Around a year ago, Apple announced the iPhone 5S, the first and so far only phone to run on a 64-bit processor. Now, as noted by AnandTech, HTC has announced the first Android phone to make use of the same ARMv8 technology that Apple's A7 chip employs. Unlike the iPhone 5S, though, HTC's Desire 510 is a pretty budget-conscious affair; aside from the 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor with LTE, it features a 4.7-inch 854 x 480 screen, a five-megapixel camera, and 1GB of RAM.

The primary advantage of 64-bit processing is the ability to address more than 4GB of RAM, so the Desire 510 isn't going to set any power records. Android itself doesn't even support 64-bit yet, so unless this phone gets updated from 4.4 KitKat to the new Android L version, its architectural credentials will be little more than a footnote in the history of mobile computing. But it's an important milestone nonetheless, showing that Qualcomm has jumped into the 64-bit race.