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MagyarHTC Desire 820 Smartphone Review
For the original German review, see here.
The HTC Desire 820 is the successor to the Desire 816, which was, according to our review last year, quite a decent middle-class smartphone. The build quality was without fault and the display very good as well - only the camera could've used improvement and the internal flash storage was pretty meager. The Taiwanese manufacturer increased the storage from 8 GB to 16 GB and improved the cameras as well: the front camera now features 8 MB; the rear-facing camera remains at 13 MP. The Snapdragon 615 is 64-bit capable, although the OS still only supports 32-bit CPUs. A pleasant surprise for the consumer is the fact that HTC adjusted the MSRP downwards: while the Desire 816 still retails for 380 Euro (~$430), the review smartphone sells for only 329 Euro (~$370).
Competitors are the Huawei Ascend G7 (250 Euro / ~$280), Sony Xperia T3 (229 Euro / ~$260), Nokia Lumia 830 (285 Euro / ~$322) and the Wiko HighwayTest Wiko Highway Smartphone (290 Euro / ~$328), but also older high-end smartphones like the Acer Liquid S2 (285 Euro / ~$322).
Case
The Desire 820 doesn't differ much from the predecessor, although HTC introduced a few design changes. First of all, the number of available colors has been increased substantially. The new smartphone is a tad slimmer, but also a little longer. The weight has been reduced by 10 g down to 155 g, which means that the Desire 820 is fairly light given its size.
The phone is pretty sturdy overall, although we were able to twist the case a little and induce creaking sounds in the process. The phone doesn't handle pressure very well though, as even moderate finger presses on the narrow display bezel produced distortions on the panel. The gaps between the transition areas are acceptable, but the glass covering the display wasn't embedded flush in our sample and the upper left corner protruded slightly.
The battery is permanently integrated and can't be swapped out. The MicroSD card slot shares a cover with the SIM card slot.
Connections
The HTC Desire 820 features a Micro-USB 2.0 interface which serves double-duty and is used for charging as well as data transfer. The port supports OTG, so flash drives and external input devices can be connected as well. MHL is not supported, so users wanting to mirror the smartphone's content to TVs or monitors need to utilize network streaming using the DLNA protocol. Other methods are not supported.
The card slot supports MicroSD cards with a capacity of up to 128 GB.
Software
Although the Desire 820 is equipped with a 64-bit processor, the phone still utilizes Google Android 4.4.4 KitKat with HTC's own Sense 6 interface running on top. A few additional HTC apps are installed as well; for details on these titles please check the reviews of the HTC Desire Eye and HTC One M8.
According to HTC, an update to Google Android 5.0 Lollipop is planned as well, but an exact date wasn't available at the time of writing.
Communication & GPS
The WLAN module supports the IEEE 802.11 standards a/b/g/n. The newest standard ac is not supported, but that's not that surprising considering the class of phone. Both 2.4 Ghz and 5.0 GHz are supported; the reception strength is excellent and we still had stable and reasonably fast connections 20 meters from the router.
To allow mobile communications, the smartphone supports both HSPA+ (max. 42 MBit/s) and LTE (max. 150 MBit/s) with all common frequency bands available.
NFC and Bluetooth 4.0 are on board as well. When we used Bluetooth to connect an external speaker, the connection remained stable and we didn't encounter any interruptions even with an interior wall between the sending unit and the receiver. HD video streaming over WLAN with external sound output was also possible without any stutters.
The HTC Desire 820 locks onto satellites quickly even when inside. Outdoors, a reliable connection was established more less instantaneously. The smartphone offers GPS as well as Glonass support.
Compared to the bike-specific Garmin Edge 500, the accuracy does suffer a little. Especially under difficult circumstances, like when the user is moving through the woods or when the streets are narrow, the deviations are fairly noticeable. Overall, the difference is about four percent, which is certainly still within acceptable parameters.
Telephone & Speech Quality
Just like the predecessor, the HTC Desire 820 offers good speech quality. We were able to understand our conversation partner on the other end very well, although our voice sounded a little bit more muffled to the person on the other end.
Cameras
The front-facing camera has been improved and now offers a resolution of up to 8 MP (3264 x 2448 pixels, 4:3). The resulting photos are sharp, although there is a slight tendency towards overexposure and the colors could be a bit more saturated as well. Changing from the webcam to dual-focus mode or to the main camera is easily accomplished with a swiping gesture.
