HTC unveiled its latest offering to the budget smartphone market, the Desire 310. The Taiwanese manufacturer has been on a steady sales decline over the past few years, with the company outlining plans earlier in the year to not only focus on high-end devices like the HTC One, but also look to penetrate untapped markets on the lower end of the price spectrum. Could the Desire 310 be the first smartphone in helping to turn the tide?

HTC has fitted the Desire 310 with a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, 1 GB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage. On paper this should add up to solid performer, capable of giving users a similarly strong smartphone experience, supported by Android 4.2.2 (Jellybean).

The Desire 310 features a well sized 4.5” TFT touch enabled display (480 x 854) with HTC’s Sense 5.1 interface. Other notable inclusions sees the integration of a 5 megapixel rear camera capable of capturing 1080p quality content, a microSD slot for up 32 GB of expandable storage, and dual-SIM functionality to aid users in managing their data usage.

HTC has incorporated its BlinkFeed home screen, which first made its debut of the flagship HTC One (review) smartphone. BlinkFeed allows users to to collate and sync all the most important streams and app data into one seamless view. BlinkFeed users can also ‘find’ other users with similar feeds and streams, to create a more connected HTC community. The inclusion of single-view collated information feeds is something we are seeing more prevalent among budget smartphones (such as Nokia’s Fastlane integration for its new Asha devices).

The Desire 310 will be making its way to consumers the end of Q1 2014 (April), with an expected retail price of €160 (R2 400). We will have to wait and see whether this cheaper offering will be good enough to tempt budget conscience users and help HTC gain some traction on its competitors.