HTC Desire 500 Review

Introduction

HTC new Android Phones indicated it wants to go down market with its Android Phones, risking to be crowded out of the exploding mid- and entry-level segments otherwise, and phones like the Desire 500 are a good indication of its strategy.
The handset sports a youthful, catchy design, with internals that are a mixed bag of midrange to low-end components, all for a decent price. Will the Desire 500 succeed in its market-expansion mission the way it is built? Read on to find out.

Design

For the most part, HTC’s designers have done their job very well. There is one bit that they have somehow managed to mess up, but we’ll get to that later. Now onto the good stuff: the HTC Desire 500 looks great in white, complemented by contrasting color accents – a scheme that will surely attract the younger crowd. For those who prefer something a bit more conservative, a black variant is also available.

The HTC Desire 500 fits nicely in the palm

To see the phones in real size or compare them with other models, visit our Visual Phone Size Comparison page.

While the HTC Desire 500 is made of glossy plastic, it lacks the “cheapo” feel often associated with that material. In fact, the smartphone is well-built, has no squeaky or slippery parts, and fingerprints are barely noticeable on its shiny surface, at least with the white model. Most impressively, the Desire 500 does have a removable back cover even though its seamless construction implies that it doesn’t. Lifting the lid off – a procedure that takes nerves and patience to execute – reveals the user-replaceable battery, the microSD card slot, and the micro SIM card slot.

The HTC Desire 500 fits nicely in the palm thanks to its curvy back side and its touchscreen can be operated single-handedly without much effort. Its buttons, however, are rather uncomfortable to feel and press. No, we’re not talking about the capacitive ones below the screen; those work fine and are easy to reach, though not backlit. It is the smartphone’s power key – situated on the top – that we’re frustrated with. It is way too flush with the side rim, with little tactile feedback, and feeling it with a finger is close to impossible. The volume keys on the right are a bit better in the feedback aspect, but HTC has gone design-fancy, introducing them as parts of the blue side rim endings, so finding a key with your finger without looking takes quite a bit of getting used to.

  Fullscreen

Display

The HTC Desire 500 has a 4.3-inch LCD screen of acceptable quality. Its resolution is 480 by 800 pixels, which is okay given the smartphone’s class, but the 217 ppi count is unimpressive when compared to something a bit more pixel-dense. Fuzzy edges in graphics are easy to spot with a naked eye, regardless of whether you’re surfing the internet, reading an article, or just looking at the icons on your home screen.

Other than that, the screen on the Desire 500 is pretty decent, actually. The viewing angles are wide and colors are represented accurately. The display is sure bright enough to be usable outdoors, as long as the sun is not shining straight at it, of course.

Interface

The Sense 5.0 user interface is loaded on the HTC Desire 500, coating Android 4.1.2. We get the HTC BlinkFeed news and status aggregator, as well as the HTC Zoe artsy collage maker that come standard with this UI as well. Granted, the visuals don't run as smooth and seamless as on the powerful HTC One, so prep yourself for some lag while swiping and scrolling, although it's nothing you can't live with.

The HTC Desire 500 comes with Android 4.1.2

Sense 5.0 is pretty uniform-looking and functional interface, with a lot of helpful features, but the default on-screen keyboard is not one of those. The keys are squished too tight to one another, with little distinction, making you tap two or three at once. At least the 4.3” screen size means you can do it with one hand without having to prop the phone with the other as is the case with so many big-screen handsets these days.

Processor & Memory

An uneducated buyer would go “wow” when they are told that the HTC Desire 500 comes with a quad-core processor. But in reality, its SoC is far from the speediest out there – a low-tier Snapdragon 200 clocked at 1.2GHz is in use, paired with 1GB of RAM. We’ve been playing with it for a while now and while we can confirm that the phone is responsive most of the time, we are annoyed by the laggy process of switching between apps or interface elements. When it comes to gaming, most games run fine, but some of those heavier 3D titles might run at unimpressive frame rates.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	GFXBench	Vellamo (HTML5 / Metal)
HTC Desire 500	5046	11211	1348 / 12 fps	1650 / 390
Sony Xperia SP	7866	16413	4970 / 44 fps	2013 / 755
Samsung Galaxy S4 mini	6783	13341	3762 / 33fps	2088 / 685

HTC chose to put only 4GB of native storage on the Desire 500, and most of it is occupied by system files, so in reality, the user has only a little over 1GB at their disposal. Thankfully, you get a microSD card slot, so that paltry storage amount can be extended quite a bit.

Internet & Connectivity

The stock web browser on the HTC Desire 500 is okay, but we have definitely seen better. In terms of speed, it loads web pages in a timely manner and then we cannot complain about lack of responsiveness while interacting with them. However, the zooming gesture behaves weirdly, causing the page to shift to the side when you zoom in. Having the text reflow feature turned off eliminates the issue.

The stock web browser on the HTC Desire 500

Also, the browser seems obsessed with reloading web pages when you switch between tabs. Even pages that we had opened a minute ago were loaded from scratch when we switched back to them. It is minor details like these that spoil the overall user experience. We must mention that the web browser comes with built-in Adobe Flash support, but don't expect it to work perfectly on all pages.

The phone sports European/Asian setup for its cell modem, and is not a 4G device, capped at mere 7.2 Mbit/s download speeds only. It also features Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and DLNA connectivity, which is a pretty decent laundry list for the category.

Camera:

The 8 MP camera is joined by an LED flash on the back and managed by HTC's Sense camera app, with its extensive list of scene modes and color effects. These include HDR shots, as well Panorama, Macro and Night shooting modes. Launching the app and taking the first pic from the lock screen takes about two seconds, while shot-to-shot times are almost instantaneous as it is customary with HTC phones lately.