The main (rear-facing) camera still features a resolution of up to 13 MP and offers quality in line with the predecessor. The dynamic range lacks somewhat and the photos are slightly overexposed, which in turn sometimes results in washed-out details and obscured contours at times. Nonetheless: the camera produces usable results.
Both cameras can record Full-HD vidoes (1920 x 1080 pixels). The quality is about average - especially the front-facing camera can't handle backlight very well. The main camera is better here and also records stereo sound. Occasionally we encountered stutters while panning.
Accessories
Included in the box are the modular power adapter rated at 5 watts (5V, 1 amp), a headset, and an USB cable.
HTC also offers optional accessories like a better headset and external speakers. The Dot View Cover (40 Euro / ~$45) is compatible as well.
Warranty
In Germany, the smartphone is covered against defects for a 24-month period; warranty extensions of any kind are not offered.
Input & Operation
The capacitive touchscreen theoretically recognizes up to ten input simultaneously. According to our findings, that's not quite true: if the user touches the screen with more than two fingers at the same time, only two inputs are recognized. When we then added one finger at a time, we were able to reach the maximum of ten inputs. Normally, this is not an issue, unless of course the application supports more than two simultaneous inputs. The touch surface allows fingers to glide easily and the Desire 820 reacts quickly and accurately to user inputs.
The virtual keyboard is identical to various other HTC phones. Swiping gestures can be used if so desired and spelling suggestions are offered as well. We found the layout to be a little confusing at first, but it honestly doesn't take that long to get used to it. We had to change the keyboard layout to QWERTZ for our German review sample, since the smartphone defaults to QWERTY even with the correct country selected. The physical buttons offer very short travel and crisp operation.
Display
The HTC Desire 820 features a 5.5-inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a pixel density of 267 PPI. Identifying individual pixels is quite difficult and requires a keen eye.
The maximum brightness has been improved as well: while the predecessor reached 444 cd/m² (87 %), the new model tops out at 548 cd/m² - a very good result when compared to the competitors. Only the Sony Xperia T3 (max. 532 cd/m², 89 %) comes close. The brightness distribution is excellent at 91 %. With the background set to black, we did notices some backlight bleeding at the edge of the panel.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brightness Distribution: 91 %
Center on Battery: 541 cd/m²
Contrast: 1082:1 (Black: 0.5 cd/m²)
ΔE Color 5.85 | 0.5-29.43 Ø5.1
ΔE Greyscale 4.71 | 0.57-98 Ø5.3
Gamma: 2.42
| HTC Desire 820 Adreno 405, 615 MSM8939, 16 GB eMMC Flash | Huawei Ascend G7 Adreno 306, 410 MSM8916, 16 GB eMMC Flash | Wiko Highway Mali-450 MP4, MT6592, 16 GB iNAND Flash | Sony Xperia T3 Adreno 305, 400 MSM8928, 8 GB SSD | Nokia Lumia 830 Adreno 305, 400 MSM8926, 16 GB eMMC Flash | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Screen | -22% | -9% | -21% | -6% | |
| Brightness middle | 541 | 446 -18% | 376 -30% | 521 -4% | 440 -19% |
| Brightness | 531 | 451 -15% | 376 -29% | 504 -5% | 421 -21% |
| Brightness Distribution | 91 | 91 0% | 88 -3% | 89 -2% | 87 -4% |
| Black Level * | 0.5 | 0.73 -46% | 0.47 6% | 0.77 -54% | 0.77 -54% |
| Contrast | 1082 | 611 -44% | 800 -26% | 677 -37% | 571 -47% |
| Colorchecker dE 2000 * | 5.85 | 5.72 2% | 6.07 -4% | 5.73 2% | 2.6 56% |
| Greyscale dE 2000 * | 4.71 | 6.16 -31% | 3.6 24% | 6.83 -45% | 2.64 44% |
| Gamma | 2.42 91% | 2.19 100% | 2.35 94% | 3.46 64% | 2.32 95% |
| CCT | 7591 86% | 7699 84% | 6985 93% | 8370 78% | 6686 97% |
* ... smaller is better
The black value is comparatively pretty decent as well at only 0.50 cd/m², which results in an excellent contrast ratio of 1082:1. Only the Wiko Highway (0.47 cd/m², 800:1) is slightly better, although its contrast ratio is lower since the brightness is lower as well. All the other phones in our comparison feature higher values around 0.7 cd/m².
