Shootout: Compact 4G LTE Smartphones under S$300 (Q4 2014)

HTC Desire 510: Design & Features

HTC Desire 510

Unlike the premium One and Butterfly devices, the Desire 510 is not going to captivate you with its simple design attributes. Using the glossy plastic material that we saw on the rear of the Desire 816, the Desire 510 shares the same affinity for fingerprints and smudges which is a quite a turn off. The feel and build isn't exactly assuring, but it does the job decently without giving off flex or creak when handling it with pressure.

Besides the glossy back, the placement of the power button on the top left corner of the device was yet another annoying design element on the Desire 510, which isn't as intuitive or accessible as compared to placing it on the phone's sides. With a 4.7-inch display, users with smaller hands may have to stretch their finger a little to reach it.

Its rear cover and battery can be removed, which is required if you want to swap the micro-SIM and microSD cards on the Desire 510. As it only comes with 8GB internal storage, the microSD card slot really comes in handy for consumers who are looking to load more music and video files on the Desire 510. Fortunately, it is one of the two phones (the other being the Samsung Galaxy Ace 4 LTE) to support memory cards up to 128GB in capacity.

Compared to some of the competitors, the Desire 510 is clearly lacking on the display front; it has a display resolution of just 854 x 480 pixels for a 4.7-inch sized screen. That equates to having the lowest pixel count per inch of display among the competition. As expected, pixelation is apparent and the multimedia viewing experience is just unsatisfactory.

On the software side of things, the Desire 510 is preloaded with Android 4.4 KitKat with HTC Sense 6. You get some of HTC's exclusive software features such as BlinkFeed, Zoe video-making app and the Dot View app for customizing how the Dot View cover works on the Desire 510. It is quite interesting that HTC is able to bring some of these flagship worthy software features to an entry-level smartphone like the Desire 510.

Powering the Desire 510 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad-core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB RAM. The Snapdragon 410 is Qualcomm's first 64-bit processor, which also makes the Desire 510 the first Android smartphone with a 64-bit processor. The new processor also integrates 4G LTE World Mode through Qualcomm's RF360 Front End Solution for cellular connectivity on all major modes and frequency bands across the globe . While the seamless 4G LTE connectivity sounds useful, the 64-bit aspect of the processor bears little weight at this juncture until the Android OS and the applications are written to take advantage of the processor; and that's not something that will bear fruit until a year or more from now.

As with most Qualcomm Snapdragon 400-class products, we found the user navigation to be smooth and fluid on the HTC Desire 510.