There were a lot of rumors concerning HTC at CES 2015. We previously reported that the company might use the annual consumer electronics show in Las Vegas to unveil a "Hima" phone, and there was a flyer distributed claiming "Always Desire More". It would appear that the "Desire" HTC is referring to is the new Desire 826, and the "more" is that this phone will be the first in the Desire series to run Lollipop (Android operating system 5.0).
I had a chance to see the Desire 826 for myself at an event known as Pepcom (an after-party press event at CES), and it is very phablet sized at 5.5 inches with 1920 x 1080 resolution. As far as the specs are concerned, Android Authority reports that it has a Snapdragon 615, Qualcomm 64-bit octa-core processor using eight ARM Cortex A53 cores, half of them at 1.0 GHz and the other half at 1.7 GHz. It has 16 GB of flash and support for micro SD card, as well as an Adreno 405 GPU and 2 GB worth of RAM. As stated before, the HTC Desire 826 will run Lollipop 5.0, but it will also have some HTC Sense in there as well.
According to ZDNet, the HTC Desire has always been a mid-tier line of phones, but their last of their devices have always had near top tier specs. One prominent feature is that it has HTC BoomSound with Dolby audio, with their famous front facing speakers. These speakers are hidden beneath the screen and the top and bottom bezels.
The big news about the Desire 826 is the camera, as it has a front-facing UltraPixel camera that is good for selfies even in low-light situations. The rear camera is at 13 Megapixels, and it has an f2.0 lens. According to GSMArena, there is also the HTC EYE Experience, which is a software suite to allow the user to optimize his or her camera.
The Desire 826 is a Dual-SIM device and supports 4G LTE. So far, there isn't any word on price at the moment. However, we do know something about the availability as the Desire 826 will be arriving in the Asia-Pacific region first, and will probably be available sometime in late January. The phone will probably make it into the United States very soon, but HTC does not have anything on the phone on their official site. However, if you want to know any details, click on the HTC Desire Coming Soon page and leave your email address. The colors will be an interesting scheme with blue lagoon, white birch, purple fire, and more styles in various regions.
CES 2015 was just one event where HTC will announce their newest smartphones. It doesn't look like the M9 was announced here, which was rumored to have been announced this week. It is more probable that the M9 will be announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March of 2015.
