Remember the HTC Desire 8 that we reported on recently? HTC decided to let the cat out of the bag and officially announce the leaked handset as the Desire 816. While that did not surprise us, the company’s Power to Give initiative sure did.
First, the handset. The Desire 816 packs a 5.5-inch 1280 x 720 pixel display. It is powered by a 1.6GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, backed up by 1.5GB of RAM. While the 8GB of internal storage might scare some users, that fear is remedied by the available MicroSD expansion slot, which supports up to 128GB MicroSD cards.
The back camera is of a 13-megapixel variety, interesting given HTC’s recent push with Ultrapixels. The front-facing camera, meanwhile, packs 5 megapixels. There is a reason HTC calls the Desire 816 the perfect selfie-taking device, after all. The rear and front-facing cameras are capable of 1080p and 720p video recording, respectively.
HTC did not reveal what version of Android the Desire 816 will ship with, though it will be all under Sense 5.5. The company did reveal that the Desire 816 would get the latest version of Sense via an over-the-air update. We have typical connectivity features — Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and optional NFC — as well as 4G LTE capabilities.
The HTC Desire 816 will be available globally in April, though China gets first dibs in March. There is no word on pricing yet.
Now let us get to this Power to Give program. The program allows users to have part of their phone’s processing power diverted to research programs of their choosing. Using the volunteered processing power, these organizations can then further their research into whatever they’re analyzing, whether it may be AIDS or searching for extra-terrestrial life.
The HTC Power to Give program will be available to users by way of an app, which HTC will initially offer as a beta to owners of the HTC One, One Mini, One Max, Butterfly, and Butterfly S. To take advantage of the initiative, users will need to run the app while the phone is charging and connected to Wi-Fi.
Power to Give will be available to a wider array of Android smartphones in “the coming six months”, while owners of the previously mentioned handsets can download the app sometime soon, we presume.
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