Introducing HTC Desire 626

The HTC Desire 626 is a smartphone that scrapes the barrel of cheap, but that’s not a bad thing for consumers looking for mid-range performance at a rock bottom price.

So with the HTC handset making its way onto the market, is it worth picking up? We decided to find out.

The tech behind the HTC Desire 626

The 5” HD display is well-sized and finely detailed with 1280 x 720 pixels. This is set within a body that uses a duo of colours to put classic highlights around its design features. Some of the colour couplings are refined while others are bold and bright.

A quad-core 1.2GHz processor with 1GB of RAM powers the HTC Desire 626 and is paired with a 16GB internal memory and a slot for memory cards with a value of up to 128GB.

There is plenty of fun to be had with the BoomSound speakers on this HTC phone, with dynamic background effects and lyric overlays for the full karaoke experience. To download these, consumers should first go to the music settings and select Wi-Fi only, in order to avoid data charges.

The whole Desire package is wrapped up into a shell that is nicely thin at 8.19mm. The design should also be credited for coming in at 140 grams, even though there is a 2,000mAh battery inside providing up to 30 hours of talk time or 800 hours of standby.

HTC Desire 626: features explained

The HTC Desire 626 gets the usual goodies that are included with the Android KitKat operating system. In addition to Gmail, access to the Google Play app store and Google Maps is also simple, whilst 4G and Wi-Fi internet connectivity, GPS and DLNA wireless TV streaming are all included as well. But, it is the HTC pre-loaded extras that separate this budget smartphone from the rest of the pack:

HTC Sense 6.0– This user interface brings a whole host of features designed to make using a smartphone as easy as possible. Gesture controls include swipe to unlock, raise to eye-level to launch the camera and flip to mute, while reminders can be set and the daily schedule can be synchronised with the calendar app.

HTC BlinkFeed– Activating this alternate home screen puts everything that is important to you in one place. Updates come through from over 10,000 sources including your Facebook and Twitter feeds, news sites, blog sites and sports sites. Sources including MTV, ESPN and The Huffington Post are used, as well as many others. A single swipe of the finger refreshes the customised feed.

HTC Theme Store– The whole look of the HTC Desire 626 can be tailored using this app. The user’s own photos or one of hundreds of free HTC images can be used for backgrounds including the lock screen and app draw background. Additionally, new icons, fonts, textures, colour schemes and sounds can be added , with live theme previews along the way to help ensure the finished look is just right.

HTC Connect– By simply swiping up three fingers from the bottom of the screen, the HTC Desire 626 can be paired with compatible TVs and entertainment systems. Compatible brands include Pioneer, Yamaha and Libratone.

“There is plenty of fun to be had with the BoomSound speakers on this HTC phone, with dynamic background effects and lyric overlays for the full karaoke experience”.

HTC Desire 626 camera

The 13MP main camera certainly achieves its goal of capturing the fragments of daily life without bogging users down with complicated menus. This is paired up with a 5MP selfie camera that has a countdown timer to ensure there is plenty of time to pout and pose.

Full HD video recording is possible on both cameras and entertaining features include slow motion video recording and Magic Face, where two faces can be merged into one with varying degrees of integration.

Once captured, images can be found in the HTC photo gallery and these can be browsed by location, album name, label or by date. The HTC photo gallery goes one step further though. It integrates the user’s existing photos and videos that are held in cloud storage. This brings photos from Facebook, Dropbox, Flckr and Google Drive into one convenient place.

To buy or not to buy?

The HTC Desire 626 certainly isn’t banging on the flagship door, but it doesn’t intend to. Instead, by offering a great user experience and some handy specs, it makes for one of the leading affordable phones on the market.

If you often find yourself questioning the high monthly cost that comes with high-end phones, the HTC desire 626 promises to help skip this with a much more budget-friendly price tag.

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