The HTC Desire 310 is HTC’s entry level phone, and roughly AED 599 it has competition from the Lenovo A series, particularly similarly specced A706. While I was surprised with the performance of the Desire 310, I must admit that the phone is flawed for its price.
Build
The making of the device is quite strange – on one hand, it is very comfortable to hold thanks to its small dimensions and curvy back. On the other hand, it does feel like a chunky piece of plastic, and a heavy one at that – at 140g, it is heavier than the much larger Nexus 5. It won’t fatigue your hands but it would make you wonder as to why it is heavy given there is little technology inside.
The back of the phone is a removable matte cover (which feels OK) that houses the battery, MicroSD, and your dual SIM cards (oddly enough, the unit I had only had support for one SIM). The battery is a 2000 mAh Li-ion one that will power up the phone for quite a while.
What you’d notice though is that there is no flash for the camera on the back, but I’ll get there in a bit.
Software
The phone runs a questionable mix of stock android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and HTC’s Sense UI 5.1. The net result is a Sense UI app drawer and BlinkFeed, but everything else is stock android – from default apps to menus and settings, everything is stock. Good or bad is a matter of taste, and though I welcome stock android, I did find BlinkFeed’s presence and the Sense UI’s drawer have a strong contrast with the rest of the phone. It felt like neither an HTC phone nor a stock android phone.
The Screen
If I have one concern over the phone, it is the screen. I’ve seen bad screens with all sorts of different colour temperatures, but the screen on the Desire 310 is by far one of the worst screens I have ever looked at. The colour temperature is very cold – everything has a morbidly strong blue tint to it. Whites appear grey-blueish and the purple ranges are over-saturated. Greens are dreary and the reds are muted. I did not expect a high pixel density for an entry level phone, but man the colours are WAY off.
Camera
HTC has cut corners with the camera as well, leaving us with no autofocus and no flash, either. The fixed focus lens is pretty much useless in any situation except for taking photos of things a few feet away. The photos themselves are alright for an entry level phone (I am not expecting iPhone quality here), but the absence of the flash eliminates any low-light photography. All photos also suffer from digital noise – even if taken in daylight – but this is a problem that makes itself prominent depending on the photo.
Performance
The strongest point of the Desire 310 is its performance – it is quite good. Animations and pages render and scroll quickly. Switching between apps is a breeze. I would note though that my unit has 1GB of RAM – there is another variant with 512MB of RAM only.
Overall
I understand that the Desire 310 is an entry level phone, but for its price I still did expect a camera with at least a flash or some sort of autofocus. The biggest downfall though in my opinion is not the camera, but the screen. The performance of the phone is very good. Overall, I have mixed reactions towards the phone. For similarly priced or slightly more, you can get a much better phone.
