HTC unveils the Desire EYE, a selfie-centric high-end smartphone with a 13MP camera at its front

Design

Frankly said, the two-color, unibody Desire EYE is not as compact as similar 5.2” devices. It has dimensions of 151.7 x 73.8 x 8.5 mm and tips the scales at 154 gr, which is just a tad larger than the 5.2” Sony Xperia Z3, for example. Among most probable causes for the elongated silhouette of the device is the additional space required to fit in the large sensor of the front facing camera. 

The front-facing BoomSound speakers at the front of the device have most probably taken their toll on the size, too – you might not see them at first sight, but they are right there, hidden between the display's black bezels and the contrasting frame. The BoomSound speakers also come with the signature built-in audio amplifiers. Meanwhile, a trio of noise-canceling microphones and HTC's Sense Voice technology take care of your voice reproduction.

Oh, and HTC has finally jumped on the trendy-of-late water-resistant bandwagon, as the HTC Desire EYE is IPX7-certified, meaning that it can survive in up to 1 meter of water for as long as 30 minutes.

Hardware specs and features

As we said, although not the absolute top-of-the-line, the Desire EYE is rather well-equipped in the hardware department. HTC has fitted a 5.2-inch IPS LCD display at the front of the device. The combination between its resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and the screen's real estate delivers a pixel density of 423 ppi, a little lower than the HTC One (M8) and the Samsung Galaxy S5, yet on par with the Sony Xperia Z3.

The whole HTC Desire EYE shebang is being powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, which is turning and churning the gears at 2.3GHz. The 2GB of RAM on board pave the way for a rather hassle-free multitasking experience. Speaking of memory, the Desire EYE has 16GB of on-board storage (roughly 8.9GB available to the user right out of the box) and a microSD slot, which supports up to 128GB microSD cards.

The present 2,400mAh Li-Po battery will allegedly keep the lights on for as long as 538 hours in standby mode. Moving on to the connectivity department, we are happy to see that the HTC Desire EYE is LTE-enabled and supports AT&T's 2, 4, 5, 17, 29 bands, among others. Software-wise, HTC's latest comes with Android 4.4.2 KitKat out of the box, and rather unsurprisingly, HTC's homemade Sense 6 UI can be found on top of it.