HTC Desire 816 announced with spring release
HTC on Monday announced the Desire 816, a mid-range Android that provides much of the HTC One experience in a lower price point.
Made from polycarbonate materials, the Desire 816 features a 5.5-inch 720p display, 13-megapixel rear camera, and 5-megapixel front-facing camera. Powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, the phone also offers users 1.5GB RAM, 8GB internals storage, and microSD expansion. In terms of connectivity, the Desire 816 packs LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS, and GLONASS.
The HTC Desire 816 is expected to go on sale in China in March followed by other markets in April. Pricing was not disclosed as of press time.
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Ford’s 2015 Focus brings touchscreen Sync technology to Europe
Europe regularly gets Ford’s latest cars, but it hasn’t been so lucky with Sync — the continent typically has to make do with the basic version rather than MyFord Touch. Locals won’t have to settle when the 2015 Focus rolls out in the second half of the year, though. The redesigned car will bring Sync 2, which is effectively MyFord Touch under a new name; drivers get a similar 8-inch touchscreen interface with sophisticated control over the climate system, media playback, navigation and AppLink support. The 2015 refresh should bring a few welcome tech upgrades no matter where you live, including a now-standard rear view camera as well as optional blind spot detection and lane warnings. Ford isn’t giving out prices at this stage, although we wouldn’t expect this newest Focus to cost much more than the outgoing model.
Filed under: Transportation
Source: Ford
HTC’s ‘flagship mid-range’ Desire 816 packs a large display, decent cameras and LTE
That HTC “Desire 8” you’ve been seeing lately? It’s finally unveiled as the Desire 816, a “flagship mid-range” phone that promises to be competitively priced, while also offering LTE (for EMEA and Asia) and HSPA+ (up to 42 Mbps). This pretty phablet comes with a large 5.5-inch 720p display, a 1.6GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 SoC, 1.5GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage (capacity may vary), microSD expansion of up to a staggering 128GB and a fixed 2,600mAh battery. You’ll get a decent multimedia experience courtesy of the BoomSound frontal stereo speakers (with dedicated amplifiers), along with the 13-megapixel f/2.2 main camera (with Zoe mode in HTC Sense 5.5 UI) plus the 5-megapixel f/2.8 selfie camera. These are all tucked inside a 7.99mm-thick and 165g-heavy body, which is pretty good for the size.
Interestingly, this will be the first HTC phone to take a nano-SIM, which may be able to lure a few iPhone 5c users. Ultimately, it’s all about the price, and we should know very soon given the China launch next month (likely March 18th), followed by a global launch in April.
Update: We now have some hands-on photos. Enjoy!
Fortunately, we were able to have a few brief moments with the device. The more we play with it, the more we’re impressed with the overall design. It’s constructed with unibody polycarbonate, and it’s quite comfortable to hold, even at its 5.5-inch size. Interestingly, HTC opted for a shiny backside while its sides have a matte finish. Another nice touch to the phone’s design is, interestingly enough, in the side buttons; the power and volume buttons are located on the left side of the device, and the side of each button has a shiny beveled finish that adds a little extra bit of elegance.
Brad Molen contributed to this post.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
HTC wants to combine all your Android phones to cure diseases (video)
With smartphones packing so much processing power these days, HTC reckons we can combine them all to do some meaningful number crunching à la SETI@home and Folding@home. We’re talking about curing diseases (AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer’s and more) as well as searching for alien life. As such, the mobile company has teamed up with UC Berkeley’s Dr. David Anderson, co-creator of SETI@home, for the HTC “Power To Give” initiative. To take part, you simply grab the app from Google Play, install it and it’ll run in the background when your phone’s being charged up plus connected to WiFi.
HTC claims that the combined power of 1 million Ones is almost just as good as a one-petaflop supercomputer, so the more the merrier — including those from other brands. But for now, HTC will first offer its app’s beta release to the HTC One family and the Butterfly series, and it’ll gradually add more compatible Android devices over the next six months. Isn’t it awesome that even Nokia phones can soon partake in this, too?
Update: The good folks at HTC have now published a couple of videos explaining this initiative. Check them out after the break.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, HTC
Live at Mark Zuckerberg’s MWC 2014 keynote
Given Facebook’s recent $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg’s Mobile World Congress keynote just got a lot more interesting. Hopefully he’ll illuminate us more about how the chat app will fit into the social network’s plans, since that’ll be top of mind. Either way, we’ll no doubt hear more about Highlights, Paper and Trending Topics. To get his take on all that and catch anything juicy, tune in right here at the time below.
