HTC Desire 530 hands-on: HTC fleshed out its 2016 mass-tier portfolio with three new devices at this year’s Mobile World Congress, starting with the Desire 530.
All three phones lean on one key design principle – urban street wear. Believe it or not, HTC claims that these latest Desire phones owe their distinctive ‘micro splash effect’ polycarbonate bodies to the urban clothing trends. We’ll leave you to interpret that as you want.
The Desire 530 features a rounded body that feels secure and sturdy in the hand. The hardware controls, and particularly the power button are marked in strong contrasting colours to the phone’s body. It feels like a bright, fun, youth-orientated aesthetic style and a far departure from the crisp, sophisticated metal bodywork of the One M9 and its ilk.
The front of the phone accommodates stereo BoomSound speakers, which pack plenty of punch, sitting above and below a 5-inch 720p HD Super LCD. There’s a flap on the side that accommodates a SIM card and microSD (up to 200GB) to bolster the phone’s 16GB of internal storage too.
The 530 runs on a surprisingly conservative 1.1GHz quad-core Snapdragon 210 processor and just 1.5GB of RAM. Despite this Android 6.0 Marshmallow, dressed in the company’s Sense UI feels fast and fluid, even when snapping photos.
You’ve got a set of basic capture options including panoramas and HDR shooting when using the 8-megapixel rear snapper, a 5-megapixel front-facer and a 2200mAh battery, which we’re expecting to last up to two days come review time.
To add a little spice beyond the design, HTC has also given the Desire 530 high-definition audio support, which we seldom see outside of Sony’s more premium Xperia line.
Stay tuned for a full review of the HTC Desire 530 very soon.
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