At the time the HTC One X9 was flaunting its metal chassis at Mobile World Congress in February, the Taiwanese smartphone maker was also lifting the veil off a new smartphone from its mid-range “Desire” series, specifically the HTC Desire 530. It took roughly five more months – until July – for US carriers including T-Mobile and Verizon to spill the beans on the smartphone’s release on their networks, and today after yet another month of waiting, Verizon is bringing the HTC Desire 530 on its shelves.
The HTC Desire 530 is a fairly eye-catching smartphone thanks to its color schemes; however, at the time of writing only the Blue Lagoon flavor (with sparkles) is available at Verizon. Spec-wise the Desire 530 incorporates a 5-inch Super LCD display with a resolution of 720 x 1280 and a pixel density of ~293 pixels per inch, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 SoC featuring a quad-core Cortex-A7 processor clocked at 1.1GHz per core, along with an Adreno 304 graphics chip, and 1.5GB of RAM. Users will have 16GB of on-board storage at their disposal which can be expanded through a dedicated microSD card slot by up to an additional 256GB, and photography enthusiasts will make do with an 8-megapixel autofocus camera with an f/2.4 aperture, and a 5-megapixel front-facing unit with an aperture of f/2.8. Otherwise, the smartphone is powered by a non-removable battery with a capacity of 2,200mAh, and runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box, sprinkled with HTC’s proprietary Sense user interface. Last but not least, it’s worth pointing out that while the device benefits from a built-in amplifier “to enhance volume and bass” along with the HTC BoomSound profile, hardware-wise we’re looking at a mono speaker, and not a dual-speaker setup despite the exterior design.
Interestingly enough, prospective buyers can purchase the smartphone through Verizon for the full retail price of $144, which is a bit lower than the initial cost of $179. Alternatively, Verizon customers who may want to acquire the phone on-contract can do so for $0 down, as long as they are willing to sign up for 24 monthly payments worth $6.00 each. The smartphone can be ordered online today, but it appears to be temporarily out of stock with a shipping date of August 11, which remains subject to change.
