Camera and Internal Storage

The camera unit at the back of the Desire 516 is a 5MP one which has a LED flash coupled with it. At the front is a 2MP camera which does well for giving you selfies and aiding video calling. The rear camera has support for 720p video recording too. So the camera department is decently well equipped. The internal storage of the Desire 516 stands at 4GB which can be increased further with the help of a microSD card by another 32GB. The internal storage is a bit less and it should have been at least 8GB instead to make the device better than the rest.

Processor and Battery

At the heart of the Desire 516 is a 1.2 GHz quad core Snapdragon 200 processor. HTC could hit the bull’s eye by launching the device with a Snapdragon 400 instead clocked at the same speed but it seems to missed out in this regard. It is joined in by Adreno 302 GPU and a 1GB RAM which complement it decently well but a better processor is missed. The battery unit inside the Desire 516 is rated at 1,950 mAh which might be a bit less for the smartphone of this size. Nevertheless, it will still last you a little less than a day. HTC could have done better by putting in a slightly bigger battery in the device.

Display and Features

The display unit of the Desire 516 is a 5 inch one which has a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels which translates into a pixel density of 220 ppi. The Desire 516 would have been a better device if came with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. It just falls short of the perfect screen resolution at this price point. It runs on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Sense 5.1 UI on top of it. The Android version is ages old now and it should have launched with KitKat instead. The only saving grace is the Sense UI which is quite a capable one and makes up for the older operating system.

Comparison

It will be competing with the Moto G, Nokia Lumia 630 and BlackBerry Z3 as its prime counterparts.

Key Specs

What we like

Large Screen size

What we don’t like

Dated Operating systemInternal Storage

Conclusion

The HTC Desire 516 is a decent attempt by HTC to rival the likes of Moto G but it falls short of the expectations in more than one regard. A new operating system, a better processor and more internal storage would have done the trick for it but HTC seems to have missed out on that.