HTC Desire 530 review - a dotty disappointment

Say what you will about HTC's ailing smartphone business, but its design team has been firing on all cylinders lately. After the stunning metal chassis of the One A9 and the gorgeous dual-colour unibody of the Desire 820, its latest effort, the Desire 530, goes one step further with its beautifully dotty 'micro splash' finish.

Instead of injecting a second colour straight into the chassis like it did with the Desire 820, this time HTC's created a specially-designed nozzle that can apply different colours at varying degrees of pressure and viscosity. The end result is a seamless, paint-speckled polycarbonate shell that's utterly unique, and it really does make the Desire 530 stand out compared to the rest of its budget competitors. It's certainly a lot more attractive than my current sub-£100 favourite, Motorola's 2nd Gen Moto E, and its sleek, 8.3mm profile immediately feels more modern and better made than the comparatively squat dimensions of Motorola's entry-level wonderphone.

It's a lovely thing to behold, and the grey and gold dot combo I saw at MWC in February is by far the most eye-catching one of the lot. There's also a white version with a red and blue dot pattern, but these colours didn't stand out nearly as much as the gold dots on the darker model. I do quite like each one's matching coloured, textured power button on the side of the phone, though, as its extra ridges not only look and feel great under your thumb, but it also makes it very easy to find when you run your hand along the edge of the handset.

With such a gorgeous design at its disposal, it seems odd, then, that the Desire 530 is also available in plain old block grey and white models, like the one I was sent for review. I can't see anyone picking these over the micro splash versions, as the way it looks is easily one of the phone's greatest assets.

Andorid 6.0 & Sense 7

The attention to detail in the phone's design also extends to the main interface. HTC's Sense 7, which runs on top of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, is one of the best and most customisable Android UIs currently available. With its Theme Generator, you can tweak and adjust every aspect of your phone's appearance, from the font right down to individual app icons.

^ HTC's Sense 7 interface is excellent, and its Sense Home box on the main home screen helps promote useful apps depending on your location 

There are several ready-made themes available to download for free (including my favourite 'Origami' theme, below) from HTC's Theme Store, but you can also create your own themes using photos in your Gallery. Here, the Theme Generator will analyse the colours present in the picture and give you a wide range of shades and accents to pick from, which you can then fine-tune to your liking. It works brilliantly, and the sheer amount of personalisation on offer has yet to be beaten.

^ Sense 7 is very customisable, and the Origami home theme is one of my favourites

There's also Sense Home, which automatically rejigs the apps on your main home screen depending on whether you're at home, work or on the move. By learning which apps you use most often in which locations, the aim is to make sure all your favourite apps are front and centre when you need them most, so you don't have to dive into the app tray or scroll through several home screens to find them. At Home, for instance, it might prioritise YouTube and entertainment apps, while at work it will swap these out for apps like Google Drive and Mail instead. It takes some time for it to get it completely right, but it certainly helps to cuts down on the amount of home screen clutter on show.

Performance

Sadly, the phone's great looks are marred by its terribly sluggish processor, which makes using the Desire 530 a real test of patience. Powered by just a quad-core 1.1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 chip – the same processor which dragged down the similarly priced Microsoft Lumia 650– and 1.5GB of RAM, the Desire 530 often leaves you waiting even when you've simply pressed the onscreen Home button. This isn't surprising given its score of just 300 in Geekbench 3's single core test and 989 in the multicore test, but the worst offender is the keyboard, which takes ages to pop up when you open a web page or start a new message.

I also found myself having to type deliberately slowly in order for it to register every keypress – at least on its default speed settings. Fortunately, HTC does include a tool which lets you calibrate the speed of the keyboard in its HTC Sense Input settings, which made typing a lot faster and smoother than before.

^ The plain versions of the HTC Desire 530 aren't nearly as attractive as the micro splash models

However, that still doesn't erase the problem of the phone's overall responsiveness, as there were several occasions when it took so long to open an app that I wasn't even sure I'd tapped the icon correctly. This kind of second-guessing isn't really acceptable in this day and age, especially when the 2nd Gen Moto E is both so much quicker and cheaper.

It's even worse when trying to browse the web. Backed up by a rather pitiful Peacekeeper score of 439, the Desire 530 really struggled with media-heavy web pages, and it would always lag behind my thumb swipes when scrolling up and down articles.

It's not really built for playing 3D games either, as Hearthstone was a bit of a juddering mess. While not wholly unplayable, it was very stop-start when laying down new cards and initiating attacks. Again, I wasn't expecting much given its score of just 107 frames (or 1.7fps) in the offscreen Manhattan test of GFX Bench GL 3.0, but even something simple like Threes wasn't quite as slick as I'd normally expect.

Battery Life

As for battery life, the Desire 530 should just about get you through the day, but its 9h 02m of continuous video playback at a screen brightness of 170cd/m2 is below average even for a budget handset. The Moto E, for example, lasted 13h 30m under the same conditions, making the Desire 530 less reliable over the course of a heavy day's usage.

Camera

Its 8-megapixel rear camera was also quite disappointing, as this produced very cool photos which were very poorly exposed. Shadow areas were particularly messy and lacking in detail, but some areas had such crushingly bright whites that you couldn't even make out what I was shooting. Thankfully, switching to HDR mode helped rectify some of these exposure issues, but it also made my photos look incredibly unnatural and artificial.

^ Exposure levels are way off in this photo, with some buildings having been completely whited out

^ HDR mode managed to get the camera's exposure levels under control, but the resulting image still looks very artificial

Indoors wasn't much better, as it struggled to focus properly in low light. The LED flash was also next to useless and even bright lighting conditions still produced very soft, hazy pictures that were lacking in detail.

^ The Desire 530 struggled indoors as well, as object outlines were very soft and blurry and there wasn't a lot of detail present either

Display

This a shame, as its 5in, 1,280x720 resolution display is reasonably decent for the money and provides a much larger, more comfortable viewing experience than the 2nd Gen Moto E. While its sRGB colour gamut coverage only reaches a fairly mediocre 87.6%, images still looked relatively natural, if a little flat, and its contrast ratio of 1,029:1 provided plenty of fine detail. Likewise, a black level of 0.31cd/m2 is pretty good for a budget handset, and its viewing angles are great. It's perhaps not quite as bright as other entry-level smartphones, as I only measured a peak white level of 318.67cd/m2, but it's still legible outside as long as you have it turned up to max brightness. 

Conclusion

Altogether, though, the Desire 530 just isn't a good choice for those who like to do a lot on their phone. It looks fantastic and it's still just about serviceable for short bursts of YouTube, checking the weather and actually being used as a phone rather than a gateway to the internet, but there are much faster, less frustrating handsets available for the same amount of money. Its large screen is admittedly more practical than the 2nd Gen Moto E, but in this case you might as well spend a little bit more and get the 3rd Gen Moto G, as this not only has the same sized screen as the Desire 530, but it also comes with a far better camera.