HTC Desire 616 dual sim review: Managing expectations

Display

The HTC Desire 616 dual sim has a relatively large 5" screen. It has 720p resolution for a satisfactory 294ppi pixel density. It's a basic TFT LCD though, so viewing angles are not perfect - there's a slight color shift and contrast loss at an angle.

The screen is sharp but not the brightest

The screen is quite dim at its maximum setting - outputting just below 500 nits when cranked up all the way. The Desire 816's screen wasn't much brighter though and neither is a flagship like the Sony Xperia Z2. On the up side, the contrast is about 1000:1, which is quite good for the class.

The front glass is not a scratch-resistant and is fairly glossy, which worsens sunlight legibility. That said the LG G3 flagship performs virtually the same, despite being brighter. The Desire 816 and 700 dual sim are at this level of legibility too, while potential competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 and the Sony Xperia M2 do worse.

Sunlight contrast ratio

• Nokia 808 PureView
  4.698
• Apple iPhone 5
  3.997
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3
  3.997
• Samsung Galaxy K zoom
  3.675
• Apple iPhone 5s
  3.565
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  3.549
• Alcatel Idol X+
  3.527
• Apple iPhone 5c
  3.512
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  3.487
• Motorola RAZR MAXX
  3.42
• Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III
  3.419
• Nokia Lumia 925
  3.402
• Gionee Elife S5.5
  3.386
• Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4
  3.352
• Samsung Omnia W
  3.301
• Samsung I9000 Galaxy S
  3.155
• Samsung Ativ S
  3.129
• Samsung I9190 Galaxy S4 mini
  3.127
• Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom
  3.118
• Nokia N9
  3.069
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  2.97
• Samsung Galaxy Premier
  2.958
• Sony Xperia Z1
  2.95
• HTC One S
  2.901
• Samsung I8730 Galaxy Express
  2.861
• BlackBerry Q10
  2.856
• Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II
  2.832
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  2.801
• BlackBerry Z30
  2.79
• Sony Xperia ZR
  2.672
• Huawei Ascend P1
  2.655
• Nokia Lumia 900
  2.562
• HTC One Max
  2.537
• Nokia Lumia 720
  2.512
• HTC One
  2.504
• Motorola Moto G
  2.477
• Sony Xperia Z
  2.462
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  2.422
• LG G Flex
  2.407
• HTC One (M8)
  2.371
• Motorola RAZR i
  2.366
• Sony Xperia ZL
  2.352
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2.307
• Oppo Find 7a
  2.279
• Alcatel One Touch Hero
  2.272
• Apple iPhone 4S
  2.269
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  2.262
• Nokia Asha 311
  2.25
• LG Nexus 5
  2.228
• Nokia Lumia 820
  2.193
• HTC One (E8)
  2.185
• Nokia Lumia 920
  2.17
• HTC One X
  2.158
• Nokia N8
  2.144
• Nokia Lumia 620
  2.142
• Nokia 515
  2.134
• HTC Desire 500
  2.129
• Sony Xperia acro S
  2.119
• Nokia Lumia 1020
  2.103
• Oppo Find 5
  2.088
• Sony Xperia SL
  2.078
• Nokia Lumia 630
  2.056
• BlackBerry Z10
  2.051
• Samsung I9295 Galaxy S4 Active
  2.022
• Apple iPhone 4
  2.016
• HTC One mini
  2.003
• Huawei Ascend P7
  1.992
• LG G2
  1.976
• Oppo R819
  1.957
• Sony Ericsson Xperia ray
  1.955
• Sony Xperia Z2
  1.944
• Nokia Lumia 1320
  1.941
• HTC One mini 2
  1.94
• Samsung Galaxy Camera
  1.938
• Sony Xperia J
  1.932
• Acer CloudMobile S500
  1.931
• LG Nexus 4
  1.926
• LG G Pro 2
  1.922
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  1.913
• Nokia Asha 308
  1.911
• Sony Xperia T
  1.894
• HTC Desire X
  1.878
• HTC Windows Phone 8X
  1.873
• HTC Butterfly
  1.873
• HTC Butterfly S
  1.867
• Huawei Ascend P6
  1.865
• Huawei Ascend Mate
  1.845
• LG G2 mini
  1.838
• LG G3
  1.82
• Nokia Lumia 1520
  1.813
• HTC Desire 616 dual sim
  1.797
• Sony Xperia V
  1.792
• HTC Desire 816
  1.783
• Sony Xperia Z1 Compact
  1.772
• HTC Desire 700 dual sim
  1.769
• Sony Xperia U
  1.758
• Meizu MX3
  1.754
• LG Optimus G
  1.753
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  1.74
• Sony Xperia SP
  1.733
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1.691
• Oppo Find 7
  1.691
• HTC One V
  1.685
• BlackBerry Q5
  1.682
• LG Optimus Vu
  1.68
• LG Optimus GJ
  1.666
• LG Optimus 3D Max
  1.658
• HTC Desire V
  1.646
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  1.632
• Samsung Galaxy Ace 3
  1.622
• Jolla Jolla
  1.605
• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
  1.578
• Sony Xperia go
  1.577
• Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 I8160
  1.566
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  1.563
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1.552
• Motorola Moto E
  1.545
• LG Optimus 3D
  1.542
• Nokia Asha 302
  1.537
• BlackBerry Curve 9320
  1.488
• Sony Xperia M
  1.473
• Oppo N1
  1.47
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1.462
• Nokia Lumia 610
  1.432
• Samsung Galaxy S Duos
  1.4
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo
  1.393
• Sony Xperia M2
  1.393
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  1.38
• Sony Xperia E1
  1.372
• Nokia Lumia 625
  1.371
• Gigabyte GSmart G1355
  1.361
• Sony Xperia L
  1.351
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8
  1.35
• Sony Xperia miro
  1.324
• Samsung I9082 Galaxy Grand
  1.321
• Samsung I8530 Galaxy Beam
  1.315
• HTC Desire C
  1.3
• Nokia X
  1.291
• Sony Xperia C
  1.283
• Nokia Asha 503
  1.281
• Nokia Asha 501
  1.27
• LG Optimus L7
  1.269
• Nokia Lumia 510
  1.268
• Samsung Galaxy Fame
  1.245
• LG Optimus L9
  1.227
• Meizu MX
  1.221
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  1.22
• Sony Xperia E
  1.215
• Nokia XL
  1.204
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1.203
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket
  1.18
• Nokia Asha 305
  1.178
• Nokia Asha 306
  1.175
• Sony Xperia neo L
  1.169
• Sony Xperia tipo
  1.166
• Nokia Lumia 520
  1.161
• Samsung S6802 Galaxy Ace Duos
  1.148
• Samsung Galaxy mini 2
  1.114

