HTC Desire 816

The HTC Desire 816 is a mid-range Android smartphone that is available with and without NFC.

The Desire 816’s plastic body takes its design cues from the metal HTC One and boasts a 5.5-inch HD screen, a Snapdragon 400 processor. The phone also supports 4G LTE.

NFC is listed as an optional feature in the official spec sheet, so availability is expected to vary by carrier and by country.

The device was announced at the Mobile World Congress in February 2014 and will be available “later this spring.”

4 comments on this article

    1. It might be if the NFC hardware is there but it has just been turned off by the network, but it is also possible that you have a model which simply doesn’t include the necessary hardware, in which case you can’t add NFC without resorting to third-party solutions like NFC-on-microSD add-ons etc.

      1. Thanks Mike. I presume it has no NFC HW (though on the SW side they even have a running NFC service). Is there a simple way to find out? My device is rooted – maybe some Linux shell commands?

        Anyway I would guess it lacks the HW. If that is the case, and knowing that this is an optional feature, maybe HTC have designed this in a modular way as a clip-on chip on a motherboard microconnector, possibly also a different back cover with NFC antenna? Would you find this likely from your experience from HTC devices?

        If my speculation above was true, it would be easy to buy a spare NFC chip and back cover and then fit it myself. BTW I have found such a chip in eBay for its little brother the HTC 616

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