HTC Desire 626G+ Review

You know, when you expect something and happens something else. That’s what happened with this phone. I expected something and got something else. It’s like the saying “same wine in different bottle”. This wine, i mean phone is not all bad though, it has got some good points too. Like it’s camera. To find out more good and bad points of this phone, keep reading the review.

Build Quality

HTC Desire 626G+ is a uni-body phone made of solid plastic. It doesn’t creak or bend. All in all it’s very sturdily built. The one i’ve got is what HTC is calling it “White & Birch” colour, it’s also available in dark colour like ‘blue lagoon’. It’s only 8.2mm thick and weighs only 138 grams. And like i said it’s a uni-body phone so the back and its battery is non user removable. It does have a LED notification light.

Display

This is one of the very few plus points of this phone, it’s screen quality is quite good for the price. The colour reproduction is fairly accurate and the best part is its viewing angles, it has very good viewing angles. HTC has not disclosed whether it’s a IPS display or some other type, but looking at it’s viewing angles, i think it is an IPS display. Oh and by the way, screen measures 5 inches diagonally and is of HD resolution.

Camera

Another good feature of this phone are its camera. It has an auto focus 13MP rear facing camera with LED flash and both of its cameras have BSI sensor which means good photos in low light conditions also they both support full HD recording. Front camera is of 5MP and it comes with “face beauty mode” for the selfie lovers. That BSI sensor and phone’s ‘post processing’ also helps in clearing your face of any zits and make it look flawless. Exactly like you want it to look like(but actually it doesn’t). The rear camera’s flash is a little too powerful though, it could disturb the white balance of the image sometimes, if the photo is not taken carefully.

It’s rear camera picks up a lot of details and colours while keeping the noise as low as possible. It takes decent quality videos, but the problem is the format. It shoots videos only in 3GP format, also you can shoot photos and videos simultaneously. You can see the quality yourself in the photos and review video below.

Multimedia

HTC Desire 626G+ is a clone of HTC Desire 620G(except for the camera) but thankfully it didn’t clone its very bad music quality. The Desire 626G+ has pretty good music quality in ear phone. It produces very clean sounding output through the earphones and there’s a bit of bass too. Which makes the overall sound quality very good. The external speaker is not that loud though could be hard to hear in a crowded place. It does not have Boom-Sound speakers it only has one speaker at the bottom in front. It can play full HD videos without any issues. And they look really good on its screen.

OS/RAM/Storage

Now, the problems start with this phone. It runs on Androd version 4.4.2 KitKat with HTC Sense 5.3 UI which is just there for name’s sake, as it still does not have the full HTC Sense UI. The RAM of this is 1GB and out of which only around 400MB is free for the user and that is the biggest bottleneck of this phone, it could perform better if it had at least 2GB of RAM. Those 400MBs fill up quite fast if you are playing a game and also browsing the net at the same time. And then one of the programs will either crash or stop responding until the RAM gets empty. During normal multitasking it stutters while switching between apps. Storage wise it comes with 8GB of storage out of which you’ll get around 5.3GB free, it does not have move to SD feature and it also does not support USB OTG.

Performance to price ratio

Lets talk about performance first. The performance of Mediatek MT6592 is decent at its best but like i said, if it had 2GB of RAM then it might have been a lot better. And for those whom don’t know Mediatek MT6592 consists of octa-core Cortex A7 processor clocked at around 1.7 GHz and Mali 450MP GPU. Which is good enough combination for gaming on Android phones at medium settings. So i would say performance of the chipset is good but the phone is not. Now as for price to performance ratio, well this chipset is now available in phones well below 10,000 Rupees so there’s no way HTC could justify its current price. So i would say its price to performance ratio is not good.

Connectivity

Connectivity wise, it has 3G, dual sim(nano sim), Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi, WiFi direct, Cast screen, DLNA. So all in all it has a lot of connectivity options. Its call quality is good. The ear piece is loud and clear and mic works fine too. WiFi connects pretty fast and does not lose signal even while moving from room to room(also depends on the range of Modem/Router).

Battery

To save battery life, this phone comes with a “CPU power saving” mode just like most of the Desire phones. And believe me this phone needs it the most. As it battery life is pretty bad. It loses battery very fast. But then again the battery is of only 2000 mAh which is never enough for a phone with octa-core processor and turning the CPU power saving mode on would simply make the phone sluggish. The phone gets a little hot while gaming. If you constantly play games on it with WiFi or 3G on then it will last you around 5 hours at best and with 3G on and on normal use it will last you around 7 hours. On 2G only and occasional use of WiFi or data it might last a day, and that’s a very big ‘might’. As what i have experienced this phone’s battery couldn’t last a day under most scenarios.

Verdict

If you wanna buy this phone right now, there’s only one thing that could justify its purchase and that is its camera quality. And if you don’t care about the camera then there’s really nothing in this phone that you can’t get in a phone much cheaper than this. Even HTC’s own Desire 620G and 526G+ are quite similar to this phone and cost almost 5,000 Rupees less. So for around 15,000 – 16,000 Rupees my verdict is a no for this phone. If it had came with Mediatek MT6752 instead of Mediatek MT6592 like the HTC Desire 626 then i could’ve recommended it but an old chipset at this price is really not worth it. This phone might do better at around 11,000 Rupees mark and that too just because of its camera.