experience in our standard test Asphalt 8. Lighten things run fine, but for example Pokémon GO was not a part of the notes. We were kicked out several times, and when it first ran went both drawing and navigation slow. Not to mention that the battery disappeared into a bottomless black hole.
A funny little detail we encountered during the test was that the Desire 530 would synchronize its volume against bluetooth speakers. So we had to ask both devices individually. However, we can not rule out whether this applies only our unit or the current level of behavior.
Call sound is incidentally good and we experienced Desire 530 as loudly. However, possibly a bit harsh at times.
Double-up of several things and little lackluster functionality
In the top model HTC 10 HTC has cleared away almost everything that exists of bloatware, including double apps that both they and Google sets with. In Desire 530 has not been as carefully and we find large amounts of bloatware and competing apps. Both Messages, Mail, Calendar, Gallery and Internet is HTC apps Google has its own pre-installed none to.
HTC sets also with a variety of tools, such as Calculator, Voice Memos, Headlight, Weather, Image Editing and Zoe Video Editing. The latter is a handy videoredigeringsapp that lets you cut together, trim, theming and not least add audio to videos you’ve taken with your phone on the go. We think it works fine, but it can probably also soon be worth looking for more advanced options if you first will engage in such.
For desktops it is Google’s own Office suite that comes in the form of the familiar Docs, Sheets and Slides. This is good and fairly advanced solutions, which we both like and use everyday. It needed nothing more for the average user, and then it’s perfectly fine that HTC have gone for this. Some notes app is not preinstalled, it must be found even if it’s needed. The keyboard is the way HTC’s own, and is a bit so-so. The prediction could have been better, and personally prefer the undersigned SwiftKey over this.
As mentioned, two mail clients: HTC’s own and Gmail. Of these works Gmail decidedly better, and are better looking, more transparent and more intuitive to use. Both support the rest of Exchange, so here’s just a fling with job mail.
as to other new features, so HTC has hidden something in the settings menus. You will find both a power saving function and extreme power saving, the latter limits the functionality and performance greatly. Both limits the brightness of the screen, so to survive summer days with the faded screen we have used them very little.
Another neat thing is HTC Connect, which allows you to play media from your phone to virtually all possible media boxes – including both Chromecast and and via Apple AirPlay (!).
however, it is evident that Desire 530 is the phone we know of who makes the strongest on the functionality side. Very many others have both cleanup, safety and accessibility features that surpass this with flying colors.
A camera that not movies in Full HD!
we had to blink twice when we saw the resolution of the main camera in HTC’s new budget model. 8 megapixels is all that is available, but the standard format (16: 9), this means a maximum resolution of 6 megapixels. There is little . In addition, aperture number of f / 2.4, which Vorder bad for shooting in low light – though the image sensor will be called backlit, and can thus remedy some of this.
In theory, anyway. The pictures Desire 530 spits out is often both blurred, faded and full of all sorts of aberrations. Especially objects onto the pages of a picture often get a kind of “halo” in some obscure color.
Sharp images obtained mostly only with simplicity in broad daylight, and inside lighting – for example, Safeway – it is very difficult to get completely sharp images. Wide angle look far behind.
the contrast is incidentally extremely impressive, and do not use HDR struggling camera strongly with both bright and dark areas. If you presumably were to use HDR, you must invariably wait at least three seconds before the next image can flips. With HDR images become more balanced, but the colors and detail levels suffer from processing. The aberrations also increase in scope.
It’s HDR also on the front camera, but then you’re locked to a digital makeup level. It quickly becomes a bit much of a good thing, but without it can fortunately be turned off completely. The pictures here are really more like expected, even if the camera is not at either wide-angle or specifically sensitized (f / 2.8).
And you shoot, you say? Well, thanks to that HTC has chosen Snapdragon 210 under the hood banging you to the roof the HD footage. We thought the time was over when a phone was launched without the possibility of filming in 1920 x 1080 pixels, but not this time. The film, which spat out is also lamentably, with zero stabilization and low tolerance for large contrasts.
We can not understand what HTC has thought here. Although processor chopped across Snapdragon 212, can record video in Full HD, and would have been a better choice. But again here had the matter been in his place with a processor from Qualcomm’s 400 series in the first place.
The interface of the camera app is also nicely and smoothly, if somewhat old-fashioned in design. Gallery app, however, is quite hopeless, and requires example all three steps into the menus to delete multiple images in’re at it.
Conclusion : HTC sent the wrong phone to Norway
We will then to like Desire 530, but just can not. The design is basically very successful, and the phone is going to be noticed in shop windows. Build quality is ok, interface distinctive but nicely and HTC Sense a satisfactory alternative to the standard Android.
There is lacking is primarily, well, all the essentials. Desire 530 does not have a good monitor, cameras are poor and have specifications that belong to several years back and the performance is the worst we’ve experienced throughout 2016.
Yes, in fact we are going quite a few years back before this was the current level of behavior among market-fresh models here in the country.
Add the battery on mere 2200 mAh usually do not hold for one day use (thanks largely to the screen, which must be fully turned on all the time), then you have a recipe for a bad phone. With a notable exception of the headphone jack there is simply nothing we like Desire 530. And by the way: the back collects smudges over a low shoes.
Looking at the field, then it becomes clear that the Desire 530 comes out badly both price and specification purposes. All of these models are very much more pleasant to use, and cost the same or only a few hundred pounds extra:
We sit basically left with the feeling HTC has sent us the wrong phone. Thus Norway, not editors. Why could not they simply dropped Desire 530 in its entirety, and invested all their money on the Desire 630? Here you can feed that is in style and can compete with the rest of the market, a better camera, more memory and the same cool design.
But this model looks sadly never seem to get over here. Too bad, because it could have saved the budget market for HTC. As it is there is only one thing to say: steer clear. Desire 530 is by far the worst fashionable car you can buy right now.
We have also tested HTC’s top model:
TEST: HTC 10 is a fantastic mobile »
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