Battery life

The HTC Desire 616 dual sim has a 2,000mAh Li-Po battery. That's fairly small for a phone this size but it's user-replaceable so you can easily pop in a spare. Still, the octa-core processor is bound to put a lot of pressure on it.

The phone lasted 13 hours of calls on a 3G network, an hour short of the official reading. That's about the same as the Desire 816 and a bit less than the Desire 700 dual sim. It helps a bit that the second SIM is disabled during a call.

The web browsing and video playback times both barely broke past the 5 hour mark, making it one of the worst performers of the Desire family with a place near the bottom of our all-time chart.

Note that standby power draw is calculated into the endurance rating but isn't indicated in the image above.

You can get more details on HTC Desire 616 dual sim's battery life from our blog post. Check out info on our testing procedure here.

Connectivity

The Desire 616 dual sim (as the name suggests) accepts two SIM cards. One of the slots takes miniSIMs (that's SIM1) and the other does microSIMs (SIM2). Both can be used for voice and texts and also both can be used for data connection, but with a twist.

SIM1 is the miniSIM slot, SIM2 the microSIM slot

Only SIM1 has 3G connectivity making it the only viable option. Also note that this is a dual-standby phone, where both SIMs are active simultaneously when there is no call going in. Once a call is initiated on one of them, the other becomes unreachable for the duration of the call. There's an app to set up call forwarding to handle this case.

Both SIM slots offer quad-band 2G connectivity and SIM1 adds dual-band 3G on top of that. It's not the fastest 3G with up to 21Mbps downlink and up to 5.76Mbps uplink and there's no LTE.

42Mbps models are quite common but at least it's better than what the Desire 700 dual sim got (14.4Mbps downlink).

The phone can connect to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi b/g/n networks to access the Internet or serve as a hotspot to share its data connection with other devices. Another use of Wi-Fi is wireless display mirroring. The microUSB port is just for charging / computer connection, there's no MHL.

Regular microUSB port

The rest of the local connectivity includes Bluetooth 4.0 with the apt-X audio codec for high-quality audio streaming.

The MediaTek MT6592 chipset also features a built-in A-GPS receiver, but unlike newer MediaTek chipsets or competing Snapdragon designs there's no GLONASS (the Russian GPS alternative) or Beidou (the Chinese one). Those aren't strictly necessary if you don't live in either of those countries but can improve lock times and accuracy even in other regions as in this way more satellites are available for the phone to connect to.