As far as the color accuracy is concerned, the Desire 820 performs similar to the competing smartphones, although the Lumia 830 displays colors even more accurately. The color green has the highest deviation (dE 10); the other colors fare better. The graylevels also show a slight shift towards green and blue, which in turn leads to a very minor bluish cast. During normal operation this is not noticeable, however.
The glossy display surface hampers outdoor use a little, but the very bright display and the outstanding contrast make up for it most of the time. Only when exposed to direct sunlight, the reflections can get annoying.
The viewing angle stability of the IPS display is pretty decent. When tilting the display around the horizontal and the vertical axis, the brightness decrease is pretty marginal. At very shallow angles, we notices the IPS glow effect.
Performance
The HTC Desire 820 is one of the first smartphones equipped with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC - a 64-bit processor with eight cores. The CPU is not a true octa-core, but contains eight Cortex A53 cores, which are part of two quad-core clusters. To save power, one of the clusters runs at up to 1.54 GHz, the other one at 1.0 GHz - similar to ARM's big.Little concept.
According to our benchmark tests, the performance of the new SoC is is comparable to a Snapdragon 600. Geekbench 3 attests a slightly lower single-core performance, but when all cores are utilized, the Snapdragon 615 ranks between a series 600 and 800-class SoC. The 3DMark Unlimited Physics Test shows a different result, as the review smartphone is not able to keep up with the other SoCs. The MediaTek MT6592 - used in the Wiko Highway - also offers better CPU performance.
The browser performance of the HTC Deisre 820 is also quite decent and only the competing smartphones with more powerful CPUs deliver better performance. Subjectively, the browsing performance is more than adequate and websites load quickly.
| Geekbench 3 | |
| 32 Bit Single-Core Score (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| 32 Bit Multi-Core Score (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| AnTuTu v5 - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| 3DMark - 1280x720 offscreen Ice Storm Unlimited Physics (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| Sunspider - 1.0 Total Score (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Nokia Lumia 830 | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| Mozilla Kraken 1.1 - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Nokia Lumia 830 | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| Octane V2 - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
* ... smaller is better
The integrated Qalcomm Adreno 405 is quite powerful compared to its competitors and outperforms other middle-class solutions like the ARM Mali-450 MP4 by up to 40 % in the 3DMark Unlimited Graphics Test. When running GFXBench 3.0, the Adreno 405 offers substantially better performance and is up to three times faster. Only the Adreno 330, which is used in the Liquid S2, is still superior. The GPU supports all current graphic interfaces like DirectX 11.2 and OpenGL ES 3.1 and is equipped with a H.265-Decoder as well.
| 3DMark | |
| 1280x720 offscreen Ice Storm Unlimited Score (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| 1280x720 offscreen Ice Storm Unlimited Graphics Score (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| 1280x720 offscreen Ice Storm Unlimited Physics (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| GFXBench 3.0 | |
| on screen Manhattan Onscreen OGL (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| 1920x1080 1080p Manhattan Offscreen (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| GFXBench (DX / GLBenchmark) 2.7 | |
| T-Rex Onscreen (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Nokia Lumia 830 | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| 1920x1080 T-Rex Offscreen (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Nokia Lumia 830 | |
| Huawei Ascend G7 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| Basemark X 1.1 | |
| Medium Quality (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| High Quality (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| Smartbench 2012 - Gaming Index (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| HTC One Max | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
We appreciate it that HTC doubled the flash storage capacity of the phone. Compared to the predecessor, the Desire 820 comes with 16 GB, 9 GB of which are accessible to the user. Users who need more can easily expand the storage with a MicroSD card (up to 128 GB). App2SD is supported as well, so applications can be stored on the SD card.
The flash drive is now faster as well and its performance is slightly above average. The write speed for smaller data blocks is on the weak side, however.
| BaseMark OS II - Memory (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| Nokia Lumia 830 | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
| PassMark PerformanceTest Mobile V1 - Disk Tests (sort by value) | |
| HTC Desire 820 | |
| HTC Desire 816 | |
| Wiko Highway | |
| Sony Xperia T3 | |
| Acer Liquid S2 | |
Gaming Performance
The integrated graphics unit Qualcomm Adreno 405 is well-suited for gaming and has enough power for most titles from 2014 up to now. The HTC Desire 820 probably benefits from the lower HD resolution, so even more demanding games like Brothers in Arms 3 or Galaxy on Fire 2 are playable at high graphics settings.
