Virgin Mobile brings HTC Desire to the off-contract war

Today Virgin Mobile has entered another contestant into the growing war of the off-contract smartphones with the HTC Desire. This device works with a 4.5-inch qHD touchscreen display, a 5-megapixel camera at its back, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 dual-core processor inside. Ready for release as early as today, the HTC Desire for late 2013 brings HTC's own "BoomSound" speakers to blast audio from its front as well.

The HTC Desire works with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean right out of the box with HTC's own Sense user interface to bring a unique experience to the user. Inside you'll also find standard Wi-fi and NFC as well as Bluetooth 4.0 for the next generation of low-power accessories. This device's processor will be backed up by 1GB of RAM as well.

NOTE: Make sure not to mistake this HTC Desire with any of the other HTC Desire smartphones of the past – there's been more than one machine with this name before!

This newest HTC device works with 8GB of internal storage space alongside a microSD card slot for an additional 64GB – supposing the user has that size a card handy, of course. This smartphone works with Sense-based abilities such as HTC BlinkFeed, Video Highlights, and HTC Zoe for its camera. These abilities originally launched with the HTC One and are now spreading to the greater HTC family.

With the HTC Desire, Virgin Mobile will be launching a $279.99 USD machine completely off-contract. That's certainly a smart-looking price for this segment, but given the Moto G competition rising up in its wake, we shall see! This HTC Desire will be able to be attached to Virgin Mobile's $35 a month unlimited data and messaging plans as well, complete with 4G LTE.