HTC Desire 816

The HTC Desire 816 is an interesting device. I remember really liking it when it was announced earlier this year, particularly the design of it. I finally got my hand one recently, and thought I would share my thoughts on the device.

The Desire 816 is a large device, and it has to be to house that large 5.5” 720p display. Despite that, the device actually felt pretty light, and is pretty comfortable to hold as well. Part of that might be because that the device is made out of mostly polycarbonate, or plastic if you prefer. The sides are made of a slightly soft touch material while the back has a glossy finish which is a huge finger print, and oil magnet. Though those are less obvious on the white version.

The build quality however, is not as great as I would have liked it to be. The plastic on the back is a separate piece from the sides, and when pressed down in certain areas, or when gripping the phone tightly, squeaky sounds can be heard. Looking at reviews around the internet, apparently I am not the only one. The buttons at the sides, while extremely nicely designed, are a little loose for my liking too, wobbling around when I shook the device. But is still entire usable and I got use to it pretty quickly.

Edit: I have just gotten another Desire 816 in white, and the issues are a lot less prominent on this device. The button is still slightly loose, but not as loose as on the blue Desire 816. Also the back isn’t squeaky or creaky in this one as well.

Getting back to the display, despite being 720p, the viewing experience is actually still pretty great. I personally had no issue with enjoying media on the device. Of course 720p also means better battery life, which is always a plus for me. Viewing angles were great, and colours looked really nice on the Desire 816’s display.

The Desire 816 like the HTC One M8 runs the latest version of HTC’s Sense UI. Sense 6.0 is actually one of the lighter skin on top of Android compared to other manufacturers, and it really shows when you start to use the device. The phone is fast and snappy in most everything it does, and has no issues with even graphic intensive games like Asphalt 8.

Which brings me nicely into the next point, the speakers. The stereo “Boom Sound” speakers are amazing. They are by far the nicest pair of speakers I have heard on a mobile device. Perhaps due to its larger size, i think it even sounds slightly better than the M8. Comparing to the HTC One M7, it definitely sounded a lot clearer and louder.

And since I am comparing the speakers, might as well compare other things as well. In terms of day to day performance, both phones actually performed similarly well. App launch speeds were pretty close, scrolling in browser and what not all felt just as quick. Where the difference comes in, is when you start loading a bunch of apps at the same time and start making use of the extra RAM that the One M7 has, and when you start doing graphic intensive things on the phone like video editing, playing games, etc. But other than that, I was actually surprised at how close the performance on both devices are, at least in terms of casual use.

The camera on the Desire 816 is a 13MP shooter. While that is a much higher count compared to the M7’s 4MP shooter, the 816’s camera lacks HTC’s Ultra pixel technology as well as Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS). Which means that in low light conditions, the HTC One M7’s camera performed much better, and that is a huge plus for me.

An interesting point to consider, is that both devices costs about the same used. But the HTC One M7 likely does not have any more warranty while the Desire 816 being much newer still has warranty.

Another device that I just so happen to have as well is the Moto G. While the one that I have is a dual sim 3G version, not the LTE version the internals are largely the same except of LTE support, microSD card slot, and a Gyroscope. I thought this would be an interesting comparison seeing that the Moto G LTE was just released in Singapore and costs S$300, the price of a used Desire 816.

The Desire being the higher end device is understandably faster in all aspect compared to the Moto G, and has better hardware all round. Opening the app list, opening apps, etc, the Desire 816 was faster than the Moto G all the time. In some instances the differences were up to more than a second. It’s not that the Moto G is slow, it isn’t. It is just that the Desire 816 is just faster. Surprising to see how much difference 400mhz in clock speed makes, and surprising how well HTC has optimised the phone. Furthermore, the 2600mAh battery in the Desire 816 is actually more than enough to last me a solid day of use.

Though when it comes to built quality, I find myself preferring the build of the Moto G. it just felt more solid in hand, and there are no creaks or squeaks in the built at all. The matte interchangeable backs are a huge plus as well and holds up to use better over time.

