HTC Desire 630

HTC has a bit of a rough ride, where some have blamed its poor marketing skills while the others have taken up the issue of poor pricing. Despite making real premium smartphones, the brand has lost out to the likes of Apple and Samsung who seem to always bring a better package than HTC. This has resulted in HTC launching tons and tons of devices in the hope that they stumble upon the winning formula.

The HTC Desire 630 is a mid range phone that HTC announced at MWC 2016, in order to make serious inroads in the budget segment. However, the phone had a delayed launch in India, which kind of killed the buzz.

Display & Design
HTC has gone with a 5 inch HD Super LCD panel on the Desire 630. This roughly equates to about 294PPI. Compare this to devices like Le 2 or even the Motorola Moto G4 Plus which bring a Full HD display in the same sort of price range, and you can see where HTC has cut the corners. Like most of the mid range phones especially in the Desire series, the 630 comes with a plastic body. There is no metal goodness going on here. The phone has an interesting painted home button in bright orange colour, which adds a bit of a personality to otherwise a bland candybar design. The phone has stereo speakers on the front, which is good to see.

Hardware and Features
Powering the HTC Desire 630 is a Snapdragon 400 chipset. There is 2GB of RAM on board. There is a serious lack of firepower there on the phone especially when you consider the likes of Zuk Z1 come which come with Snapdragon 801 in lesser. The good part about the phone is the BoomSound speakers on the front, which gives the device excellent media playback capability. There is no fingerprint scanner here either, though to their credit, HTC launched the phone with the latest Android 6.0 with Sense UI on top.

Camera & Storage
HTC Desire 630 comes with 13MP rear camera with f/2.4 aperture. The front facing camera is 5MP with an f/2.8 sensor. As expected, the rear camera is accompanied by a flash light for taking shots in night. There is 16GB internal storage that comes out of the box though it can be expanded by another 128GB thanks to the slot for MicroSD card that comes with the phone.

Battery and Connectivity
Battery is bit of mixed bag here. Although, you can be glad that the battery is removable and user replaceable, it packs only 2200 mAh, which you can be sure will not get you through a day with heavy usage. HTC has given a Dual SIM slot with the phone, both of which are capable of latching on to LTE connectivity. There is support for Bluetooth 4.1, WiFi as well as GPS. There is no NFC or USB Type C here.

Competition
As much as the phone may look tempting thanks to its looks, the HTC Desire 630 really falls short when you compare it to phones in the similar price range. You would be better off picking the Zuk Z1 or even the Redmi note 3 and saving money. There is also the OnePlus X if you just want a phone that is handy and looks good. Oh, and the Moto G4 Plus is a good pick too in just under Rs 15,000 budget point.