HTC Desire 700 Dual SIM: A detailed Review of its Features and Specifications
Are you looking for a detailed review of HTC Desire 700 Dual SIM Android smartphone? Here I am detailing about the specs, features and cons of this device.
HTC added a new phablet in to their database named HTC Desire 700 dual SIM this year. Company announced this product on November 2013, but it released for sales on January 2014. On design basis it looks similar to HTC One, an iconic smartphone from HTC. However, the display of HTC Desire 700 dual SIM is a 5 inch one whereas HTC One got only a 4.7 inch display. This 5" display and front-facing stereo speakers make this device even taller. The Desire 700 runs Android 4.1.2 with Sense UI 5. You can now access Google Now in your Desire 700 by holding the home button. Using Google Now you can give voice commands, Google will show relevant search results based on your search pattern, shortcut roads to avoid traffic jam, weather notifications etc.
Design & Controls
The HTC Desire 700 is almost same in design when compare with the HTC's flagship smartphone HTC One. The 5" display and front-facing stereo speakers made this device even taller than Samsung Galaxy S4, LG G2 etc. It measures 145.5 x 72 x 10.3 mm (5.73 x 2.83 x 0.41 in) dimension and weighs a reasonable load of 149g. Except its 10.3 mm thickness, other dimensions are quite impressive. The frontal face is where Desire 700 shows its original flagship specs. The 5" display is rounded with a thin bezel and boom sound tech is placed to provide better experience while watching your favorite movies and playing games.
The rear portion of Desire 700 is a curved one and which is sloping towards frontal edges. A line is drawn with a frame which is made up of soft and darker plastic at the rear side which separates front and rear portions. Because of the curve, the Desire 700 is nice to handle. However it's not perfect to use single singlehandedly and most of users will not be comfortable with that.
The front camera is placed just near to the speakers and the ambient and proximity sensors are held on its opposite side. The volume keys are available at the right side whereas left side remains plain. The power button is placed at the top of HTC Desire 700 which is little difficult to operate single handedly. If it would have been on any of the sides it would have been more comfortable for the users. A 3.5 mm headphone jack is placed near to the power switch. On the bottom a microphone and microUSB port are available. On the back side we got an 8 mega pixel primary camera and an LED flash just below. The rear cover of Desire 700 can be easily removed by a small slit. This is a dual SIM device. Both its SIM card slots as well as expandable memory slot are placed inside the back cover. But we can easily manage these options without removing battery and it's really a great help from the company. The primary SIM supports 3G but the secondary will only supports 2G network. The memory can be expandable up to 64 GB using microSD card.
Display
HTC Desire 700 has a 5" capacitive touch screen with 16 million colors. The 540 x 960 pixels display holds a 220 ppi pixel density, multi touch and HTC Sense 5.0. The pixel density is not an eye-catching one. But they managed to provide a good viewing angles as well as colors which can be ranged above average. When we compare HTC One's display with Desire 700 it's quite impressive because of it's 5.0" display, but the pixel density is not up to mark.
Operating System and Hardware
HTC Desire 700 is an Android device which runs on the Android v4.1.2 Jelly Bean. Now we have to consider this version as an outdated because of Android's latest updates. However, users can update its version to at least Android 4.3 in the upcoming months. This Android version is supported with a Sense UI 5.0. Coming to the hardware of Desire 700, it has a Spreadtrum Shark chip set which is manufactured by a Chinese company named Spreadtrum. Nowadays Snapdragon chip sets are ruling the smartphone world and this change is to reduce the cost of the device. In my opinion this budget grade chip set may do more harm than good for the company. However we can expect a performance from Spreadtrum Shark chip set which is shown by a Snapdragon 400 chip set. Desire 700 got a Cortex-A7 processor cloaked at 1.2GHz and a Mali-400 GPU. Sensors such as accelerometer, proximity, and compass are included for better user experience.
Memory is a key attraction of smartphones and in this case HTC Desire 700 got a 1 GB RAMS which is up to mark. The 8 GB internal memory and expandable storage support up to 64 GB using microSD card are also impressive features of this device. HTC Desire 700 supports MP4 / H.263 / H.264 / WMV video players
And MP3 / eAAC+ / WMA / WAV audio players. It is already installed with necessary apps such as Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Organizer, Document viewer/editor, Photo viewer/editor, Voice memo/dial/commands - Predictive text input etc.
Camera and Connectivity
HTC Desire 700 got an 8 mega pixel primary camera which can do stills up to 3264x2448 pixels in 4:3 mode and up to 3264x1840 px ones in 16:9 mode. You can also record 1080p videos @ 30fps. An LED is positioned just below the camera which can be used as a flash/video light. The effect buttons helps you to adjust color effects such as sepia, solarize etc. You can also add some cool effects to your photo like blur the parts of an image etc. It also got a 2.1 mega pixels camera which is perfect for video calls. Both these primary and secondary cameras has enabled with touch focus and face detection, geo-tagging and smile shutter. It offers different shot mode such as HDR photos, Panorama (with a gyro horizon), portrait, group portrait, landscape, whiteboard, close-up, low light etc. Overall the camera of this device serves a nice appealing and pleasant looking photos from its camera.
This dual SIM device supports 3G only in the primary slot and second one only supports a 2G network. It supports connective options such as Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, DLNA support and Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP. It has a GPS support with A-GPS and GLONASS. However if we compare Desire 700 with HTC One it lacks few connectivity options which are available in the One. Because of the un availability of MHL, NFC and IR it's not possible to connect Desire 700 in to TV, or USB storage. The IR which helps us to control TV and other home equipments lacks these features. The Google Chrome browser which is pre-installed with this device creates an easy interface to navigate, but it never supports Flash.
Battery
HTC Desire 700 got an impressive removable battery of 2100mAh. This battery got a surprise and disappointment. It has a 52 hours standby time if you do an hour of calling, web browsing, and an hour of video watching. This results gained when both the sim are in active mode. An outstanding call duration and web browsing time are the surprise of this battery, however the video playback time is not an impressive one and it's the disappointment.
Conclusion
HTC tried to create HTC Desire 700 as a low coast blueprint of HTC One, which is a nice move from the company. The 5" display and dual SIM support etc will give more favors to Desire 700. But the company failed to continue the good story of display and sim in its other specs. The use of Spreadtrum Shark chip set to reduce the manifesting cost smashed the face of Desire 700. The price tag of €300 seems fair to this device and hence it can make a competition with Sony Xperia C, Samsung Galaxy Grand 2, and Motorola Moto G Dual SIM with superior specs.
Read HTC Desire 526G+ Dual SIM With Octa-Core SoC Launched In India
