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HTC's big, budget-minded Desire 816 phone reaches the US on August 12th
If you've been intrigued by HTC's big-yet-affordable Desire 816, you no longer have to go through an importer to get one in the US. The 5.5-inch Android smartphone will be available through Virgin Mobile on August 12th for $299 contract-free. Nothing has changed apart from the support for Virgin's network, but that's not necessarily a bad thing -- while we're not fans of the cameras, the 816 is a good deal if you want a large display at a low price (and haven't scored a OnePlus One invitation). Don't despair if you want something smaller or cheaper, either. AT&T recently launched the 4.7-inch Desire 610 for $200 on prepaid GoPhone service (free on a regular contract), so you have at least one other option for a modern HTC phone if the One and One Remix are too rich for your blood.
HTC's Desire 610 joins the affordable LTE smartphone party
Joining HTC's "flagship mid-range" Desire 816 at MWC is this smaller, but similar-looking Desire 610. As the cheaper model of these two LTE phones, many things have been downsized a little here: There's a 4.7-inch 960 x 540 display, a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 chip, 1GB of RAM and a fixed 2,040mAh battery. The cameras are also more modest, with the main one sporting an 8-megapixel sensor with f/2.4 aperture, and the front imager featuring a 1.3-megapixel sensor. Both can only handle 720p video recording. On the flip side, the Desire 610 has preserved some of the goodies from its bigger sibling: microSD expansion (but up to 64GB instead of up to 128GB) on top of the built-in 8GB of space, BoomSound stereo frontal speakers, nano-SIM support and LTE radio for either EMEA or Asia. There's no pricing info at the moment, but knowing that the Desire 816 will be priced extremely competitively, here's hoping that the Desire 610 will cost a tad less than Huawei's counterpart, the €249 (about $340) Ascend G6 4G. Expect this device to arrive in Europe sometime in May.