The fact that the touchscreen can only handle two simultaneous inputs can be annoying at times. The sensors work without a hitch, however.
Emissions
Temperature
The surface temperatures of the HTC Desire 820 top out at 30.6 °C during idle and increase to a maximum of 41.7 °C under load. This means that the new smartphone is not only a lot warmer than the predecessor HTC Desire 816 Smartphone Review(34.5 °C maximum), but also runs hotter than most of the competitors. Among the phones in our comparison, the Huawei Ascend G7 (35.1 °C maximum) remains the coolest; the Sony Xperia T3 (46 °C maximum) gets warmer still. None of the observed temperatures are a reason for concern, however.
The stress test - we use the battery-portion of the GFXBench 3.0 benchmark - ran without any problems. Here, the T-Rex test is run thirty times in a row. In addition to monitoring the battery, the test checks the frame rate as well. We discovered no issues: the frame rate remained stable at all times.
(±) The maximum temperature on the upper side is 41.7 °C / 107 F, compared to the average of 35 °C / 95 F, ranging from 21.9 to 56 °C for the class Smartphone.
(+) The bottom heats up to a maximum of 39.4 °C / 103 F, compared to the average of 33.8 °C / 93 F
(+) In idle usage, the average temperature for the upper side is 28.6 °C / 83 F, compared to the device average of 32.7 °C / 91 F.
Speakers
The stereo speakers of the HTC Desire 820 are located to the left and right of the display when the phone is held in landscape mode. The sound is pretty decent with good mids and bass considering the size of the speakers. The bass does rattle the the plastic case, however. The highs could be improved, as they are quite subdued at higher volume settings. We also noticed a minor amount of background hiss at maximum volume level.
Energy Management
Power Consumption
The phone has a slightly higher-than-normal power draw during idle at a maximum of 3.5 watts. Under load, we measured up to 5.6 watts, which is pretty high compared to the competition. Only the Wiko Highway requires almost as much (maximum of 5.2 watts).
Considering the power draw, the power adapter (5 watts) does not have a lot of margin build in. It takes about 2 hours and 48 minutes for the phone to fully charge.
| Off / Standby |   0 / 0.1 Watt |
| Idle |  0.4 / 2.8 / 3.5 Watt |
| Load |
5.9 / 6.5 Watt |
    
| |
Battery Life
The non-removable supplies 2600 mAh and therefore has a fairly large capacity. Since the power consumption is high, the battery life under load is only about average. The maximum run time of over 17 hours is quite decent.
In order to be able to compare the results in a more concise manner, we reduce the display brightness to 150 cd/m² and use our WLAN browsing-test. Here, the smartphone lasted for over 8 hours, which is decent enough, although some competing phones still last longer: the Lumia 830, for example, ran for over 12 hours before shutting down. Only the Wiko Highway has a shorter batter life with 6 hours and 42 minutes.
| HTC Desire 820 Adreno 405, 615 MSM8939, 16 GB eMMC Flash | Nokia Lumia 830 Adreno 305, 400 MSM8926, 16 GB eMMC Flash | Wiko Highway Mali-450 MP4, MT6592, 16 GB iNAND Flash | Huawei Ascend G7 Adreno 306, 410 MSM8916, 16 GB eMMC Flash | Sony Xperia T3 Adreno 305, 400 MSM8928, 8 GB SSD | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Battery Runtime | 35% | -28% | 67% | 4% | |
| Reader / Idle | 1034 | 1808 75% | 1169 13% | ||
| H.264 | 493 | 577 17% | |||
| WiFi | 490 | 721 47% | 402 -18% | 703 43% | 634 29% |
| Load | 171 | 174 2% | 106 -38% | 326 91% | 118 -31% |
Verdict
The HTC Desire 820 is a logical progression and the successor to the Desire 816. As such, it does its job well: the smartphone comes equipped with an outstanding display, a speedy CPU and usable cameras. The SoC delivers the same performance regardless of the load level and is based on a 64-bit design, which might be an advantage once a corresponding Android update has been released.
The touchscreen of our review smartphone could only recognize two inputs at a time, which can potentially lead to spelling errors when typing a message quickly. It's possible that HTC will remedy this problem with an update in the near future. We would also like it if it was easier to establish communication with other devices: Wireless Display support, for example, would be a nice feature to have. Considering the price point, ac WLAN should probably be on board as well. Overall, the HTC Desire 820 is definitely worth looking at.
