HTC Desire 600 dual sim goes official, Sense 5 on board

[ZTR]

The HTC One leads the charge of the Sense 5 experience and now the HTC Desire 600 dual sim fills the ranks with an affordable alternative. The smartphone was introduced today and is supposed to bring many of the One's premium features at a far lower price point.

*st.gsmarena.com/vv/newsimg/13/05/htc-desire-600/gsmarena_001.jpg

The HTC Desire 600 dual sim runs Android Jelly Bean (probably 4.1) with Sense 5 on top, which includes the BlinkFeed screen that pulls updates and info from your social networking accounts and 1,400 media sources.

It's powered by a Snapdragon 200 chipset, which packs four Cortex-A5 CPUs clocked at 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM and Adreno 203 GPU. There's 8GB of built-in storage and a 1,860mAh battery.



The smartphone has a 4.5" Super LCD2 screen with qHD resolution, surrounded by two BoomSound speakers, just like on the One. Beats Audio is, of course, also a part of the package.

The HTC Desire 600 dual sim packs an 8MP / 720p main camera and a 1.6MP front-facing camera that can be used to capture photos, which the Video Highlights feature combines into 30 second video clips. All you have to do is pick the music theme. It's not as great as Zoe, but it's in the same spirit.

As the name suggests, the phone has two SIM card slots and both cards are active at the same time – you can receive a call on one of them, even if the other is already in use. The phone has 3G with HSDPA connectivity (up to 7.2Mbps down), Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX, Wi-Fi b/g/n, NFC and GPS (plus GLONASS in Russia and the EU).

The HTC Desire 600 will be available early next month and while it aims for global availability, it will start off with Russia, Ukraine and the Middle East. There's no info on pricing yet.

Quad core A5

Is it just me or is Sony and LG the only ones making decent mid range phones?

 

[Empirial]

Quad core A5

Is it just me or is Sony the only one making decent mid range phones?

Sony, LG, HTC, Samsung should make NovaThor U8500 based cheap Dual Sim Phones with Mali 400 GPU & 1GB Ram. Why they are still using A5 Processors?

 

[theserpent]

Why lord WHY? Cortex A5

Quad core A5

Is it just me or is Sony+LG the only one making decent mid range phones?[/QUOTE]

No its true

 

[RohanM]

^^ they think giving an extra sim slot means a lot, it's ok in their country but in india & china it's totally normal.

 

[Sainatarajan]

One more A5 ................Too bad
HTC

 

[quagmire]

Features seem to be good, but dual A5 with Adreno 203? Oh God Why

 

[coderunknown]

Following Samsung's steps to greatness. Samsung may win customers by packing quad A5 but HTC will lose the company by doing this.

 

[theserpent]

Following Samsung's steps to greatness. Samsung may win customers by packing quad A5 but HTC will lose the company by doing this.

True.But I these are aimed for emerging markets, where "people" are now buying MMX,Xolo etc, And they are eating away the sales from samsung and HTC.
But A5 phones at 20k? Wake Up HTC, Sell them at 10k(its not worth more than that)

 

[quagmire]

I wonder why popular OEMs are settling for underperforming processors? There isn't much of a price difference b/w quad A5 and dual Krait right?

 

[theserpent]

I wonder why popular OEMs are settling for underperforming processors? There isn't much of a price difference b/w quad A5 and dual Krait right?

A5 Is much much cheaper AFAIK, Dual core a5 are as cheap as Mediatek Quad cores

R.I.P The people who will buy this phone

 

[Empirial]

A5 Is much much cheaper AFAIK, Dual core a5 are as cheap as Mediatek Quad cores

R.I.P The people who will buy this phone

I guess the cost of NovaThor U8500 is same as A5 QC. Atleast HTC should have used Adreno 305 GPU.

 

[coderunknown]

There isn't much of a price difference b/w quad A5 and dual Krait right?

you are saying this because Nokia 520 packs Krait at sub 10k right? no, there is price difference between quad A5 & dual krait. i don't have fixed numbers but A5 takes less space (or say less die area) and build on 40nm node so cheaper to make. krait takes more area (but ultimately should be an even game as 4 small cores will take same space as 2 big cores) but the 28nm tech is still new so cost slightly more. but in the end the price is more like 15-25$ per SOC depending on the SKU.

Sony is doing the right thing by jumping on the Mediatek platform. this also allows them to add Full HD video recording if they wish.

Atleast HTC should have used Adreno 305 GPU.

they can't. the products are designed that way. adding 305GPU on a crappy A5 will be like adding a ferrari engine on a maruti. the engine will burst out of the car and complete several lap while the car slowly rolls. and my guess is Adreno 203 is nothing more than Adreno 200 with higher clock which is a continuation of the ancient Adreno 200 found on some ridiculously old mobiles (Galaxy 5).

 

[Empirial]

they can't. the products are designed that way. adding 305GPU on a crappy A5 will be like adding a ferrari engine on a maruti. the engine will burst out of the car and complete several lap while the car slowly rolls. and my guess is Adreno 203 is nothing more than Adreno 200 with higher clock which is a continuation of the ancient Adreno 200 found on some ridiculously old mobiles (Galaxy 5).

