Dual-SIM phones have been found to be quite useful by a lot of people, including yours truly. They’re a boon for people who have to be in two different circles of network in one day’s work. They are quite popular among younger customers who like to keep different connections for different purposes .

And more or less, I have found dual-SIM phones very handy in keeping the personal and professional worlds apart. It’s as simple as it gets – one number for the boss, and another for my folks. And let’s face it; carrying more than one phone is a little bit of an inconvenience.

But for some strange reason, dual-SIM options have only been available amongst low to mid range feature phones and (a few smartphones of that price range as well). Never had I seen a dual-SIM smartphone in the 20k+ plus category – until now.

With the HTC Desire SV, customers can now have a near high-end smartphone with a dual-SIM option. But before that, we need to see if it passes the Smartbuy test!

Design

I have always liked the designs that this Taiwanese manufacturer has come out with. Starting from the One X to the recent Desire X, every handset that has landed up on Smartbuy’s test bench has caught my eye. The Desire SV is no different.

The design is not unibody, as it is the one form factor catching up with many brands and even HTC has employed the same in many models. I can’t say if it’s a good thing, because if the phone is already a dual-SIM one, I wouldn’t need to pry open the rear panel to change SIM cards. One can have slots on the sides to insert the SIMs and for expandable memory. But then again, having a removable rear panel gives access to the removable battery, so I guess it is a good thing for those who travel a lot and need to pack more batteries for their phones just like the energy bars that packed for themselves.

While I’m on the matter of the back panel, I was quite happy to see the matte-rubberized coating on the removable hatch with curved edges. A matte-rubber grip, although known to be a dust magnet, does offer a very sturdy grip on any given day.

The front looks quite simplistic and desirable (no pun intended). The 4-inch super-LCD screen is surrounded by a black bezel (we got a ‘Stealth Black’ unit for our review) and has 3 capacitive buttons which are the usual Back, Home and Multitasking buttons.

Running along the right side is a volume rocker, which isn’t the grippiest I have ever seen, but makes up for that with a nice tactile feedback. And then you have your usual 3.5mm audio port and the Power/Lock button on the top and only a micro-USB port at the bottom. Like I said, the design is nice and simple.

As usual, the notification LED is embedded inside the longish ear-piece grille, and although the rear sports an 8-meg snapper, the front has zilch. Adios, video calls!

Tech and performance

I wish I could say I was just as happy with the Desire SV’s tech specs, as I was with the simplistic design. The phone has been outfitted with a Dual-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 SoC (system-on-chip) that clocks 1GHz, along with an Adreno 203 GPU, but I found that the memory was a bit low with just a 768MB RAM. The phone comes with 4GB of internal memory, but can be expanded with a microSD card.

Now, I wouldn’t have said that the memory is very low, considering that this is a non-HD phone and has a dual-core chip, but the fact that the phone slows down with the most basic multitasking functions makes me say that it is definitely inadequate. For example, when I listen to music, I don’t just listen to music. I also use text, WhatsApp, FB or read the news. The Desire SV was struggling to cope up at times.

The dual-SIM operations are quite easy to use, though. There is no physical or other shortcut to swap between the SIM cards instantly, as we saw with the Sony Xperia Tipo, but it seems okay considering that all the settings can be managed easily. I could easily set up the preferred call slot from the call menu itself, and could set the SIM for using data through just a few taps in the settings menu.

In the texting menu, there are two send buttons, each with the SIM number. And in the thread view, messages are marked with the SIM slot number on which they were received, which is a feature that I have seen in many low to mid range dual-SIM phones.

The Desire SV is shipped with Android 4.04 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, and HTC claims that the Jelly Bean update will arrive “soon”. Now I would’ve felt okay if the Desire SV was only one version behind, but with the announcement of Android 4.2 Key Lime Pie, it is going to be outdated by two versions. It’s not that bad though, for Samsung’s Galaxy S Advance still runs on v2.3 Gingerbread.

Music sounds decent, courtesy Beats Audio, on both loudspeaker and the earphones that come with the box. I wish HTC had added the options to customise the equalizer, instead of giving the option to only turn Beats Audio on and off.

8 million pixels make up for a big enough picture, and though the LED flash and a Background Enhancer mode do a good job in indoor shooting conditions, the camera’s results were grainy in some poorly lit pictures.

On our benchmark Quadrant test, the Desire SV scored a not-so-great 2794 points, but marginally more than the Galaxy S Advance’s 2696. The 1620mAh battery lasted for around 19-20 hours on moderate to heavy usage during the entire testing period. I was happy with this, as I had to charge it only once every day.

We say

I can’t possible explain the feeling in words, that I get when I eat a slightly pricey burger that has a lot of stuff, but is still just not enough. You get good cheese, fresh lettuce, right-out-of-the-oven bread, not one but two good patties, and serve it up with some good fries. It’s good enough to sate your hunger, but something’s still missing. I’m trying hard to find a single word here, but no. It’s inexplicable, I reckon.

It would be a very wrong analogy, comparing a burger and a smartphone, but I am running out of options here, and my stomach has been growling for a while. The Desire SV has a lot of good features, like good music quality, hassle-free dual-SIM usage, ample battery life, but somehow lacks enough flavour in the multitasking and camera department. For its price, I would’ve expected it to perform a little better.

Rs 22,590

Love – battery life, easy dual-SIM handling

Hate – hangs while multitasking, average camera

>sabyasachi.b@thehindu.co.in

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