HTC offers speedy 4G connectivity in a budget handset
"Fast 4G network speeds for a bargain price is pretty tempting, but the
HTC Desire 510 isn't quite as desirable as its name suggests thanks to
some budget compromises, especially in the screen and camera."
Vanilla White, Jet Black, Dark Grey, Deep Navy Blue
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
- MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player
- Organizer
- Document viewer
- Photo viewer/editor
- Voice memo/dial/commands
- Predictive text input
Introduction The
HTC Desire 510 is the Taiwanese company's latest addition to its Desire
line up, a range of budget and mid-range smartphones that feature some
of the latest mobile technology that you'd normally find in more
expensive handsets. Previous entries in this series include the HTC Desire 610 and the HTC Desire 816, which are both good, if rather unremarkable, smartphones. The
hook with the HTC Desire 510, according to its manufacturer, is that it
is the cheapest LTE-capable smartphone it has made. At £149 (around
$248, AU$265) the HTC Desire 510 isn't the cheapest 4G handset on the
market in the UK at least, with the EE Kestrel coming in at just £99. It's pretty much the same price as the Moto G 4G, which can be had for around £155 (around $256, AU$276), and quite a bit cheaper than the OnePlus One's price tag of £250 (about $414, AU$445) for the 64GB model. The
promise of a blisteringly fast 4G data connection wrapped in an
affordable handset is certainly a tempting offer, but can the HTC Desire
510 surpass its predecessors and not just be a 'good enough' phone, but
an excellent one? The HTC Desire 510 has the body dimensions of 139.9 x 69.8 x 9.99mm, but it sits in the hands comfortably enough. The
body itself has rounded edges and looks similar to the Desire 610 –
though the front-facing camera is located on the upper-left hand corner
of the body, rather than the upper-right. The choice of going with the HTC Desire 610's more elegant design compared to the Desire 500's more budget (and outdated) look is a good move in my eyes. This is unmistakably a budget smartphoneYou're
not going to mistake the HTC Desire 510 for a high end phone, however.
There's no brushed aluminium casing like in the flagship HTC One M8; the HTC Desire 510 is a budget handset after all, so a plastic case is the order of the day here. Still,
the improved design means that at first glance the HTC Desire 510
doesn't look like a budget phone, and can look good next to more
expensive smartphones. Essentially you can whip the HTC Desire 510 out
of your pocket without people around you recoiling in horror. The
bezel around the HTC Desire 510's screen has been reduced when compared
to the HTC Desire 610, which results in the HTC Desire 510 looking
sleeker, and not feeling quite so bulky. I found it quite easy to hold
the phone whilst using my thumb to scroll over much of the screen. As
with the HTC Desire 610, the power button remains on the top, with the
volume controls on the right hand side of the case. Volume buttons are on the right hand sideThe
power button has a nice click to it that feels satisfying and
responsive, and its placement (to the left of the top of the case) makes
it easy to reach regardless of which hand you use to hold the HTC
Desire 510. The volume buttons don't feel quite as
satisfying to use, however, as the shorter travel of these buttons makes
them feel softer and less responsive. Thankfully the headphone jack is on the top of the phone and not the bottomThe
headphone jack also remains on the top of the HTC Desire 510, which may
come as a relief to those of you who find headphone jacks at the bottom
of handsets (such as on the iPhone 5c and HTC One E8) a rather fiddly and inconvenient trend. The
back of the case is slightly curved, and it is made of polycarbonate
material, which unfortunately gives the HTC 510 a bit of a cheap feel to
it – but then, to be fair, this is a cheap phone. The shiny white plastic doesn't lend itself towards a high-end lookThe
HTC Desire 510 comes in two colours "Terra White" and "Meridian Grey".
