Rogers this week hooked me up with the HTC Desire 510. It’s an Android smartphone that as you will see comes with enough power for most for not a lot of money. From a size perspective, it’s pretty easy to hold and it will not slip out of your hand. The one that Rogers sent me was white so fingerprints were covered up everywhere except the screen. Speaking of the screen, it’s a 4.7-inch, 854-by-480-pixel TFT LCD. I found that the viewing angle is too narrow, and even from dead on, everything looks a bit washed out and grainy. Maximum brightness is average, which makes the highly reflective screen even more of an issue outdoors. In terms of the rest of the phone, the volume buttons are on the right edge, while the Power button is positioned on the top left corner, making it a pain to reach with one hand. The back peels off to reveal a microSD card slot and removable battery. Strangely, the speaker is on the back rather than the front which I would expect to find it on an HTC phone.
In terms of specs, here’s what’s under the hood:
- 1 GB RAM
- Quad-core 1.2GHz processor
- 8 GB internal storage expandable to 128GB via MicroSD
- Android KitKat 4.4
- LTE connectivity
- 802.11 B/G/N
- Bluetooth 4.0
Performance with this setup is decent. You won’t set the wold on fire, but you won’t feel that the Desire 510 is slow. In short, it’s performance is acceptable. HTC’s Sense 6 skin runs atop Android 4.4 with a spattering of custom apps for Gallery, Music, and Videos. The BlinkFeed social and news aggregator is still enabled by default, but you can easily remove it if you want. Rogers has added a few apps of their own including Rogers Anyplace TV, Rogers One Number, and City TV Video. Speaking of Rogers, this phone achieved 34.05 downstream and 5.96 upstream on the Rogers LTE network when I tested it with the Speediest.net app.
In terms of the camera, at the back you get at 5MP shooter that does 1080P video. Up front, you get a 0.3 MP camera for selfies and video conferences. To test the rear camera, I took a trip to Pearson Airport in Toronto. First, let’s look at the still picture. Click on them to see it in full resolution:
The image quality isn’t bad given that it’s 5MP. Now the video. Set it to full screen and 1080p:
The video quality is decent. I don’t think anyone will complain. Though I will note that there was only a slight breeze and the microphone was overwhelmed by it. In terms of battery life, you’ll get almost a day and a half out of it. More if you use the power saving modes that come with the phone. Either way, that’s very good. In terms of price, Rogers is offering the HTC Desire 510 for $0 on a two year term or $200 outright. At that price point, it’s a good choice for someone who wants their first smartphone, or doesn’t want to spend a lot of money on a smartphone.
BlackBerry And Ingram Micro Team Up To Move BlackBerries
Posted in Commentary with tags BlackBerry on November 4, 2014 by itnerdIn an effort to get more BlackBerries into the hands of users, the company has teamed up with distributor Ingram Micro Mobility to distribute unlocked BlackBerry 10 smartphones across Canada. Now this is likely a good move on the part of BlackBerry as value added resellers who buy from Ingram Micro would be a very good vehicle to move more BlackBerries. Not only that, BlackBerry becomes less reliant on carriers to move their product. Let’s see if this shows up on the balance sheet next quarter.
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