HTC Announces Desire 510: First 64-bit Android Phone
by Joshua Ho on August 27, 2014 2:24 AM ESTWhile normally one might expect high end phones to get the latest and greatest features first, this time we see a bit of a surprising reversal. The Desire 510 is HTC's first 64-bit phone, and the first announced device with Snapdragon 410. For those that aren't familiar with Snapdragon 410, it has four Cortex A53 CPU cores running at 1.2 GHz, along with an Adreno 306 GPU which suggests that it is a mild modification of the current Adreno 305 GPU that we see in the Snapdragon 400. Overall, this should make for a quite fast SoC compared to Snapdragon 400, as Anand has covered in the Snapdragon 410 launch announcement.
While it may seem strange that ARMv8 on Android phones is first to appear on a budget smartphone, it's quite easy to understand how this happened. Looking at Qualcomm's roadmap, the Snapdragon 810/MSM8994 is the first high-end SoC that will ship with ARMv8, and is built on a 20nm process. As 20nm from both Samsung and TSMC have just begun appearing in shipping chips, the process yield and production capacity isn't nearly as mature as 28nm LP, which is old news by now.
At any rate, outside of the SoC the Desire 510 is a relatively standard budget phone. As this phone ships with Android 4.4 it's likely that it is running in AArch32 mode only, with AArch64 coming with Android L. The display is a 4.7" size, with FWVGA resolution (854x480) which makes for a rather low 208 DPI. This will be the cheapest LTE phone in HTC's product line, and also has support for a Dot View case. I've included the rest of the specs below, but for the most part the key point of interest is the SoC.
HTC Desire 510 | |
SoC | MSM8916 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 410 |
RAM/NAND | 1 GB RAM, 8GB NAND + microSD |
Display | 4.7” FWVGA (854x480) |
Network | 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Qualcomm MDM9x25 UE Category 4 LTE) |
Dimensions | 139.9 x 69.8 x 9.99mm, 158 grams |
Camera | 5MP rear camera, .3MP/VGA FFC |
Battery | 2100 mAh (7.98 Whr) |
OS | Android 4.4 with Sense 6 |
Connectivity | 802.11b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, DLNA |
SIM Size | MicroSIM |
The only additional comment I have to make is that there is no 5 GHz WiFi. This is probably a WCN3620 part like the Moto G. While there's no word on pricing, HTC will have to price this near the price of the Moto G for it to be reasonably competitive. The Desire 510 should find its way to Europe, Asia, and the United States.
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extide - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
"yes I know they are kludging up Android L to be somewhat 64 bit but it is not remotely close the the full 64 bitness of iOS."Lol, wow, fanboy much? Android L will be fully 64-bit, and it runs on an entirely new runtime (ART vs Dalvik) -- this is no kludge, this is a massive update to the OS, and the whole OS will be 64-bit.
rpmurray - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
64-bit is a gimmick. Or so the fandroids were saying last year.GC2:CS - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
Of course they were saying that when Apple made a complete 64-bit platform and sold dozens of millions of them, I think is safe to say that there is more than 100 million 64-bit mobile devices by now.But when they will get an "64-bit" marketing sticker, without any benefit, suddenly android leapfrogged Apple and it's behind again.
SirKnobsworth - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
For the moment it is, yes. So are the core count and DPI space races.I somewhat suspect that Apple's early entry into the 64 bit arena has less to do with performance or marketing and more to do with making sure the entire app ecosystem is at 64 bit when mobile devices actually start to need more than 4GB of RAM.
leomax999 - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
Didn't Intel atom had some 64bit enabled flavors?extide - Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - link
Yes Atom has been 64-bit for a long time. Some of the early Atoms were 32-bit only but even he old Bonnel based ones supported 64-bit in the later versions, and of course all the Silvermont ones are 64-bit.leomax999 - Thursday, August 28, 2014 - link
So question is if atom had 64bit variants on phone