HTC LTE Desire 601 and Desire 300 Android smartphones take aim at SMEs

Company unveils budget handset but no pricing information as yet announced

HTC has unveiled its new low-end long term evolution (LTE)-enabled Desire 601 and 300 Android smartphones, claiming that the affordable devices are tailor made for businesses on a budget.

The Desire 601 is designed to target the same small-to-medium sized business market as Nokia's Lumia 625 Windows Phone, offering buyers a big-screen smartphone experience and LTE connectivity at an affordable price.

The phone breaks from HTC's top-end One handset design, as it is made from polycarbonate as opposed to metal. The Desire 601 also features a detachable backplate, which grants access to its removable 2,100mAh battery and MicroSD card slot.

In terms of hardware the Desire 601 is fairly basic, featuring a QHD 4.5in display and is powered by a lower-end 1.4GHz dual-core processor and boasting a modest 1GB of RAM. The Desire 601 will not feature HTC's UltraPixel technology, instead coming equipped with a 5MP rear camera and VGA front camera.

Below it the Desire 300 features lower-end specs, being powered by a 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and boasting just 512MB of RAM. The Desire 300 will also features and slightly smaller 4.3in, full lamination wide video graphics array (WVGA) display.

HTC is yet to reveal how affordable the Desire 601 and 300 are and told V3 it would leave pricing announcements to its partners, but promised both would be a low-cost handset.

The Desire 600 will Android 4.2.2 while the 300 will run on Android 4.1.2. Both phones are confirmed to feature many of the same software touches as HTC's top-end One smartphone, being bundled with the company's Sense user interface.

Chief among these is HTC's BlinkFeed service. BlinkFeed is a news-collation service debuted on the HTC One. It uses the owner's account and search data to collate and push relevant news stories and social media posts in a dynamic tiled display. The interface replaces Android's native home screen.

The HTC Desire 601 and 300 are set to launch in the UK in September, check back then for full reviews.