The Desire is the mid-range series from HTC and it’s also where the company has the maximum traction. There are a bunch of similar looking phones and this one is no exception. Visually, this phone is identical to the previous Desire 728G — it just adds 4G and bumps up the RAM to 2GB while all other features remain the same.
The phone is fairly smart looking with a typical Desire design cues: flat back, matte finish and a unibody design with the SIM and micro SD slots placed under a plastic flap on the left side. The volume rocker and power button find place on the right. HTC has included stereo BoomSound speakers up front and they give you good audio for gaming and multimedia.
The 728 LTE gets HTC Sense 7.0 based on Android 5.1. The interface is fairly clean with no extra bloatware except CleanMaster. The screen is about average quality: viewing angles and colours are okay and there is a colour temperature adjustment. The camera takes about a second to start and various modes are built in: photo booth, split capture, panorama and selfie. Once again, quality was about average. Thankfully, it does record decent quality 1080p video from both cameras. While we didn’t face any issues with call quality and signal, the performance was once again at a mid level.
There doesn’t seem to be anything exceptional about this device. It should probably be priced at about Rs 12k to be competitive. Instead of spending Rs 17,990 on the Desire 728 LTE, why not consider the OnePlus X? It’s cheaper by Rs 1,000, has a 1080p amoled screen, a faster 2.3Ghz Snapdragon 801 processor paired with 3GB RAM and a better camera. If you want a larger screen, our choice would be the Moto X Play 16GB, which is cheaper by Rs 1,500. It has a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS LCD, a 1.7Ghz Snapdragon 615 processor, 2GB RAM and better cameras. Both of these phones are also 4G capable.
Price: Rs 17,990
Specifications: 5.5-inch IPS LCD (1280 x 720 pixels), 1.3Ghz Mediatek octa core, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage + micro SD (up to 2TB), 13MP f2.2 rear camera + 5MP front camera, dual nano SIM, BT 4.1, WiFi n, GPS, HTC BoomSound, 2,800mAh battery, 153 grams