Conclusion:

I am actually extremely impressed with what HTC has achieved with the Desire 816. At the price of S$405 (at the time of this post) vs the S$300 of a brand new Moto G LTE, the Desire 816 is definitely worth paying the extra S$105 for if you can spare it. Making it a great buy at this price.

One may look at the recently launched Redmi Note as well and compare the Desire 816 to it, and you definitely can. While the Redmi Note is cheaper and more powerful on paper, I can tell you that the Desire 816 is still worth paying the extra for. The Desire 816 with its “subpar” specifications on paper still performed better than the Redmi Note in most instance. Benchmarks may say otherwise, but having used both, the Desire 816 is still better in my opinion if you can spare the cash.

But in the end, a lot of it comes down to needs. If the cheaper Moto G or Redmi Note already suits your needs perfectly, and you can save a bit more money in the process, why not?

Here's to Change: HTC

3 years ago, I would not be caught dead using an HTC device. I hated that multi tone, multi textured backs that HTC so love, seemingly inherited from the vile remnants of their Dopod acquisition. They always had decent hardware specifications, but the design just never appealed to me. Just take the 2 phones above for example, the Titan II up top and the Velocity 4G below. Both were announced in the January of 2012. Both featuring design and colour scheme going back to the HD2, the Nexus One, hell, I even see some Dopod in it. But a month later, something amazing happened…


HTC announced the HTC One X. This was the device that changed my opinion of the company. For the first time, they had a device that I wanted to buy. A device that made the Samsung Galaxy S3 felt cheaper than it already is.

From then on, year after year, I have preferred HTC’s flagship over Samsung’s. And while I did not get either the S5 or HTC One M8 this year, my choice would still be the M8 if I had to choose. And from the reviews and accolades that HTC has been receiving for the One series of devices, many people seem to agree with me as well.

Not only that, HTC’s Sense UI has vastly improved as well. I have always been a fan of the vanilla Android look and feel, or the Nexus experience if you like. But with Sense 6, I think for the first time I actually prefer it over a custom ROM or AOSP. I converted my HTC One M7 to the GPE (which felt poorly optimised), and tried CyanogenMod 11 on it (which actually felt more optimised). But eventually what I ended up using was HTC’s Sense 6 UI (which actually felt better than both GPE and CM11). And that’s a huge deal for me.

In fact I just bought a HTC Desire 816 to play with earlier, and so far, I think I already like it more than the also reasonably priced Moto G running near stock Android.

Before the One M8 was officially announced, I photoshopped a leaked render into a design that I think would be cleaner looking. That post on G+ has gotten 699 +1s, 35 reshares, and 145 comments sparking many interesting conversations and discussions. So clearly people like HTC (at least that’s what they say on the internet).

A friend who is a long time iPhone user just switched to the HTC One M8. And this is not some tech savvy user, this is your average consumer, liking what HTC has done with the One M8. According to her, "sick of iTunes, wants to try in android, likes HTC’s camera and audio." (Weirdly i see more female HTC One users than male) When she got the M8, she happily/excitedly announced it on her facebook.

So… HTC has products that people clearly like and enjoy using (myself included), but why are they still struggling? Despite managing to finally make a profit the previous quarter, people are already saying that it will likely be their best result this year and they will likely continue to hover around the break-even mark.


So that begs the question, “What the hell is going on?” Is it down to poor marketing? poor management? Or is it the poor impressions people got from early HTC devices? Or is Samsung just too strong in the market? I have no idea.

What I do know, is that I want HTC to continue making great phones. They are one of the manufacturers who I think is doing a great job at hardware design as well as software. But to do that they need to keep selling phones, something that they seem to be unable to do much of.

So this posts goes out to HTC. Kudos for your dedication to the mobile industry and pushing many “Firsts” in the industry. The first Windows smartphone in 2002, the HTC Canary. The first Android smartphone in 2008, the HTC Dream. The first Nexus device, the HTC Nexus One.

