HTC Desire 500 review: Here To Charm

Synthetic benchmarks

As we already mentioned, the HTC Desire 500 uses the Snapdragon 200 chipset, which is Qualcomm's entry-level chipset for 2013. It's a quad-core CPU chipset and while four cores may sound impressive on paper, the real-life chipset performance is far from that. The four cores are of the Cortex-A5 variety and they all run at 1.2GHz each. The Snapdragon 200 also includes an Adreno 203 GPU alongside 1GB of RAM.

HTC has obviously kept things on a tight budget when constructing the Desire 500, so they've picked the Snapdragon 200 as the cheapest current-gen chipset. Placing a Snapdragon 400 chipset inside it, would've put it directly against the HTC One mini and that's not what HTC is after here.

So, let's see how the four Cortex-A5 cores perform under heavy load. Naturally, single-core performance is underwhelming, but multi-core performance isn't great either. In Linpack, the Desire 500 barely managed to float above the rock bottom of our list.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  166
• Sony Xperia Z
  264
• HTC Butterfly
  266
• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• HTC One mini
  293
• Sony Xperia V
  279
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  346
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  409
• Sony Xperia L
  435
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  499
• Sony Xperia go
  543
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  552
• HTC Desire 500
  542
• HTC Desire X
  639
• Sony Xperia E dual
  800
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  831

Linpack

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  788
• LG Optimus G Pro
  743
• HTC One
  646
• Sony Xperia ZL
  631
• Sony Xperia Z
  630
• HTC Butterfly
  624
• LG Optimus G
  608
• Oppo Find 5
  593
• Sony Xperia SP
  348
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  413
• HTC One mini
  320
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  214.3
• Nexus 4
  213.5
• Sony Xperia L
  191
• Meizu MX 4-core
  189
• HTC One X+
  177
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  175
• HTC One X
  160
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  141
• HTC Desire 500
  115.2

Geekbench 2 tests just about everything you can think off. Unfortunately for the HTC Desire 500, that didn't help it bounce up from the bottom of the chart.

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  3227
• LG Optimus G Pro
  3040
• HTC One
  2708
• Sony Xperia Z
  2173
• HTC Butterfly
  2143
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  1937
• Sony Xperia SP
  2105
• Sony Xperia ZL
  1995
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1845
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1661
• iPhone 5
  1601
• HTC One mini
  1417
• Sony Xperia L
  1073
• HTC Desire 500
  850

Overall performance is in a similar situation - Quadrant considers it to be above last year's midrangers, but it's still near the bottom bracket as far as the current generation of mid-range phones is concerned.

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• HTC One
  22678
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15547
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  14518
• HTC Butterfly
  12631
• HTC One mini
  11434
• HTC Desire 500
  11203
• Sony Xperia L
  9746
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  6650

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  7153
• HTC One mini
  6048
• Sony Xperia V
  5816
• HTC Desire 500
  5385
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  4998
• Sony Xperia L
  4279
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  3542
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  3045
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  2316

Because of the low-end Adreno 203 GPU that's running the graphics department in the Snapdragon 200 chipset, we had to reside back to the NenaMark 2 benchmark. Unlike mid- and high-end devices, the Desire 500 GPU didn't max out this test, but it leads the selected 2012 mid-rangers by as much as 11 frames.

NenaMark 2

Higher is better

• HTC Desire 500
  38.5
• Sony Xperia E dual
  27.7
• Samsung Galaxy Fame
  26.9
• HTC Sensation XE
  23.0
• Sony Xperia J
  19.6
• LG Optimus L7
  19.3
• Sony Xperia miro
  15.9
• Samsung Galaxy mini 2
  15.4
• HTC Explorer
  15.1
• Samsung Galaxy Y Duos
  13.2
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket
  12.9
• Samsung Galaxy Ace
  12.0

Now it's time to move onto web performance testing. We start with the JavaScript benchmark SunSpider. Here, the HTC Desire 500 browser is close enough to that of the faster smartphones, but you have got to remember that JS doesn't care for multi-core CPU architecture much. However, BrowserMark 2 and Vellamo show scores that can't really compete with the current batch of midrangers.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  1185
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  1196
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1192
• HTC One mini
  1237
• Sony Xperia V
  1189
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  1460
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  1654
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  1863
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  1901
• HTC Desire 500
  2060
• HTC Desire X
  2259
• Sony Xperia L
  2539
• Sony Xperia E dual
  2824
• Sony Xperia J
  2853
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  3578

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2314
• HTC One
  2262
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  2170
• HTC One mini
  2164
• Sony Xperia V
  1957
• Sony Xperia L
  1809
• HTC Desire 500
  1794
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  1154
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  1079
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  1036
• Sony Xperia E
  992
• Sony Xperia E dual
  975
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  714
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  908

Vellamo

Higher is better

• HTC One mini
  2252
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• Sony Xperia SP
  2497
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2418
• HTC One
  2382
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• Sony Xperia ZL
  2186
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  2078
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  2060
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2019
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Oppo Find 5
  1658
• HTC Desire 500
  1652
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• Sony Xperia L
  1640
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1468
• Nexus 4
  1310
• Samsung Galaxy Fame
  1234
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  1072
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1065

While synthetic benchmarks are good for making comparison tables and all, the stuff that matters is real-life performance. In this respect the Desire 500 performed quite satisfactory most of the time - it's not as snappy as Galaxy S4 mini, for example, but it does all the daily tasks done without annoying lags or long waiting times.