US$600 HTC Bolt launches on Sprint and may be going worldwide

The rumours are true; HTC and Sprint have inked an exclusive contract with Usain Bolt to debut the HTC Bolt smartphone as noted in “HTC Bolt dashes to Sprint: a 5.5" phone with HTC 10's design, IP57”, published 11 November 2016 by Peter, GSMArena.

The HTC Bolt is available starting today at Sprint stores and is unlocked for US$600 at the following stores:

§  Best Buy

§  The Radio Shack

§  Costco

Look out for the HTC Bolt might launch elsewhere, possibly on the Digicel Network under a different name. So do the specs live up to the hype?

HTC Bolt Specs – Not a Record Setter but it can outrun the best of them

The 5.5" HTC Bolt uses an all-aluminum chassis and is IP57, effectively dust and waterproof.

It boasts dimensions of 153.6 x 77.3 x 8.1 mm (6.05 x 3.04 x 0.32 in) and weighs in at 174 g (6.14 oz). The Screen is a Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen with a 1440 x 2560 pixels resolution that represents 534 ppi pixel density. This means you'll pretty much see all those 16 million supported colours protected by that thick Corning Gorilla Glass 5.

 

The HTC Bolt runs on Android OS 7.0 Nougat, the latest iteration of Android that's yet to even gain traction albeit its now on the Huawei Nexus 6P as mentioned in my Geezam blog article entitled “Huawei Nexus 6P is Google’s Marshmallow for Android Nougat”. 

The lucky buyer gets to choose between two (2) Octa-Core processors:

1.      4x1.5 GHz Cortex-A53

2.      4x2.0 GHz Cortex-A57

These processors are supported by an Adreno 430 GPU and a Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 Chipset. Its packing 3 GB RAM with 32 GB Internal memory expandable to some 256 GB via a dedicated slot.

 

As for the Rear-Facing camera, this is a 16 Megapixel beast with a aperture of f/2.0 and sports phase detection autofocus, Optical Image Stabilization and dual-LED flash, standard on most high-end smartphones. It also captures 2160p video at 30fps along with 24-bit/192kHz audio but can bump it down to 720p at 120fps and the camera on the back uses Phase Detection AF to lock focus in 0.3 seconds.

The Front Facing Camera is a very small 8 Megapixel that supports 1080p image capture. The HTC Bolt keeps all you nude selfies secure with a fingerprint reader that recognizes you in 0.2 seconds. Alas, no 3.5mm headphone jack but you can use USB Type-C port or Bluetooth Headphone Jack.  The Type-C port supports Quick Charge 2.0 to recharge the 3,200mAh battery. 

So all in all HTC Bolt is a fairly decent smartphone that won't set any record but can outrun the best of them.