HTC Desire 820 Smartphone Review

The Desire 820 features exactly the same internal specifications of the OPPO R5 – namely, a Snapdragon 615 and 2GB of RAM – so we were expecting a similar level of performance.

In real word terms, this was certainly the case. Multi-tasking was very fluid, as switching between ten apps (including Chrome with 10 open tabs) was lightning fast and posed no problems. Everyday functions, such as the keyboard responding as you would expect, were managed very well.

We do question the inclusion of the Snapdragon 615 chip, however. It is a 64-bit CPU, but it is paired with only 2GB RAM. Not to say the performance isn't excellent, but perhaps costs could have been saved by using a different 32-bit chip from the Snapdragon 600-series – which would still give similar performance. We just feel it's not really worth including a 64-bit processor to only give it 2GB RAM.

On to the benchmarks. Geekbench 3 gave the Desire 820 a single-core score of 692, while the multi-core score was 2519. As expected, this is very similar to the R5, which posted 680 and 2632, respectively.

In 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited, scores were also very similar, with the HTC smartphone scoring 9120 – just ahead of the 8398 achieved by the R5.

It is also important to note the Desire 820 became uncomfortably warm during the benchmarks, something we did not notice when testing the R5. It would suggest the OPPO phone is more efficient and has a better cooling system than its HTC counterpart.

Become a Patron!