The HTC Desire 820 and Desire 820q, India’s first Android phones with support for 64-bit computing, are now available select outlets in the country in the Rs 22,500-25,000 price range.
The HTC Desire 820 and 820q was launched in India about a month ago and are also the first handsets to ship with Qualcomm’s octa-core chipset, the Snapdragon 615.
They will be available online by Thursday or Friday, by which time outlets in Delhi and Mumbai will also start getting the phone.
The Desire 820 is also among the cheapest phones to come with LTE, though the cheapest is the LG F60, priced at just Rs 15,000.
The phones are also among the cheapest decently speced smartphones from HTC, a Taiwanese brand. The Desire 820q, priced Rs 22,500, is the quad-core version of the Desire 820, and also supports 64-bit processing.
Of course, 64-processing support is largely inconsequential right now as Android itself has not been fully ported to the 64-bit architecture. As a result, the 820 and 820q are likely to come with 32-bit Android.
The newly launched 5.5-inch Gionee G5, with very similar specifications (but no 4G) is available for Rs 13,400, or about half the price of the 820. It comes with a 720×1280 px IPS display, Hexa Core processor, dual SIM, 3G, 1 GB RAM and a 2400 mAh battery.
The Desire 820 is the second big launch by HTC in the mid-range space. Two weeks ago, HTC’s Desire 816g, which comes with a quad-core MediaTek processor, is now available on online stores for just Rs 18,300.
With the Desire 820, HTC has unexpectedly stolen a march over rivals Huawei, Samsung, LG and Sony in announcing the first ever 64-bit enabled Android phone in the market.
The Cortex A53 64-bit core that underlies the Snapdragon 615 chipset is expected to be about 50% more powerful than the Cortex A7 cores that are being used by Mediatek in its popular quad-core and octa-core chips.
As an example, the Micromax Canvas Gold (price Rs 19,000) is powered by Mediatek MT6592T octa-core processor with eight Cortex A7 processors running at 2 GHz each. Phones with this chip have been reported to score around 25,000-28,000 in Antutu tests. In other words, an optimum implementation of Cortex A53 cores could give Antutu scores upwards of 35,000.
The Desire 820 has been designed not just as a mid-range chip, but also a very low-power consumption one. Four of the cores are clocked at just 1 GHz, while the remaining four are tuned at just 1.5 GHz.
As a result, in terms of raw power, it may actually underpeform the octa-core processors found in Micromax’ and other models available in India, but will certainly be more power efficient.
The 5.5-inch Desire 820 is one of the most good looking phones in India.
The Desire 820 has a 720p display, 2 GB of RAM, an 8 megapixel front camera and a 13 MP shooter at the back, and the all-new Adreno 405 graphics processor (compared to the 300 series currently available in the market.)
Other 64-bit Android phones that will be launched in India over the next two months are almost all built around the Snapdragon 410 chipset, which is the quad-core version of the 610 series. The models being prepped for launch include Samsung Galaxy Alpha (price around Rs 25,000?), the Huawei G621 (around Rs 15,000), Samsung GM-510 (Rs 18,000) and HTC Desire 510, also around Rs 15,000.