HTC announced a phone called the Desire 500 last month that can best described as a solid midrange phone. It has a 4.3 inch 800 x 480 pixel resolution screen, 8 megapixel camera, quad core Snapdragon 200 clocked at 1.2 GHz, and 1 GB of RAM. When the press release was published, the company said it would come in at roughly $400. When I heard that number, I declared it dead.

Today, however, I’ve had a change of heart.

My local tech store, Verkkokauppa, has begun accepting preorders for the Desire 500 at 250 Euros. That’s $335, which is a far better deal. That’s the exact same price that Samsung sells the Galaxy S II over here. And while on paper the GS2 is a better phone, boy it looks ancient, whereas this HTC looks fresh. I’d go so far as to even call it hip.

Best of all, it ships with Android 4.2.2 out of the box and it runs the latest version of Sense UI, which I hear is nice, but I’ve yet to try it out myself. So will the Desire 500 turn things around for the company? At this price, I want to say yes, because flagship smartphone saturation is real, at least here in Europe.

By that I mean if you’re buying a smartphone now, chances are you’re buying midrange.

Update: The publication Pocket-lint says it’ll cost £230 in the UK, which is $360.