techknow beat
by Bilal Iqbal
Before the One M8 came along, and before the earlier One M7 and the even earlier One X, Desire was the moniker Taiwanese giant HTC had reserved for its high end Android phones.
Eventually though, the moniker was relegated to the company’s mid-end and lower-end offerings, devices that were unable to really compete in the cutthroat market they existed in. Many of them were solid contenders in their segments, but none of them was particularly, ahem, desirable — certainly not along the lines of the Moto G anyways.
The Desire Eye then — launched in Qatar last week for QR2,100 — may be a return of the moniker to higher ambitions. The device sports cutting edge technology that keeps it ticking along with the rest of the high end competition, while offering a feature that gives it its very name: a 13 megapixel front facing camera with dual-LED flash. In fact, the camera is the entire raison d’etre for the Desire Eye, otherwise the HTC One E8 itself does a pretty decent job in the mid-high end tier.
To the camera then — selfies never looked this good. GSMArena even went on to call this device an “undercover flagship,” and it is easy to look why.
The phone boosts a 5.2 inch Full High Definition screen and sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset running four cores at 2.3ghz apiece, paired with Adreno 330 GPU. This is the combination you will find in virtually all current high-end phones with the exception of Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the yet-to-be-released-in-Qatar Google Nexus 6 (they offer faster chipsets). The screen may miss out on QHD resolution (as offered by LG G3), but still packs more than enough pixels for your daily needs.
Internally you get 16gb of expandable storage and 2gb of RAM. You also get features such as quick charging (60% battery charged in 30 minutes), FM Radio, stereo front speakers, dust and water proofing (something the One M8 does not have), and Bluetooth 4.0.
The entire package is powered by a rather measly-sounding 2400mah battery, but GSMArena tests show that HTC has done a good job on optimising its phone and the battery should last you easily through the day. The phone lasted for 10 hours of browsing over Wi-Fi, 10.5 hours of continuous video playback or 19 hours of calling — all this is good for a GSMArena score of 70 hours. To compare, Galaxy S5 gets a score of 72, One M8 gets 71, LG G3 gets 69 and iPhone 6 gets 61 hours on the same test.
The big selling feature of this phone is the 13 megapixel front-facing camera. Clearly, this is targeted at all the selfie-craze in the market. You will not be able to find any other known competitor offering a similar camera in the front — if you take selfies, this is the phone for you, period. There’s even two dual-tone dual LEDs to accompany the cameras. The Dual-tone helps with reproducing accurate colours and the flash is a nifty feature to have, especially for selfies — most of the time you will find yourself taking pictures in low light situations, and the flash performs admirably, according to reviews. Trusted Reviews described one picture it took under darkened conditions as “a massive step up from the noisy and murky front-facing efforts we get from most phones under the same dark and dingy conditions.”
Even though the phone offers 13mp snappers on both front and the back, there is a perceptible difference in the quality between the two, according to GSMArena’s testing. The back camera is much better. It would have been nice to get a great camera upfront too, but I guess good will have to do for now. You also get the well-received HTC Eye Experience, a bunch of software features to help you take better selfies.
The big front camera is great for selfie lovers, but it will also be the reason why many others will pass on the Desire Eye: it adds height to the phone. In hand, the phone feels rather strange, unnaturally tall. The phone measures 151.7 x 73.8 x 8.5mm. To compare, the One M8 packs in a slightly smaller screen at 151.7 x 73.8 x 8.5mm, and this phone itself is not known for its great screen-to-body ratio with the twin-speaker sporting facade. The LG G3 packs a much bigger screen than both Desire Eye and One M8 in a shell that is no taller than the latter: 146.3 x 74.6 x 8.9mm. So you do pay for that camera in terms of size of the phone.
That said, the size is something you can learn to live with. The lack of a premium feel is also something you may be able to get used to in a few days (the plastic on the Desire Eye feels and looks cheaper in hand than, say, the G3). But if you just aren’t that much into selfies and don’t need the bigger front camera, you could just skip along to the more premium HTC One M8, the cheaper HTC One E8, or the many competitors that can be had for the same price.
The asking price of QR2,100 is not bad. But at this level, the only way Desire Eye can distinguish itself is with its selfie functionality — and I guess that’s exactly what HTC was going for. Those who want the bigger front camera will have no choice but to go for it, but others may need incentives in the form of price cuts or extra goodies to take home with the camera — a selfie rod, perhaps?
The author may be e-mailed at
or followed on Twitter at @tknobeat
