HTC today added a new entry-level handset to its Desire smartphone family. It’s called the Desire 310, and it’s the Taiwanese company’s first handset powered by a MediaTek processor. Other highlights include a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, 1GB of RAM, and HTC BlinkFeed.

The Desire 310, like the new Desire 816 and the upcoming “All New HTC One,” has lost its traditional capacitive touch buttons in favor of virtual, on-screen controls. It boasts a 4.5-inch display with an 854×480 pixel resolution, a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek processor, and a microSD card slot.

It’s very much an entry-level device, so these specifications aren’t supposed to blow you away. But like all HTC devices, the Desire 310 does have looks on its side. It sports a clean and simple form factor with a curved back, and it’ll be available in a number of pretty colors, including white, navy blue, and bright orange.

The Desire 310 comes with BlinkFeed and other trademark HTC features, however, it’s unclear whether it actually runs the Sense user interface. According to the press images, it appears to be running more of a stock version of Jelly Bean — it has the Jelly Bean icons and status bar — with some Sense features baked-in.

The Desire 310 probably isn’t powerful enough to run Sense 5 or the upcoming Sense 6, and HTC probably decided that making a watered-down version just for entry-level devices wasn’t worth it. As a result, we seem to have a Sense and stock Android hybrid, which will surely please pure Android fans.

The Desire 310 will be available in Taiwan first, starting next month.

• SourceHTC