HTC Desire 820 & Desire 820 dual SIM review: The doppelganger

Performance

The HTC Desire 820 runs Android 4.4 KitKat with Sense 6 out of the box. It's powered by a Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 chipset with four Cortex-A53 processor cores at 1.5GHz and another four, clocked at 1.0GHz, all along an Adreno 405 GPU. It has 2GB of RAM.

This is a notable improvement over its predecessor, the Desire 816, but interestingly enough, the fairly comparable eight A53 cores do not fair all that well against the four Cortex A7 ones, found inside the A7. This might just be due to the higher clock rate on the Snapdragon 400, but all in all, in a lot of respects the Desire 820 does not seem to offer as big of a performance increase as we would have liked to see.

We kick off with a simple CPU benchmark that, interestingly enough, places the Desire 820 between the Xiaomi Redmi Note (Octa-core 1.4/1.7 GHz Cortex-A7) and the OnePlus One (Quad-core 2.5 GHz Krait 400), both cheaper and solid competition in terms of price to performance ratio.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  3647
• HTC One (E8)
  3229
• HTC Desire Eye
  2911
• Oppo N3
  2704
• OnePlus One
  2663
• HTC Desire 820
  2586
• Xiaomi Redmi Note
  2435
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  2172
• HTC Desire 816
  1510
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  1181

Results with the Basemark OS II were really inconsistent on the Desire 820 for some reason and we found ourselves having to retest several times. The total score is expectedly a bit ahead of the Desire 816, but single and multi-core tests just seem a little off. Perhaps it's a software bug or some optimization issue, but in any case the numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• Oppo N3
  1280
• OnePlus One
  1196
• HTC One (E8)
  1146
• HTC Desire Eye
  1122
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  930
• HTC Desire 820
  688
• HTC Desire 816
  520
• Xiaomi Redmi Note
  452
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  169

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Higher is better

• HTC One (E8)
  2579
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  2571
• HTC Desire Eye
  2478
• Oppo N3
  2417
• OnePlus One
  2213
• HTC Desire 816
  1739
• Xiaomi Redmi Note
  1701
• HTC Desire 820
  1670
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  1507

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  13999
• Xiaomi Redmi Note
  12771
• OnePlus One
  10234
• HTC One (E8)
  10219
• HTC Desire Eye
  9495
• Oppo N3
  9320
• HTC Desire 816
  7071
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  6440
• HTC Desire 820
  5483

Going forward to the AnTuTu test, the numbers seem quite expected, placing the Desire 820 just above the comparable Sony Xperia C3 (Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7). Keep in mind that the chart might also be a little misleading as the Desire 816 is absent and for a good reason. It was tested under Antutu 4, which had a different scoring chart, but the difference between the two is pretty much identical to the one observed in GeekBench.

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• HTC One (E8)
  46857
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  46666
• HTC Desire Eye
  40296
• Oppo N3
  39245
• Xiaomi Redmi Note
  32487
• HTC Desire 820
  27070
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  18466

The Adreno 405 GPU is nothing spectacular and the Desire 820 fails to amaze in most rendering tests but definitely holds its own. Real-life performance is of course, a whole other question and as evident from the onscreen scores, the mid-ranged device handles rendering nicely. The lower screen resolution has certainly attributed towards the respectable scores.

The Adreno 405 offscreen graphics test at 1080p resolution is rather disappointing, but expected for the particular chip.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus One
  28.3
• HTC One (E8)
  28
• HTC Desire Eye
  23.4
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  17.8
• HTC Desire 820
  15
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  15
• Xiaomi Redmi Note
  9.8
• HTC Desire 816
  5.9
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  5.8

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One (E8)
  12.3
• OnePlus One
  12.1
• HTC Desire Eye
  10.3
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  6.1
• HTC Desire 820
  5.7
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  3.7
• HTC Desire 816
  1.7

The onscreen performance is much better and the device delivers very respectable frame rates almost topping the charts.

As already mentioned, the lower screen resolution does aid a lot but one thing is for sure, the Desire 820 delivers playable frame-rates on graphics-intensive tasks, something that the Desire 816 is badly struggling with.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus One
  30
• HTC One (E8)
  29.9
• HTC Desire 820
  26
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  25
• HTC Desire Eye
  24.6
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  17
• Xiaomi Redmi Note
  13.3
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  11
• HTC Desire 816
  11

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus One
  12.9
• HTC One (E8)
  12.9
• HTC Desire 820
  12
• HTC Desire Eye
  10.9
• Lenovo Vibe X2
  6.1
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  4.7
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  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 820 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.

Interestingly enough, looking back at the Desire 816 yet again, we can't help but notice a very slight improvement in overall browser performance.

Taking into account the fact that the pair uses the same HTC Sense software, we have to deduct that the Desire 820 is mostly under-optimized rather than underpowered and this, while fixable is all up to the manufacturer to address at this point.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  4747
• Oppo N3
  6460
• HTC One (E8)
  6460
• OnePlus One
  7008
• HTC Desire Eye
  11093
• Xiaomi Redmi Note
  12416
• HTC Desire 816
  13564
• HTC Desire 820
  13568
• Sony Xperia C3 Dual
  15737

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Lenovo Vibe X2
  2211
• HTC One (E8)
  1362
• OnePlus One
  1339
• HTC Desire Eye
  1009
• HTC Desire 820
  991
• HTC Desire 816
  774
• Oppo N3
  730
• Xiaomi Redmi Note
  588

The HTC Desire 820 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 major hiccups and the UI does look and feel very polished and functional, but more on that later.