HTC Unveils the HTC Desire 826

HTC Unveils the HTC Desire 826

HTC unveiled the HTC Desire 826 at CES but it would be launching in China first, followed by other Asian Pacific countries. Externally, it looks rather similar to their recently released Desire Eye series, and is poised for the mid range market. HTC hopes the HTC Desire 826 will help people take better photos, enjoy improved surround sound, and express themselves with bold design, colors and materials.

The Hardware Stuff

HTC was the first smartphone company to come up with dual front-facing stereo speakers and generally still lead the pack with their BoomSound experience. They have taken one step further with the Desire 826, which now includes Dolby Audio surround sound. Sounds like overkill to me on a phone, but might be something interesting to try out. It could be a feature we see in the upcoming HTC flagship (the rumoured M9) as well. The Desire 826 will feature dual front-facing stereo speakers, a finely tuned sound profile and Dolby’s decoding technology to deliver an end-to-end multi-channel audio solution. Depending on your location, the Desire 826 might be packaged with an audiophile-grade headset that is carefully tuned for HTC BoomSound with Dolby Audio, delivering the cinematic surround sound experience wherever you are.

The Desire 826 is also one of the bigger HTC phones around, with a 5.5″ full HD display, similar to the Desire 820, which wasn’t launched too far ago. It will be powered by an all-new Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 615 octa-core 1.7GHz 64-bit processor and 2GB of ram. There are four cores running at 1.5GHz with the other four at up to 1.0GHz. Handling the graphics is the Adreno 405. While Singapore will likely see the single nano SIM variant, there will be a dual nano-SIM variant as well, likely for the China market.

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The smartphone is available in various colors with different base and accent flavors. Similar to that of the previously reviewed Desire Eye. Once again, the matte plastic material (the gray version) looks better and should offer better grip. Colors include White Birch, Blue Lagoon, Purple Fire and more. Availability varies by region.

Return of the UltraPixel

The UltraPixel camera had been somewhat of a hit and miss for HTC. It had only been featured on the HTC One M7 and M8 to date, and now it has made it’s way to the Desire 826, in the form of a front facing selfie camera. That should help in taking selfies in low light condition. The back camera is a rather standard 13 MP shooter. There’s also the usual HTC camera software features, such as beautification, split capture features and also Auto and Voice Selfie.

HTC seems to be paying quite a bit of attention on cameras and appears to be testing out various combinations of lens between the front and rear camera. Perhaps some form of A/B testing to see the market response?

Availability

The HTC Desire 826 will be available with mobile operators and major retailers in Asia Pacific at the end of January 2015 and will roll out in other regions over subsequent months. No news on price yet.