HTC Desire 816 review: Heart's desire

Performance

The HTC Desire 816 runs Android 4.4 KitKat with Sense 6 out of the box. It's powered by a Snapdragon 400 MSM8928 chipset with four Cortex-A7 processor cores at 1.6GHz and Adreno 305 GPU. It has 1.5GB of RAM. interestingly, this one is better spec'd than the HTC One mini 2, and yet it costs less.

This should give it an edge in performance over the likes of the Sony Xperia T2 Ultra, but HTC's phablet should be behind the Exynos Hexa-powered Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo.

We kick off with a simple CPU benchmark that, expectedly, places the Desire 816 above the Xperia T2 Ultra (4x Cortex-A7 @ 1.4GHz), but behind the Galaxy Note 3 Neo (a hexa-core processor with two Cortex-A15 @ 1.7GHz as the muscle).

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  3093
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 S800
  2937
• LG G Pro 2
  2585
• Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  2172
• HTC Desire 816
  1510
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  1359
• Alcatel OT Hero
  1321
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  1159
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo
  1041

Unfortunately, the results prove to be not very reliable as we ran both the Play Store version and the anti-cheat versions of Basemark OS II and there was a noticeable change in score.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• LG G Pro 2
  1140
• Oppo Find 7a
  1057
• HTC Desire 816
  520
• HTC Desire 816 (anti-cheat)
  468
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  434

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  2580
• LG G Pro 2
  2401
• HTC Desire 816
  1739
• HTC Desire 816 (anti-cheat)
  1193

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  10256
• LG G Pro 2
  9802
• HTC Desire 816
  7071
• HTC Desire 816 (anti-cheat)
  4537

Going back to AnTuTu, we see that the Desire 816 tops the lot of affordable phablets in overall performance, but keep in mind the results are probably a bit off due to benchmark optimizations on HTC's part.

AnTuTu 4

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  33344
• Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  32162
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 S800
  31109
• LG G Pro 2
  29603
• HTC Desire 816
  21580
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  19896
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  17106
• Alcatel OT Hero
  15667

The on-screen versions of the GFX 3D benchmark didn't run at a satisfactory framerate.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  28.4
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 S800
  26.3
• LG G Pro 2
  22.9
• Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  15
• HTC Desire 816
  5.9
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  5.8
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  5.8
• Alcatel OT Hero
  3.4
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo
  1.8

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  11.4
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 S800
  9.9
• LG G Pro 2
  8.7
• Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  3.7
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  1.9
• HTC Desire 816
  1.7

Since the HTC phablet has a 720p screen we should be looking at the on-screen results. And as could have been expected, Adreno 305 just isn't up to snuff when it comes to delivering quality 3D graphics at 720p. Even the relatively old GFX 2.7 T-Rex test didn't get anywhere near a playable framerate.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  28.8
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 S800
  26.7
• Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  25
• LG G Pro 2
  24.1
• HTC Desire 816
  11
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  10.9
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  10.6
• Alcatel OT Hero
  3.4

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 7a
  11.4
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 S800
  10
• LG G Pro 2
  9.2
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  4.1
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  4
• HTC Desire 816
  3.9

JavaScript performance is not great, though it's in line with what we can expect from a mid-range device. In the BrowserMark 2.1, an HTML5 test, the HTC Desire 816 score was proportional to the JavaScript score. These tests fully stress the browser (we used the stock browser, by the way), in daily browsing the phablet works without annoying slowdowns.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  6043
• LG G Pro 2
  6578
• Oppo Find 7a
  6660
• Sony Xperia Z2
  7041
• LG Nexus 5
  7148
• HTC Desire 816
  13564

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Galaxy S5 (Snapdragon 801)
  1398
• LG G Pro 2
  1346
• Oppo Find 7a
  1327
• LG Nexus 5
  1286
• Sony Xperia Z2
  1224
• HTC Desire 816
  774

The HTC Desire 816 is a middle of the road device when it comes to performance. It's not sluggish by any means and it will do okay for daily multitasking, browsing and even 3D games. From a user point of view, we didn't experience any