The review handset was a Terra White version of the HTC Desire 510, and
it's an attractive pure white hue that's reminiscent of early Apple
products. The "Meridian Grey", is an attractive charcoal grey that also
looks very nice. The HTC Desire 510 is light enough to
comfortably hold in one hand as well, yet it still feels substantial
enough that you won't feel shortchanged. Even with the plastic-feeling
case, when holding the HTC Desire 510 it feels pretty robust. The Desire 510 feels fairly robustThough
I wouldn't recommend flinging the Desire 510 around, it definitely
feels like it could take a few knocks and drops in its stride.
Crucially, it doesn't feel like it will shatter the first moment you
accidentally drop it. It certainly feels like a well
built bit of kit, especially for the price. Hopefully dropping the 510
won't be too commonplace – though the back of the case is slightly
curved, the smooth plastic doesn't feel too slippery. One
thing that the Desire 510 case lacks which is present in the 610's
case, and in a number of other Android smartphones, is that there is no
microSD card port along the side of the case for easy access. Instead
you have to take the back of the case off and remove the battery to
insert the memory card. It's not a huge problem, but it is inconvenient
and a bit of a shame to see that port removed from being easily accessed
on the side.
Interface and performance
The operating system installed on the HTC Desire 510 is Android 4.4.4, and comes with HTC's own software HTC Sense and HTC BlinkFeed preinstalled. As with other HTC handsets such as the HTC One Mini 2 and the HTC One M8,
the Android KitKat operating system has been overlaid with the HTC
Sense interface. It's an attractive and intuitive design, though it may
take a little getting used to if you're used to using the standard
Android interface (or the likes of iOS or Windows Phone). Many
smartphone manufacturers have created their own Android interfaces to
give their handsets a distinctive feel, such as Sony's Xperia overlay
and Samsung's TouchWiz. HTC'S Sense user interface is probably the most
popular, as it combines a simple, colourful and easy to use interface
with some decent improvements over the standard Android interface. The HTC UI improves upon standard AndroidIcons
and apps are laid out well and are easy to find. In certain
applications the tile-like design is certainly eye catching, if slightly
reminiscent of Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 OS, and it looks
particularly nice in the gallery app. Meanwhile, configuring the home
screen through HTC Sense is quick and easy, allowing you to add or hide
widgets. Some of the big changes between HTC Sense and
the stock Android interface include a revamped dial pad and contacts
lists that make it simple and easy to call who you want quickly. The
home screen is easy to customise and contains four icons along the
bottom that offer quick access to the phone, text messages, internet and
camera tools. These quick shortcuts can be easily
changed and replaced with your favourite apps. HTC took a "if it isn't
broke, don't fix it" approach to the notification drawer, keeping it
mainly the same as with the stock Android, but with a few tweaks to make
it fit in with the rest of HTC Sense. The HTC Blinkfeed
app that comes preinstalled is a handy tool that collates news from a
large number of sources on the internet and presents them in an
attractive tiled layout that fits in well with the HTC Sense aesthetics.
Mixing breaking news from websites such as The
Guardian, ESPN, MTV and Vice and news feeds from your social media
networks such as Facebook and Twitter gives you a handy overview of
what's happening on the internet, and can be quickly viewed by swiping
left from the home screen. Blinkfeed is a helpful addition from HTC that rounds up news and social media notifications that might interest youWhile
it does a good job of providing you news from around the internet, it
isn't immediately obvious how to configure HTC Blinkfeed to only show
you news from the sources you want to see. The HTC Backup
tool is also included with the HTC Desire 510. This saves settings,
passwords and user account information, bookmarks, messages, contacts,
and apps which can then be restored if anything happens to the phone.
It's a simple program to use, which quietly backs up your data in the
background. A feature I rather liked about the HTC Backup
tool is that it will automatically back up your stuff every day, and it
will only do that if the HTC Desire 510 is connected to the internet
via WiFi, so you don't have to worry about using up your mobile data
allowance.