Here’s to Change. And here’s to many more years in the mobile industry (hopefully).

BBM (Beta) for Windows Phone Screenshots

The #BBM  Beta on Windows Phone actually looks really nice, and follow Windows Phone UI design guideline well. Here are some screenshots I took of this.

Do note that this is the first release of the public beta, a lot might still change going forward. For now it is still too early to give an impressions or review. So I’m just sharing some screenshots here.

Splash Screen

Viewing BBM Profile

Chats Screen

Feeds Screen

Contacts Screen

BBM Groups looking good. Simple and clean. The “Pictures” section actually shows preview of the latest shared image, but I took the screenshot before it loaded.

The slide up menu

Live tile, the ability to pin individual chats to the home screen is really useful.

Slide up menu again

Within a chat

Xiaomi Redmi Note

So… about a week ago, the Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi began selling the Redmi Note in Singapore. The device boasts some pretty decent specs for just $199 Singapore dollars (SGD) (~160 USD). But is it actually any good, or would you be better off spending a little bit more for other low end devices like the Moto G? Read on to find out more.

For the price, it is easy to forgive the generous use of plastic on the device. That said, the build quality of the device is actually not that bad. In fact it feels pretty similar to most Samsung devices. At 154 x 78.7 x 9.45 mm (H x W x D), this is a large device. It is also a bit on the heavier side at 199g, but that actually works to its advantage. Since the phone is pretty big, instead of gripping the phone while using it one-handed, I just let it sit on top of my fingers. This allows my thumb to reach a wider area on the screen and allow for easier one-handed use. The heavier weight does help with the balancing act.

The buttons are all comfortably placed on the right side of the device. They have a nice rough touch to it, and gives a nice click when pressed.

Of course the reason for the huge size of the phone, is to house the 5.5” display. With a resolution of 1280 by 720, it is definitely not the sharpest display around. But it still does provide a really great viewing experience.

The colours looked pretty decent and fairly accurate, and viewing angles were great too. Outdoor visibility is decent, but not great. In bright sun light, it is a little hard to see what is on the screen, and a brighter backlight might have helped.

Powering the device is a Mediatek MT6592 octa-core (ARM v7) processor clocked at 1.7Ghz paired with a Mali 450 GPU and 2GB of RAM. Part of my gripe with the original Redmi was that it still felt a little slow at times. With the upgraded chipset in the Redmi Note, the sluggishness has been mostly eliminated. The UI is noticeably smoother, and apps runs noticeably faster.

The 2GB of RAM definitely helped as well to cope with the additional feature that comes with MIUI as well. The phone is able to handle graphic intensive games with relative ease, but I did notice dropped frames occasionally. Comparing to the HTC One M7 with the Snapdragon 600 processor (which according to benchmarks should be pretty similar), performance actually felt a little better on the One M7. But overall, it still provides a pretty good gaming experience.

Ingress players might want to read my G+ posts here for how the phone performs during the game, as well as its GPS performance.

(Part 1, Part 2)

Like the Redmi, the Redmi Note is a dual-sim device with one WCDMA/3G sim slot, and another GSM only slot. Both slots uses mini-sim. Network speeds were pretty normal, though I did noticed that the signal switches between HSPA+ and 3G frequently, causing additional battery drain on the device. I also noticed that the device drops data connectivity completely at times even though the signal still indicating H+, but a quick on/off toggle of airplane mode normally fixes that. I did notice the same behaviour on other HSPA+ only devices like the Nexus 4 and Moto G as well, so it might be a carrier issue (Singtel).

As with most phablet size devices, the Redmi Note has a pretty decent 3100mAh battery. Despite the slightly higher drain from the radio, I was able to get pretty good battery life out of the devices. In one of the days with heavy use, the phone lasted 12 hours with a screen on time of 5 hours, and that is with 2 hours of playing the game Ingress, a game known for its insane battery use. As a gauge, phones like the Moto X, Nexus 5, and Nexus 4 would go from a full charge to empty in less than 3 hours while playing Ingress. Hopefully the signal issue is something that can be fixed with software updates and optimisation.