BBM coming to Windows Phones this summer
BlackBerry is slowly, but surely covering all its bases in an effort to turn BBM into a cross-platform messaging monster. The quest to return the standard-bearer to its former glory started with iOS and Android, but this summer it’ll be coming to Windows Phones as well. According to the Canadian company, it will ship with all the same functionality as its counterparts on other OSes, including stickers and voice. More importantly though, BBM Groups (which allows you to chat with up to 50 people at once) and Channels will be included as BlackBerry works to fight off challenges from the likes of WhatsApp and Hangouts. Sadly those are all the details we have for now, but hopefully Waterloo will lock down a release date sooner, rather than later.
Filed under: Software, Mobile, Microsoft, Blackberry
Via: SlashGear
HTC’s Desire 610 joins the affordable LTE smartphone party
Joining HTC’s “flagship mid-range” Desire 816 at MWC is this smaller, but similar-looking Desire 610. As the cheaper model of these two LTE phones, many things have been downsized a little here: There’s a 4.7-inch 960 x 540 display, a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 chip, 1GB of RAM and a fixed 2,040mAh battery. The cameras are also more modest, with the main one sporting an 8-megapixel sensor with f/2.4 aperture, and the front imager featuring a 1.3-megapixel sensor. Both can only handle 720p video recording. On the flip side, the Desire 610 has preserved some of the goodies from its bigger sibling: microSD expansion (but up to 64GB instead of 128GB) on top of the built-in 8GB of space, BoomSound stereo frontal speakers, nano-SIM support and LTE radio for either EMEA or Asia.
There’s no pricing info at the moment, but knowing that the Desire 816 will be priced extremely competitively, here’s hoping that the Desire 610 will cost a tad less than Huawei’s counterpart, the €249 (about $340) Ascend G6 4G. Expect this device to arrive in Europe sometime in May.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
Samsung’s Galaxy Core LTE could also be the S 4 Mini… lite? (hands-on)
When you have the inventory that Samsung does, you don’t need to make a fuss when you launch a mid-range Android phone. But the Korean firm did recently release one — the Galaxy Core LTE — and it’s certainly worth a moment of your time if you’re in that market. Design-wise you know the drill: take one of Samsung’s flagships and nip a bit here, maybe a tuck there. Aesthetically it’s derivative, sure, but comfortable — like some well worn-in shoes. On a positive note, the back panel is textured, and feels like something between rubber and a soft touch finish. This at least stops it feeling too much like one of Samsung’s many “sausage machine” handsets.
As for specifications, it’s fairly typical of the current mid-tier breed. That means a 4.5-inch qHD display, a 1.2 GHz dual-core chip (based on Arm’s A9, but no mention of specifics), a 5-megapixel/VGA camera combo, 8GB of storage (plus a microSD slot) and a 2,100 mAh battery. We only got to spend a short while with it, but if we’re honest, we were actually impressed by how quick and fluid menu navigation was, or how responsive Google maps rendering was. This, of course, should be no real test of a modern phone, but it still gave us a little “not bad” reflective moment. At the moment we only know it’s coming to Europe and Asia, with no mention on price. But if we’re betting on anything, it’s that it’ll have a new cousin to look up to too — in just a few short hours.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung
Xbox One gets its first price drop, now £400 in the UK
The Xbox One hasn’t been selling as well as the PlayStation 4 on a global level, and that’s partly due to pricing — in the UK, Microsoft’s system costs a lofty £429 ($713) versus Sony’s £349 ($580). That gap is about to narrow, though, as Microsoft plans to cut the Xbox’s price to a slightly more reasonable £400 ($665) on February 28th. The company isn’t leaning solely on that lower price tag to attract gamers, either. It’s also releasing a special Titanfall Xbox One bundle (shown here) that includes both a download code for Respawn’s shooter and a month of Xbox Live Gold for the same price as the regular console. Americans can expect this limited edition system to ship alongside the game on March 11th, while Brits should get it on March 14th.
Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft, Xbox Wire, Game.co.uk
HTC to expand its US reach in 2014 by launching a greater variety of phones
HTC seems to understand that it needs to do something to get its products into more hands. That’s the sentiment that exec Jason MacKenzie expressed to us today after the company’s Desire press event. Said MacKenzie, “you can expect to see more devices in the US that reach out to more market segments.” Among these new devices, he tells us, is the new Desire 816 announced at today’s show. Such a move shows that while the HTC One was one of our favorite devices of the year, it simply wasn’t enough to make a significant enough impact in market share; by offering phones at a variety of price points, HTC believes that more people will take notice of its products as they hang out on store shelves. And if the company can keep up its ability to make tempting handsets with good build quality and low enough prices to compete, it likely will have a much larger impact in the US than anything Robert Downey Jr. can have.
AIVAnet 