The phone leaked as the HTC Zara a few weeks ago has now been made official as the HTC Desire 601, so as expected, it slots into HTC’s range somewhere in-between the Desire 500 and the HTC One Mini. Sadly, while it looks quite similar to the One Mini from the front, it doesn’t share the aluminum body seen on the One and One Mini, and instead goes for the plastic shell used on other Desire models. This should keep the price sensible though.
HTC has fitted the Desire 601 with a big 4.5-inch screen, however the resolution is 960 x 540 pixels, seeing it match the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini. Giving the phone its power is a dual-core, 1.4GHz Snapdragon 400 processor with 1GB of RAM, which is again the same chip used in the S4 Mini, but with a reduced clock speed.
When the HTC Zara was leaked, it was rumored to come with Android 4.3 and HTC Sense 5.5 installed, however at this point it appears Android 4.2.2 and Sense 5.0 will be standard. That doesn’t mean an update won’t arrive in the future though. The addition of Sense means the phone has HTC’s BlinkFeed on the home screen, and HTC Zoe is there to compliment the camera software.
Two stereo speakers are fitted to the front of the phone, and the BoomSound amplifier is on hand to give the bass a boost. There is some good news on the connectivity front, as the Desire 601 will happily connect to 4G LTE and 3G HSPA+ networks. Other features include a 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of internal memory, and a microSD card slot.
HTC will begin selling the Desire 601 across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in October, but no price has been provided yet.
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