Performance
High speed for a low price
is the theme of the HTC Desire 510 and this doesn't just refer to the
connection speeds. The HTC comes with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 410
quad speed processor that's clocked at 1.2GHz. This is
an extremely proficient mobile CPU, and makes navigating the operating
system and opening and using apps incredibly fast and smooth. The
processing power behind the HTC Desire 510 leads to an impressively
responsive user interface that feels great to use. The
HTC Desire 510 comes with 1GB of RAM, which is the same as the EE
Kestrel. The lower resolution of the screen helps to prevent the HTC
Desire 510 from being put under too much stress. While
the HTC Desire 510 keeps things generally nice and speedy, things begin
to slow down when using a lot of apps at once, especially if you're also
browsing the internet with lots of tabs open. In the
Geekbench 3 benchmark tests we ran, the HTC Desire 510 scored 1330,
which is very respectable for this price range. The EE Kestral, its
closest competitor, managed only 1190, proving that the new Qualcomm
Snapdragon 410 quad speed processor in the HTC Desire 510 is pulling its
weight.
Battery life and the essentials
The HTC Desire 510 comes with a removable battery with a
capacity of 2100mAh, a fair bit larger than the HTC Desire 610's 2040mAh
battery. The battery also gives the HTC Desire 510 a
clear advantage over its cheaper rival the EE Kestrel, which not only
has a smaller capacity of 2000mAh, but also can't be removed or
replaced. Meanwhile, the Motorola Moto G 4G
offers similar features to the HTC Desire 510 (such as 4G), for roughly
the same price, and has a battery capacity of 2070mAh, and is again
non-removable. In both cases the Moto G 4G falls short of the HTC Desire
510. The battery is removable, handy for long trips without a chargerThe
fact that HTC includes a removable battery in the HTC Desire 510 with a
larger capacity than normally found in smartphones of its price range
is reflected in the generally impressive battery life when used for
day-to-day tasks. After running our standard battery
test, where I played a video for 90 minutes with the screen set to the
standard brightness, the HTC Desire 510's battery dropped from full
charge to 81% - a marked improvement over the HTC Desire 610, where the
test reduced the battery to 74%. This test confirmed that
the HTC Desire 510 offers a very good battery life thanks to a
combination of its large capacity battery and not terribly demanding
specifications. As we've come to expect from HTC, a
number of battery saving features are included to help stretch out the
battery life for as long as possible. The power saver
setting (which can be quickly turned on by swiping two fingers downwards
on the screen to bring up the quick settings menu) can be used to
restrict CPU usage, reduce the brightness of the screen, turn off
vibration and put your data connection on hold when the screen is off. Turning
off these battery-hungry features resulted in a decent bump in the
battery life of the handset. You can configure the power saver setting
to only turn off certain features, which I was particularly pleased
with, as it gave a bit of flexibility to the feature. There's
also an extreme power saving feature that goes even further in its bid
to maximise potential battery life. On top of the settings found in the
normal power saving mode, this turns off access to all but the most
essential apps, which means just phone, messages, mail, calendar,
calculator and clock can run. It's a good start, though
the inclusion of the calculator is a bit strange, and checking and
downloading your emails is one of the more battery-intensive tasks your
phone can do. It's a shame you can't configure the extreme power setting
mode to leave this app off as well, if you're not expecting an urgent
email. The mode also completely turns off the data
connection when the screen is off, and also shuts down Bluetooth,
location settings, auto sync, motion launch and notifications. This
mode can add even more hours onto the HTC Desire 510's battery life,
though because it limits the functionality of the smartphone so much,
you probably won't want to keep this setting on all the time. You can control your power use to conserve your batteryThankfully
you can set this option to turn on when the battery reaches a certain
level, which is much more helpful. I set it to turn on when the battery
got to 10%, which it did dutifully, giving me some precious extra time
to get to a charger. In light to normal use, where I was
making the occasional phone call, sending texts and doing a bit of web
browsing, the battery lasted for one day and seven hours before needing
to be charged again. For much heavier use, where I was regularly
browsing the internet, streaming media, listening to music, using
location services and playing games, the battery life was cut to just
over one day and one hour, which wasn't too bad. With the
battery saving options on, I was able to get just under two days worth
of battery, which is good but does mean you have to limit how much you
use the HTC Desire 510 by quite a bit.
