Published in Mobiles

HTC launches Desire 626 in Taiwan

by on10 February 2015


Snapdragon 410 LTE inside for $190

HTC has not been doing particularly well in the mainstream market, but the new plan is to win 25 percent of the market in this sub-$200 segment this year, at least in Taiwan.

The company that sells some of the best high-end Android phones on the market fails to price its mainstream products properly. For example, the HTC Desire 620 is hard to get in Europe, and is priced at  €270 or more, while the HTC Desire 610, a year old model, is available in select markets for €199, but this phone comes with a rather outdated Snapdragon 400 SoC.

The company has announced a new phone that might fix this mainstream mess. The Desire 626 follows the design language of the HTC Desire Eye, but it comes at more reasonable price. The phone is currently launched in Taiwan, but it might find its way to other markets as well. It comes with a Snapdragon 410 64-bit quad core SoC, 5-inch 720p display and LTE. The Desire 626 is priced at NT$5990 and that translates to $190. Getting as much as 25 percent of mainstream market is a big goal, but with the right pricing and specs, the company might have a chance. 

The Snapdragon 410 comes with four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.2GHz and this SoC aims to replace Snapdragon 400 that didn't come with LTE in most cases. Both SoCs are manufactured in 28nm LP, no surprise there.

The HTC Desire 626 has 1 GB RAM, 16GB memory and microSD slot support, 13-megapixel camera and 5-megapixel front camera, with supporting for Full HD video. It comes with LTE (1, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 28) , Bluetooth 4.0 as well as standard Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n. The phone has a 2000mAh battery and probably comes with Android 4.4.4 with Sense 6. There is no word on the official OS and if it will ever upgrade to Android 5.0, although it's safe to assume that HTC will roll out an update.

What we see missing from the spec is dual SIM support, but we are sure that if they go after China or India, they will have a dual SIM version as well.

We can only hope that this device will make its way to Europe, US and other markets as it looks interesting. HTC is well known for launching a lot of phones regionally, so you never know. This one looks at like an interesting Moto G 2 alternative. 

Last modified on 10 February 2015
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