One thing to note is that the charger provided is only a 1.0A charger, which does take a really long time to charge up the 3100mAh battery. But since the phone is able to last a day of use, I just leave it to charge overnight. And if you need more power, Xiaomi sells its 10,400mAh power bank for a mere 13.99 SGD and spare batteries for the Redmi Note costs just 10.99 SGD a pop.

The phone has a 13MP rear facing camera with a f/2.2 aperture. It takes decent photos in good lighting conditions. Images taken are sharp, but tend to look a bit washed out to me, and there is this noticeable delay between hitting the shutter button and the phone actually taking the photo. (photos taken in auto mode)

Where the camera really falters, is in its low light performance. The lack of optical image stabilisation, as well as backside illumination on the camera is probably the reason. The front camera is a generous 5MP shooter, which is also as average as it gets other than the high resolution count. As expected with an average still camera, the video recording capabilities are pretty mediocre too. Overall the optics on the Redmi Note is nothing to call home about.

The single firing speaker is on the back of the device, and is pretty average. For the occasional gaming and video watching, it serves it purposes pretty well. Though it is pretty easy to cover the speaker unintentionally due to its position. The call speaker on the front is pretty average too, but I would have preferred if it was louder.

The phone runs MIUI which is based off Android Jellybean 4.2.2. The UI will probably remind you a little of iOS. The icons are colourful, simple, and housed within a rounded square, and they actually look pretty nice. But if you notice some of the Google apps doesn’t actually follow the same icon style, which kind of ruins the look a little. What I personally do is go into the theme store, then download a new set of icons which are based off MIUI, but includes stylised icons for other apps to suit the rest of MIUI’s icons.

MIUI also comes with loads of features that I found to be pretty useful.

Here are a few of my favourites:

• Double tap on lock screen to get quick access to music player


• The locking of recently used apps to keep them running, and then a single click to clear the rest of the apps that I don’t need. 


• If you are on the home screen you can swipe down from anywhere to get to the slide down menu. No need to reach all the way to the status bar.


• Slide down menu will default to quick settings when there are no notifications.


• Quick access to apps like the music player and notes app with a swipe down on the icon. 


• UI is highly customisable with loads of themes available in the Themes app. 


• Ability to pin shortcuts to settings and toggle as an app icon. I have one to lock the screen, and another to check battery use.


• When uninstalling apps, the phone scans for residual files that are related to the app in question and erases them completely too.

There are actually a lot features in the UI, to find out more tips and tricks regarding MIUI, if you want to learn more, just click here. The built-in apps are actually all pretty well designed too with good functionality. Overall, I actually found MIUI to be pretty decent after spending some time with it, providing a nice blend between iOS and Android. Normally I would prefer devices with the vanilla Android look and feel, like the Moto G, Moto X, and Nexus devices. There are very few versions of skinned Android I can live with, and MIUI is one of them.

There are a few bugs in the OS that I have found though, and most of them are minor things like menus not being translated properly to english. I have a few apps force closed on me as well like G+ and Ingress. But hopefully those could be eventually worked out with software updates.

Conclusion:

The Redmi Note is a good device in my opinion, and not just because it is cheap. But the cheap price does make it easy to forgive its shortcomings mentioned above. This is a device that I could actually see myself using as my daily driver, something I struggled to do with the Redmi. At $199, it makes the Moto G feel overpriced, and that is saying a lot considering how much I loved the Moto G. Before using the device I was pretty much on the fence between this and the newly released Moto G LTE. But after using the Redmi Note for a while, I find it hard to justify paying an additional 100 SGD for the Moto G LTE. Even the 3G dual sim variant of the Moto G costs more than the Redmi Note!

But in the end, everyone has different needs and preferences. Some are Android purists who will scoff at anything other than stock or near stock Android devices. But if you are like me, and can appreciate the variety and functionality that these custom skinned versions of Android brings to the market, the Redmi Note is a great buy. (IF, you can manage to get one that is)