HTC seems to have realized that there’s still a market for entry-level smartphones, and just made the quad-core Desire 316 official in China.
A sibling to the existing Desire 516, the Desire 316 comes with a 5-inch qHD screen and is powered by a quad-core processor. What really makes it entry-level is the fact that is comes with just 512MB of RAM. Other specifications of the device include a 5 mega-pixel rear camera, a VGA front camera and a battery of 1950mAh capacity. Before we forget, the quad-core processor is a Snapdragon 200 clocked at a modest 1.2GHz through the 4 cores.
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As you would expect, it comes with 4GB of on-board storage along with support for microSD expansion.
Similar specifications are offered by China’s own JiaYu in the form of the JiaYu F1 (which costs just $50 in China), save for the screen size. Given a choice, which one would you rather go for? The readily (soon) available HTC Desire 316 or the (expectedly) the much cheaper JiaYu F1?
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Definitely HTC will want to charge 2 times the price of similar spec.JiaYu phone and for honor of carrying a HTC brand we must pay thru our noses. Jia Yu is what i will buy!
Unfortunately, Jiayu’s habit of supporting only the 2100mhz band means that their phones aren’t an option for many of us.
I’m not sure. If it were up to price alone, I’d definitely take the F1, but I simply love large displays and I can’t bear going any lower than 4.5-inches. If the Desire costs more than $140, than I’d rather have the F1. Judging from HTC’s pricing scheme though, it’ll probably be more expensive than the Redmi Note.
There are more cheaper phones with better specs so HTC won’t stand a chance in the Chinese low end market.