The HTC Desire 612 stands out in a sea of generic entry level smartphone. You do not mistake it for a flagship phone, but it's surprisingly well made and unique for free (with contract) phone. While this camera does not impress, display quality and battery life are among 612 Desire force. It is a solid value for the entry-level Android smartphone in Verizon Wireless and offers a bit more personality than the immediate competition.
Design, Features, and Call Quality
Although it is completely made from plastic, the Desire 612 avoids feel chintzy. The glossy finish is a fat magnet, but looks solid, as it is completed from a single piece of plastic. At 5.66 by 2.77 by 0.37 inches (HWD) and 5.15 ounces, it's a good size for one-handed use, and the rounded, rubberized edges make it comfortable to hold. This reminds me of an iPhone 4 with a permanent bumper around its perimeter. Volume and Power buttons are built into the panel rubber accents, making them somewhat difficult to find. I also dislike the top-mount position for the Power button. In the left corner is a difficult-to-open flap covering the microSD and SIM card slots.
The 4.7-inch, 960-by-540-pixel display is not the brightest around, but it is a high quality panel. Viewing angle is about 180 degrees and the display is brighter and punchier than the panel LG Lucid 3. The top and bottom of the display are stereo speaker slits, the louder and better sound than your typical smartphone mono speaker .
The Asha 612 supports 3G CDMA Verizon is (850 / 1900MHz) and 4G LTE (750 / 1700MHz) networks, which means faster speed and a wide range from the latest winner of our tests Fastest Mobile Networks. Call quality was mostly positive in my test. Earpiece gets plenty loud without distorting and transmissions through the mic sounded natural and warm. Noise cancellation worked well to limit the powerful city streets, but the voice sounds muffled as a result. In my test, the sealed 2,040mAh battery is good for 4 hours, 35 minutes of continuous streaming YouTube over LTE with the screen brightness set to max.
Rounding out the options the 802.11b / g / n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, and NFC. The Desire 612 connects only the 2.4GHz network, though, which is generally slower and more crowded than 5GHz.
Performance and Android
Like so many other entry-level Android device, the XL 612 uses a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC 400. Performance, as expected, does not deviate much from the pack, it overcomes the Moto G in some graphical test, but only because of its lower resolution display. In real world usage, the Desire 612 breezed through most of the basic tasks quickly and efficiently. There are occasional stutters and crashes the app, but nothing to be worried about. Performance is largely normalized for low-end Android device at this point.
612 The Desire runs on Android 4.4 with HTC's Sense skin 6 above. In addition to their Aesthetic customizations, you see the BlinkFeed, Zoe, and custom apps to music, gallery, video, and HTC's camera. HTC adds a Extreme Power-saving mode, which pairs down functionality and wireless connectivity to extend battery life.
8GB of storage, only 2.95GB is available to users outside of the box. That the slim side, but not completely unmanageable-you'll limited to how many apps you can install, especially the bigger games that can exceed 1GB of storage required.