The essentials
When
it comes to call quality, the HTC Desire 510 is incredibly good, with
both phone calls inside and outside coming through loud and clear. In my
time with the HTC Desire 510 I didn't experience any dropped calls
either. One annoyance, however, is that the phone app
resets itself if you leave it to go to another app. This happed to me
when I found a phone number on a website I needed to call. As the phone
number was included in a photo, and not part of the text, I remembered
half the number, then went into the phone app and typed in that half. I
then went back to the website for the last half. On
returning to the phone app, the numbers I'd already typed in had
disappeared, so I had to start from scratch. This might not be a problem
most of the time, but when it does occur, it can be pretty annoying. Call quality is loud and clearThe
HTC Sense user interface brings some tweaks to the phone and contacts
app, with big easy to push buttons to dial and an easy to navigate
contact list. Voice commands use Google Voice, and as
usual it does a good job of recognising your commands, even when used in
noisy environments. The HTC Sense keyboard is slightly
different to the stock Android keyboard, which might take a bit of
getting used to. Thanks to the large screen and relatively low
resolution the keys are large and easy to hit, but it does make it
slightly uncomfortable when typing with just one hand, as some keys
require a bit of a stretch to reach. Typing two handed is
a much more comfortable experience, and I found that the Sense keyboard
did a good job of keeping up as I furiously typed away. It also offered
a good degree of predictive suggestions which helped speed up writing
text messages and emails. Web browsing duties are handled
by the HTC internet app, though Chrome is also included. The internet
app does a fair job at displaying web pages, and it includes a nice
feature where double tapping the web page automatically zooms in and
arranges the text to fit the screen, making it easy to read text-heavy
websites. What's not quite so good is the app's habit of
occasionally refreshing the page if you've gone to another app or tab,
and then returned to it. This causes you to lose your
place on the website. It doesn't always happen, and it usually occurs
when you have lots of tabs and other apps open at once, so I'd place the
blame of the limited RAM of the HTC Desire 510, which means it can only
hold so many web pages in memory.
Camera and media
The HTC Desire 510 comes with two cameras, one at the front
and one at the back. As to be expected, the front-facing camera (which
can be used by selecting the 'Selfie' mode in the camera app, in a nod
to current trends) is a budget camera with a VGA 0.3MP resolution. Though
I might be tempted to call the quality of the front camera
disappointing, in truth these cameras are rarely particularly good
(especially on budget phones) so I had rather low expectations for it
before I even tried it. The selfie camera is only 0.3MPIf
you're just using the front camera to take quick head and shoulder
shots to be used in small thumbnails and on social media websites, then
the HTC Desire 510's front camera will do the job. However,
if you're going to be using it to take selfies of yourself and friends
in front of landmarks and in beautiful surrounds, then you're going to
be sorely disappointed with the results. The rear camera
is 5MP, which used to be par for the course with budget smartphones,
however many are now including more proficient snappers – the Huawei Ascend G6,
for example, comes with an 8MP camera. While megapixel count isn't the
be-all and end-all of camera quality, it sadly doesn't seem like the
lens in the HTC Desire 510's camera is great either, with the shots I
took lacking sharpness and clarity. On the back of the Desire 510 you get a 5MP snapperAs
you can see from both the portrait and landscape shots I took, while on
the whole colours are well represented, there is a lack of details that
shows that these photos were taken on a budget smartphone. With
close up shots this lack of detail is even worse – and this was taken
using the HTC Desire 510's 'macro' mode, which is specifically for close
up shots. During use the camera is able to take photos
in quick succession, though fast moving subjects were often blurry.
