Performance: ARM-Based Snapdragon 400

The HTC Desire 816 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC, similar to what was found in last year's HTC One Mini too as the Motorola Moto K.

When the HTC One Mini launched, it was stuck between fitting into the mid- and high-end segments. The choice to use a Snapdragon 400 in a virtually-$500 smartphone left it feeling a little underpowered and underwhelming for the toll point. Yet with the Desire 816 costing over $150 less than the I Mini at launch, it's much more suited to Qualcomm's mid-range SoC.

The actual Snapdragon 400 model, the MSM8228, isn't one I've used in a smartphone before. It's most similar to the MSM8226 found in the Moto G in that information technology uses ARM Cortex-A7 CPU cores, every bit opposed to Qualcomm'due south custom Krait cores that were used in the HTC One Mini's MSM8930.

There are four Cortex-A7s in the MSM8228 clocked between 300 MHz and 1.6 GHz, making it the fastest system of ARM cores in a Snapdragon 400 SoC. Performance from the quad-core CPU should be comparable to, if not faster than the dual-core Krait 300 CPU in the MSM8930, at to the lowest degree on paper. Like all Snapdragon 400 chips, the MSM8228 is produced using 28nm LP engineering science.

The quad-cadre CPU is paired with an Adreno 305 GPU clocked at up to 450 MHz, besides as a single-channel 32-fleck LPDDR2 memory interface at 533 MHz, and a 1080p video encoding/decoding block. The Desire 816 has 1.5 GB of RAM, as well as viii GB of internal NAND that tin be expanded upon by inserting a microSD carte.

Connectivity-wise at that place'south an integrated LTE modem supporting speeds up to 150 Mbps, as well as unmarried-ring Wi-Fi 802.11b/grand/n, Bluetooth 4.0, HSPA+, 2G and IZat Gen8A GPS+GLONASS. Unlike HTC'southward higher-end products, in that location's no NFC in the Desire 816.

Around the operating arrangement in general, the Desire 816 performs just besides as HTC'south flagship products. The interface is normally buttery shine, and the times where you discover a dip in performance are few and far betwixt. Loading apps is quick and responsive for a mid-range product, and while information technology can't match the Snapdragon 800 in providing an instantaneous feel, in that location's no reason to be unsatisfied with the Desire 816.

The Adreno 305 has always been very capable at rendering Android games at 720p, and it'due south no exception in the Want 816. I tried out a few of my favourites and all of them ran fine, easily reaching playable frame rates and often hitting lx FPS. For example, Dead Trigger 2 performs very well on High settings, despite the mid-range GPU.

Dissimilar the Ane M8, the Desire 816 does not cheat on benchmarks. It looks like HTC has heard the voices of the reviewers and has cut out the pointless practice; enough said.

In our browser benchmarks, the Want 816 actually outperformed the HTC Ane on two occasions, falling backside in Kraken. The actress clock speed beyond the Cortex-A7 CPU cores besides sees the Desire 816 outperform the Motorola Moto G.

Vellamo shows the Desire 816 performing better than the Samsung Milky way S3, only below the HTC 1 by a margin of 11%.

Every bit the GPUs in both the Moto One thousand and Desire 816 are the aforementioned unit of measurement with the same clock speeds, rendering to the same resolution display, it's not surprising to run into them produce the same results in our graphics benchmarks.

The performance displayed from the HTC Desire 816's internal NAND is very good, matching flagship handsets in sequential read and write, but falling slightly behind in random read/write speeds.

No review of an HTC handset would be complete without mentioning the BoomSound speakers institute on the front of the device. The speakers on the Desire 816 are just as loud as those establish on the HTC Ane M8, but the quality isn't quite as balanced when listening to music. Even if the Want 816 isn't at the same quality level as the One M8, it's leagues alee of other competing smartphones.