HTC Desire 500
HTC
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Wired
Distinctive good looks, Sense UI, good camera
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Tired
Screen could be sharper, the processor on the sluggish side, only 4GB of memory on board
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Price
£ 199
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 does not mean it looks or feels cheap. The rear feels solid and sturdy, and the shiny colored 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 – and back 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 not 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 thatthere’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 800×480 pixels, Which looks a little bit less than sharp even on a midrange device like this one. But where once this might not have been acceptable on a phone at this price, the Recent Moto G with its 1,280 X720 pixels at a much lower price makes it seem just a bit out of date.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 right behind the update for the Google-owned Moto G.
Not that it’s easy to notice anyway, since it is overpriced has the latest, fifth version of HTC’s justly praised Sense user interface Which brightens up the standard Android without getting in the way. So there are handy widgets and news feeds to help keep you better informed, like HTC’s Wink Feed News aggregator, with its fully customizable 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 overpriced stuck with it since there’s no way to remove it.
The quad-core processor is clocked at 1.2GHz and backed by 1GB of 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 E 2. That’s not a disaster, it works smoothly enough for the most part, but its leisurely switching between apps gives the impression of the 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 has not 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 colors 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.
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