There's also a continuous shooting mode as well, which will continue to
take photographs for as long as you hold the button down. You can
configure the HTC Desire 510 to use one of the volume control buttons as
the shutter button, which I found more comfortable than using the
onscreen one. There is a small selection of filters you can add to your picturesWhile
the physical camera in the HTC Desire 510 was less than impressive, the
camera app of the device is the same found in other HTC smartphones and
is actually very good. It offers a range of options for
tweaking the camera, from setting the ISO and EV settings, to applying
Instagram-like filters. You can also set what type of light you're
taking the photo in, such as under florescent lights, or outside on a
cloudy day, to help the camera compensate. These settings
are all easily accessed and applied through the Camera app, and while
they won't magically turn the HTC Desire 510's cameras into more capable
snappers, with a bit of tweaking you can certainly improve the quality
of the photos. As expected, the HTC Desire 510 can also
record video up to 1080p quality. This is done through the same camera
app, and you can apply the same settings to your videos as to your still
images. Though the video footage I took with the HTC
Desire 510 is still limited by the camera, moving images don't suffer as
much from the lack of clarity and detail as the photos, with the 1080p
footage proving to be perfectly fine for home videos, though still
nothing remarkable.
Most of us use our smartphones to play music, podcasts and videos, and the HTC Desire 510 does a good job at media playback. For
playing music the HTC Desire 510 comes with Google's Play Music service
and HTC's Music app. Whichever one you use will probably be down to
personal preference. I found the Play Music app to have more features,
especially if you subscribe to its streaming service, though this is an
extra monthly cost. The HTC Music app is simple and easy
to use and there are a number of widgets that you can add to the HTC
Desire 510's homescreen to make playing music even easier. The
HTC Desire 510 will benefit from a decent pair of headphones, but even
with a standard in-ear set sound quality was pretty good. The music app is easy to use, though for good sound quality you'll want to use headphones or portable speakersUsing
the built in speaker for playing music is also possible, though it's
not really ideal, with the sound losing a lot of its detail over the
rather tinny speakers. Unlike the HTC Desire 610, which comes with
front-mounted 'Boomsound' speakers, the HTC Desire 510's speaker is on
the back of the handset, and lacks any special bells and whistles. Like
a lot of the HTC Desire 510's features it does the job, but again it's
nothing special. If you want to play your music outside at a BBQ, for
example, you'll want to invest in some portable speakers. Playing
games on the HTC Desire 510 was also very good, with graphically
demanding games like Temple Run 2 encountering no problems while
playing. Overall the HTC Desire 510 did a good job of playing media and games considering the budget price of the handset.
Comparisons
HTC Desire 610
The close price gap between the HTC Desire 510 and the HTC Desire 610 offers inevitable comparisons between the two smartphones, so what do you get for that extra £25 that the HTC Desire 610 costs? Both
handsets come with the same 4.7-inch screen size, but the HTC Desire
610's screen is capable of 960 x 540 (known as qHD resolution and not to
be mistaken with the much higher QHD resolution), giving it a pixel
density of 234ppi. The HTC Desire 610's screen was
nothing to write home about but it still beats the HTC Desire 510's
screen, which as I mentioned earlier is 854 x 480 (208ppi). The Desire 610 is a little more expensive but has a few better featuresWhile
the slight improvement in screen resolution might not be worth shelling
out for, what is interesting is that the HTC Desire 510 comes with a
better battery, with a capacity of 2100mAh, compared to the HTC Desire
610's 2040mAh battery. The larger capacity battery coupled with the
lower screen resolution works in the HTC Desire 510's favour when it
comes to battery life. One big performance difference between the two handsets is the cameras, both front and back. The
HTC Desire 510 comes with a 5MP main camera, and a 0.3MP front camera,
whereas the HTC Desire 610 comes with a more impressive 8MP main camera
and 1.3MP front camera. What this boils down to
price-wise is that the HTC Desire 510 is cheaper and has better battery
life, whereas the HTC Desire 610 is not that much more expensive and
comes with a slightly nicer screen and a much better camera.