Oh I thought Adreno 305 in A5 Phones will atleast enable 720p@30fps video recording. BTW any idea why these companies are not using NT8500U proccy?

 

[quagmire]

sam, Thanks for info..
Also won't the UI engineers have a lot tougher job to optimize an UI made for higher end devices to work on such crappy procc. + GPU combination?

And as Empirial mentioned do OEMs have an MOU with SOC manufacturers?

 

[coderunknown]

Oh I thought Adreno 305 in A5 Phones will atleast enable 720p@30fps video recording.

AFAIK, Qualcomm has Cortex A7 based chipset with Adreno 305 but still, Samsung & HTC went for Cortex A5. most likely quad A7 SOC from quadlcomm are yet to enter volume production and Win/Desire 600 were designed way before A7 even started sampling so designing a mobile with a processor that is yet to hit production will be the dumbest thing any company can try. And my guess is, Win/Quattro will soon fall below 15k (just like S Duos did) making space for some new variants with quad A7 at same price. Samsung is launching mobiles so fast that they can retire a bunch of mobiles and nobody will even know they existed at first place.

BTW any idea why these companies are not using NT8500U proccy?

ST-Ericsson closing down, 1,600 jobs axed by chip firm. novathor is gone. they have a lot of new chips in production so we may have a few more launches based on NovaThor chipset but thats just it. Company is closed.

sam, Thanks for info..
Also won't the UI engineers have a lot tougher job to optimize an UI made for higher end devices to work on such crappy procc. + GPU combination?

can't really say. in android, UI means launcher with all of the apps getting skinned. this shouldn't be taxing the mobile so other than turning off some transitions, i don't think they do anything else. also even if the processor is crappy, they can pretty much handle the heaviest of UI.

this is my idea of UI based on android programming i have learned so far. i don't know if my explanation is correct or not so don't take it as an absolute explanation.

Spoiler

the UI/launcher activity will be paused and saved in memory whereas a new activity (like a game) will take its place. the UI will no longer tax the GPU. maybe only eat a portion of the ram to waiting for it to be called back up. when you exit the game, the UI wakes from the paused state and is visible.

moreover, manufacturers completely replace the default android UI with their own interface or looks (old one is replaced right at the source level) so not much taxing than the stock android UI. Sense has evolved a LOT making it as light as Touchwiz

And as Empirial mentioned do OEMs have an MOU with SOC manufacturers?

only the big ones. Qualcomm 600 has a default clock of 1.7Ghz but in case of S4 (US edition) the clockspeed is 1.9Ghz. All other manufacturers that use 600 chipset are stuck with 1.7Ghz parts so most likely Samsung specifically ordered S600 with higher clock. but they can't do things like swapping GPU. not possible.

 

[quagmire]

can't really say. in android, UI means launcher with all of the apps getting skinned. this shouldn't be taxing the mobile so other than turning off some transitions, i don't think they do anything else. also even if the processor is crappy, they can pretty much handle the heaviest of UI.

this is my idea of UI based on android programming i have learned so far. i don't know if my explanation is correct or not so don't take it as an absolute explanation.

Spoiler

the UI/launcher activity will be paused and saved in memory whereas a new activity (like a game) will take its place. the UI will no longer tax the GPU. maybe only eat a portion of the ram to waiting for it to be called back up. when you exit the game, the UI wakes from the paused state and is visible.

moreover, manufacturers completely replace the default android UI with their own interface or looks (old one is replaced right at the source level) so not much taxing than the stock android UI. Sense has evolved a LOT making it as light as Touchwiz

But sam, after Project Butter (4.1 JB) the entire interface runs 60 fps.. Is this for all phones with 4.1 or only the ones with sufficient hardware?

 

[vickybat]

.
they can't. the products are designed that way. adding 305GPU on a crappy A5 will be like adding a ferrari engine on a maruti. the engine will burst out of the car and complete several lap while the car slowly rolls. and my guess is Adreno 203 is nothing more than Adreno 200 with higher clock which is a continuation of the ancient Adreno 200 found on some ridiculously old mobiles (Galaxy 5).

Adreno 305 is almost equivalent of adreno 225. Adreno 203 stands no chance against it. A7 quad + 305 is a powerful as well as efficient combination.
Mediatek soc's are packing A7 quads with powervr544. Now that's a deadly combination. The xolo's and canvas hd are using these.

 

[RohanM]

^^ to all, refer this, this will clear any confusion.

Snapdragon (system on chip) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[coderunknown]

But sam, after Project Butter (4.1 JB) the entire interface runs 60 fps.. Is this for all phones with 4.1 or only the ones with sufficient hardware?

i'll have to check but running at 60 FPS will need triple buffer on. i.e. huge ram requirement & processing power. surely something that can't be done on crappy hardware. maybe they turn off triple buffer completely.