HTC DESIRE 500 REVIEW

HTC's One series is the place for the Taiwanese
company's latest technology, but its midrange Desire
handsets benefit from the trickle-down effect, for a
fraction of the price. The Desire 500 has a great
look, but does its spec really justify the price?
Design
Unlike the One series, the Desire is an all-plastic
affair, but that doesn't mean it looks or feels cheap.
The rear feels solid and sturdy, and the shiny
coloured banding around the side (blue on white on
our model) gives it an air of class.
There are only two Android buttons on the front --
back and home -- so there's no multitasking button,
though you get the same function by double tapping
the home button
HTC Desire 500 HTC
No, it can't handle 4G, but that's hardly a deal-
breaker yet, until the super-fast networking
capability becomes more established. Of more
concern is the fact that there's just 4GB of memory
on board. Fortunately though you can add up to
64GB via microSD card and you can save apps to the
card too.
The 4.3-inch screen is nice and bright but the
resolution is a sub-HD 800x480 pixels, which looks a
little bit less than sharp even on a midrange device
like this one. But where once this might have been
acceptable on a phone at this price, the recent Moto
G with its 1,280x720 pixels at a much lower price
makes it seem just a bit out of date.
Android and processor
It's running the slightly older 4.1.2 Jelly Bean
version of Android, so not the very latest 4.3, but
HTC is promising an upgrade to Android KitKat as
early as next January, which will be just behind the
update for the Google-owned Moto G.
Not that it's easy to notice anyway, since it also has
the latest, fifth version of HTC's justly praised Sense
user interface which brightens up standard Android
without getting in the way. So there are handy
widgets and news feeds to help keep you better
informed, like HTC's BlinkFeed news aggregator,
with its fully customisable interface that pulls in all
your chosen news sources, including magazines,
blogs and social networks so you can get all your
important info in a hurry. It's good, and useful, but
you're also stuck with it since there's no way to
remove it.
The quad-core processor is clocked at 1.2GHz and
backed by 1GB RAM. That's not great, and sure
enough, in our AnTuTu benchmark test it racked up
one of the lowest scores we've seen for a quad-core
processor -- 11,786, well behind the Moto G or even
Acer's Liquid E2 . That's not a disaster, it works
smoothly enough for the most part, but its leisurely
switching between apps gives the impression of
budget rather than premium performance.
HTC Desire 500 test photo Dave Oliver
Camera
The 8-megapixel camera however is actually quite
good. It has autofocus and an LED flash, plus a BSI
sensor for improved shots in low light. It hasn't got
the UltraPixels you'll find in the One series, with
outsize pixels designed to absorb more light, but
picture quality was pretty decent overall, with
accurate colours and a good level of detail.
The battery gave a reasonable account of itself,
comfortably delivering about a day and a half of
steady use.
Conclusion
The HTC Desire 500 is a decent midrange phone with
a good look, but the so-so screen and processor are
starting to look a bit behind the curve for the price,
with the likes of the Moto G offering more for less.