HTC unveils the Desire 601 and Desire 300

The HTC Desire 601 aims to bring some high-tech specs to the mid-range, while the new Desire 300 is an entry level smartphone.

HTC Desire 601

At first glance, the HTC Desire 601 with its 4.5-inch screen seems really closely related to the HTC Desire 600 dual sim, however this one only has a single SIM slot. At 9.88mm, the Desire 601 is thicker than the Desire 600 dual sim but it has a beefier battery at 2100mAh. Not only that, but it also has a speedier 1.4Ghz dual-core Snapdragon 400 chipset with 1GB RAM.

Thanks to the faster processor, the Desire 601 offers LTE and HSPA+ 42Mbps connectivity, as well as HTC's proprietary software features - HTC Zoe and the Video Highlights in the Gallery - which were first introduced on the HTC One family of smartphones. HTC Zoe automatically captures short 3-second video clips to accompany each still shot, while the Video Highlights in the Gallery automatically creates 30-second video montages of the clips and stills taken at a particular place or event.

Funnily, the 5MP camera on the HTC Desire 601 has higher resolution than that of the HTC One flagship, but this one doesn't make use of the much touted Ultrapixels. The regular 5MP camera however has some of the One's tricks such as Sequence shot, Always Smile, Object Removal and VideoPic. It uses a 1/4" BSI sensor with a wide F/2.0 aperture and a 28mm wide lens and is helped by HTC's in-house image processing chip, called HTC ImageChip.

In terms of video recording, the Desire 601 offers capture up to 1080p, but lower resolution video can be shot in slow motion with variable speed playback.

The smartphones has a VGA front facing camera and a microSD card slot. Unfortunately, the battery is not removable.

The HTC Desire 601 will launch in October 2013.

HTC Desire 300

The HTC Desire 300 has a 4.3-inch WVGA screen and a 1Ghz dual-core Snapragon S4 chipset with 512MB RAM.

HTC Desire 300 may not use HTC Zoe, but it comes with Blinkfeed, which turns your smartphone's homescreen into a dynamic list of titles and social network updates.

HTC Desire 300 has a 5MP camera as well, but this one has a F/2.8 aperture and a 34mm lens.

The user available built-in storage is about 1.2GB but the Desire 300 has a microSD slot to expand that. There is a removable battery on board, but it only has a capacity of 1650mAh.

The smartphone will launch in October 2013, too.