Barcelona: Only an hour after the global launch of the HTC Desire, Aussie telco Telstra has taken first dibs on the high-end smartphone with a three-month Australian exclusive.
The exclusivity period begins in April with the phone’s launch down under and it will be the first Android device to be officially available on the Next G network. It will also be amongst the first smartphones in the country to run the latest version of the Google Android operating system, version 2.1.
HTC has been a leading manufacturer of Android devices since the first commercial release of the system at the end of 2008, and is the well-publicised manufacturer of the Google-branded Nexus One. The Desire takes many cues from the Google phone, with a similar 3.7-inch AMOLED display and a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, but offers HTC’s advanced user interface, HTC Sense UI, as well as a range of other software features that aren’t available to owners of the Nexus One.
HTC also launched two other smartphones at its Mobile World Congress press event, the stylish, aluminium HTC Legend and the HTC HD Mini, a pint-sized version of the Windows Mobile HTC HD2 released in January and another Telstra exclusive.