Three months ago at Mobile World Congress, HTC announced three devices under their new One brand. The One X was the flagship device, the One S was the midrange and stylish handset, and the One V was supposed to be the low end solution. This week HTC has decided to announce the Desire C, which can best be described as a shrunken One X, which makes us wonder why it wasn’t called the One C instead? Anyway, here’s what you need to know: The screen measures 3.5 inches diagonal and pushes 480 x 320 pixels, the processor inside is a single core Qualcomm Snapdragon clocked at 600 MHz, there’s 512 MB of RAM onboard, NFC, the camera can do 5 megapixels, and it runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Prices depend on which market you’re in, but expect this thing to cost around 200 Euros.
Should you buy it? That’s a tough one to answer. We usually shy away from smartphones that have a resolution lower than 800 x 480 pixels. Over on Amazon Germany you can buy a Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray for 215 Euros. That has a 3.3 inch 854 x 480 pixel display, an 8.1 megapixel camera, a 1 GHz processor, and it’s even smaller than the Desire C should you be the type of person who is looking for a compact device. Now yes, it runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but the company has promised that the Ray will get upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich at some point in the future.
Most people don’t realize this, but last year’s phones can be had for amazingly cheap if you shop around. If you’re willing to go used, then you can find incredible bargins. The Galaxy S II for example, the best selling Android smartphone of all time, can be had for 300 Euros on the second hand market. That’s less than half the price of the Galaxy S III!