The HTC Desire 816 was officially unveiled yesterday, and today I managed to track it down on the show floor here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. HTC’s booth is mostly filled with HTC Ones, but tucked away in the corner were a few glass boxes with orange, blue, and white Desire’s inside. With a little persuasion, I got to hold one of the demo units.
The Desire 816 is like HTC’s iPhone 5C. It’s a plastic version of the HTC One, but retains a lot of the build quality and attention to detail that makes HTC special these days. On the inside it runs what I still consider very good specs: a 1280 x 720 pixel 5.5-inch screen, 1.6GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage (there’s a MicroSD slot that supports up to 128GB cards, thankfully), a 13-megapixel (not Ultrapixel) rear camera, and an impressive 5-megapixel selfie cam. Front-facing selfie cameras are becoming a hot item this year. It may be able to support dual-SIMs as well, if having two phone numbers is your thing.
Though it’s a budget device, the outside had a clean look to it with especially push-able and good-looking power/volume buttons on the left side of the device. A single hatch holds a MicroSD slot and space for two SIM cards.
The unit I used wasn’t finished so it couldn’t turn it on, but I got a quick look at a device running Sense 5.5, and it looks pretty standard, but nice. There don’t appear to be any major surprises in how HTC’s interface looks. If you’ve seen an HTC One, you know what you’re getting here. And if you haven’t seen an HTC One, check one out sometime. It’s one of the best-looking phones available.
Release details and price aren’t yet known, but this will be a cheaper phone than the HTC One and is coming sometime in the next few months.
A virtual private network (VPN) encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through a server run by the VPN provider. Websites see the VPN server’s IP address instead of yours, and you can get around geo-blocks, censorship, and ISP throttling. The best VPN services are paid, but there are still a handful of free options that do the job well.
Most free VPNs come with a hidden cost, because running servers isn’t cheap and a company that doesn’t charge you has to make its money somewhere else. Many do so by logging your browsing activity and selling it to advertisers, while others flood you with ads and track you across apps.
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A good Android app should earn its place on your phone. It might make an everyday task easier, handle something the built-in software can't, or let you change an experience that never quite worked for you.
These 20 apps cover everything from quick notes and password management to automation and local file sharing. Some are free, others charge for advanced features, and a few take some effort to figure out. The point isn't to install them all. It's to find the ones that make your phone work better for you.