HTC Desire 626 is a phone that is quite late to the party. If HTC has launched it last year with the same price it would have been a big hit. But now even this lower mid-range segment is very crowded with phones with the same chip-set as this phone. Anyway, better late than never i guess.

Design & Build

Design wise, it’s just like any other HTC Desire 626 phone in the world. Exactly like it. So if you are thinking about updating from your Desire 626G or 626G+ it will feel very familiar to you.

Build quality of the phone is fantastic it’s very sturdy and at the same time very flexible that’s why it survived a special test i performed on it. It’s 8.2mm thick and weighs 140 grams. It also has a notification LED.

Display

There’s very little official information available about the specs of this phone’s display apart from that it’s a 5 inch HD display. The screen is very bright and has very good viewing angles though.

In the video it doesn’t look that bright ’cause i forgot to turn up the brightness, it was set at very low to save battery. Looking at its viewing angles i think it is an IPS LCD display. Overall the display quality is good.

Camera

Primary camera of HTC Desire 626 is of 13MP is nothing spectacular. It takes decent photos at best. It comes with touch to focus and auto-focus both and they both work pretty accurately.

It takes quite bright photos even in low light condition but, that doesn’t mean that it also captures the same amount of colour and details that’s why photos in low light or overcast conditions comes out to be quite washed out and colourless.

With flash it captures a very accurate photo with accurate colours but without flash in low light, you can say it takes lifeless photos. As you can see in some photos below.

Its front camera is of 5MP and it’s also backside illuminated meaning bright photos in low light. Just like the back camera this one also takes bright photos even in bad lighting condition but it doesn’t pick up that much colour or details. Which ultimately end up making the photo look dark and lifeless like i said before. And it picks up more noise than the back camera.

Good lighting and with flash performance of the camera is good though. So, like i said its just a decent camera and it doesn’t comes with any HTC Sense camera features. Both the cameras can take video up-to 1080p and can also take photos while shooting videos.

[Full Resolution Sample 1 2 3]

Multimedia

HTC Desire 626 comes with the music player that looks like a relic from the past now. I am talking about Android 4.4 KitKat’s music player.

Thankfully it also comes with Google Play Music pre installed. Both the music players support equalizers by the way.

Volume of the speaker is a bit on the low side. But its music quality in the earphones is extremely good if you use good quality earphones with it.

It supports video playback up-to 1080p. 4K is a no go. Not even in MX player. On the YouTube app it can play up-to 720p videos.

OS/Storage/RAM

There was news that it is going to come with Android 5.1 Lollipop but instead it comes with the same old Android version 4.4.4 KitKat with slight HTC’s customization on top.

Since it comes with a powerful chip-set. The OS remains smooth most of the time without any freezing or stuttering. Compared to the OS version this chip-set is still new. That’s why you can say it’s more powerful than the old OS itself.

It’s a good and bad thing both. ‘Cause some might choose performance over latest OS but some might not like the old software at all.

Storage wise it comes with 16GB of total internal storage out of which you will get around 11.75GB free and you further expand it up-to 32GB with the help of micro SD card. It also supports move to SD.

This is the second thing which is actually updated in this phone. Its RAM. It now comes with 2GB instead of 1GB which is more than enough for a lightweight OS version like KitKat.

Performance

And this is the first thing which is updated. Its processor. It now comes with Mediatek 6752 instead Mediatek 6592 i think its about time MT6592 retired anyway. Since the OS is old and very lightweight its performance is very good.

Also HD resolution of the display helps too. Just like i keep saying, this chip-set coupled with HD display always produces good results.

Gaming experience on the phone is exceptional which makes it price to performance ratio very good. You can’t really expect better performance at this price.

Connectivity

WiFi of this phone is really fast with strong reception. It comes with dual nano SIM slots. You can only use 4G/3G on one SIM at a time.

Earpiece and mic quality is also good. It also comes with Bluetooth 4.0, GPS. And it does not support USB OTG.

Battery life

Battery capacity of this phone is 2000 mAh. Let me tell you straight it’s not gonna last you more than 4-5 hours if you keep plying games or watching video on it even at medium brightness.

If you want it to last a day or around 7-8 hours you have to use it very moderately. Avoid using internet on it continuously. Check you mails and messages in short intervals and don’t keep it always connected.

It also comes with intelligent power saving mode, you can turn that on to preserve battery life even more but that will effect the phone’s performance a bit.

My Opinion/Your Choice

In my opinion this is a good phone for the price. But not everyone is going to like Android KitKat and 2000 mAh battery in 2016. All i can tell you is that performance wise it is a very good phone.

If you are looking to update your old 626G or 626G+ or looking to buy a decent quality phone around this 13,000 Rupees price range you should definitely check this phone out.

That’s my opinion, rest is your choice.