HTC Desire 826 announced with an UltraPixel selfie-snapper

HTC Desire 826
With the M9 expected later, this could be the biggest CES announcement we get from HTC

As well as the entry-level Desire 320, HTC has also used CES 2015 to announce the mid-range Desire 826.

Seemingly designed as a successor to the recent Desire 820, the HTC Desire 826 packs a large 5.5-inch 1080 x 1920 display, 2GB of RAM and a 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor with four cores clocked at 1.7GHz and four at 1GHz.

That already puts it at the upper end of the mid-range, but it's also set to run Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box and has a four-UltraPixel front-facing camera, which should help selfies come out better when the light isn't perfect.

An affordable Eye?

The rear snapper is 13MP and the Desire 826 has a 2,600mAh battery, 16GB of storage and a microSD card slot. Its design is reminiscent of the HTC Desire Eye, albeit not quite as compact, coming in at 158 x 77.5 x 7.9mm and 183g.

Like most HTC phones it's got front-facing BoomSound speakers and looks like a solid handset, though how desirable it is will largely depend on the price, which hasn't been revealed yet.

We do know though that it's set to launch in the Asia-Pacific region later this month. Hopefully it will then move on to the rest of the world, but again that's not yet been revealed.

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.