HTC has launched the mid-range smartphone – HTC Desire 310 in India to compete with Motorola Moto G. The HTC Desire 310 is designed to be affordable yet offer some of the basic tools needed to give first-time smartphone users a pleasant experience. After using the smartphone over a week I can say that, the phone is not the worth of money. In this post I’m sharing the review of HTC Desire 310 dual SIM smartphone.
Build & Design
HTC Desire 310 is a dual SIM budget smartphone and it is build from plastic materials. It is 11.25mm thick and weighs 140 grams. It has removable cover and the phone feels solid.
The front-panel of the phone features glossy plastic that sports 4.5-inch TFT LCD display. There are no capacitive keys for navigation as the phone offers on-screen soft keys. There’s a metallic earpiece grill located above the display. The VGA camera lens sits next to the grill.
The right edge of the phone features a volume rocker key and a power/screen lock key, while the left edge is barren. The keys offer average tactile feedback and we found them to be a bit soft. The micro-USB port and the 3.5mm headset back are located at the top edge of the phone.
The back of the phone features a plastic, removable cover that sports matte finish. It features the 5MP camera lens and the HTC logo, along with a speaker outlet. Removing the panel reveals two SIM card slots and a microSD card slot located just above the battery comparment. Overall, the Desire 310 dual SIM does not stand out, but is nonetheless decent to lug around and use.
Display
HTC Desire 310 dual SIM sports a 4.5-inch FWVGA display with resolution of 480 x 854 pixels and it has poor viewing angles & lacks brightness. Colours do not look vivid and text does not appear sharp.
Storage
HTC Desire 310 has 4GB in-built memory out of which only 1.8GB is available for users although the internal memory can be expanded further up to 32GB via microSD card.
Processor
The HTC Desire 310 has a quad-core MediaTek MT6582 processor that is clocked at 1.3GHz and it has 512MB of RAM which is pretty less because many games & applications will not be supported by this phone.
Camera
There’s nothing much to talk about HTC Desire 310 5MP camera as it lacks in many features like autofocus and LED flash. The images captured in day time does not have good clarity and in low light or in dark never think of clicking images with HTC Desire 310. In addition to this, it has 0.3MP VGA front-facing camera.
The interface of the camera is also very basic and quality of videos recorded with the phone was also not great. Although it can record in 1080p from rear-camera and there is no hope with front-facing camera, since the maximum resolution is low 640 x 480. There are panorama and HDR modes available but of no use.
Battery
The HTC Desire 310 is powered by 2000mAh battery and company claims that it will last up to 11 hours while talking to others and standby time of the smartphone is around 5 weeks.
Software
The HTC Desire 310 runs on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and HTC’s Sense UI 5.1. The HTC Desire 310 has 3 home screens but you can add up to 3 more and HTC tried to consolidate all the android stock in these three screens. To the left of the default screen is BlinkFeed, it aggregate content from various sourced including social networks and the app drawer is borrowed from Sense.
A video highlight app collect pictures to create instant slideshow by which a user can add music or a theme. It has many third-party applications embedded such as WeChat, Twitter and Polaris Office Suite, all of which could be useful.
Performance
The HTC Desire 310 performance is pretty good. It is a dual SIM smartphone which is powered by 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6582M processor & coupled with Mali-400MP graphics. It is paired with 512MB RAM. If I neglect some minor instances, then there is no lag while navigation through the phone’s menu, launching apps and switching between them.
I did not face any issues while making calls & satisfied with phone’s network reception. Voice clarity and loudness is also good. The phone comes with GPS and aGPS for navigation & maps.
It comes with FM Radio with recording capability and the built-in speaker offer decent sound output. The default video player supports a large number of multimedia file formats. The phone cannot play 1080p videos without skipping frames but it managed to play 720p videos.
It packs 2,000mAh battery which claimed up to 852 hours of standby time and talk time of up to 11 hours. The battery lasted up to 6 hours when video played continuously. With moderate to high usage, including calls, playing games, clicking some pictures, listening to music and browsing the web, the phone will last you more than a day, even though you put the screen brightness at the highest level and keep 3G turned on.
Gaming
The HTC Desire 310 has 512MB of RAM and has low internal storage, only 2.6GB memory is user accessible. This prevents installation of bigger games & files. Although I play games like Temple Run 2, Subway Surfers without any lag but while playing graphics intensive games like Asphalt 8 & Riptide GP2, there is some lag with minor frame drops.
Media
There is a music player for music and video player for video. For music, equalizer presents to tune your music. The audio quality is not bad. The HTC Desire 310 has 4GB in-built memory out of which only 2.6GB memory is user accessible and it can be expanded further up to 32GB via microSD card.
Although there is a 1080p playback support but due to low-resolution screen I doubt that you ever enjoyed movie on this smartphone
Connectivity
The HTC Desire 310 is a dual-SIM smartphone (GSM + GSM) with single-band 3G and quad-band 2G support. It has usual connectivity options like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GLONASS and USB 2.0. The call quality is good and because of bad display surfing the web is not good. In addition to this, absence of notification LED to alert you with incoming calls & messages.
GadgetGuide4U Opinion
HTC Desire 310 is a dual SIM smartphone that has some positive aspects like design, audio but it lacks in many areas like camera, RAM and display. Although the storage capacity of the phone can be expanded via microSD card but not all apps can be installed on it. The performance of the phone is pretty good. The HTC Desire 310 offers BlinkFeed UI which is only available in high-end smartphones.
At a price tag of INR 11,700 I feel that HTC Desire 310 is too expensive and doesn’t deliver value for your hard-earned money. In fact I wouldn’t even recommend it, if it is dropped to half the price of market price. When compared with HTC Desire 210 and HTC Desire 816 it is a complete disaster and by spending INR 1,000 more you can easily get 8GB version of Moto G or the Micromax Canvas Turbo Mini or the Lumia 525.
