HTC, who are making a bucket load of money in Australia, appear to be treating this market as a dumping ground for old models. Last month they launched the old model HD7, WP7 Smartphone, when the rest of the world was getting the HD7 Pro with a new LED screen.Tomorrow, HTC will launch the HTC Incredible, which is supposed to be a new Android based phone that sits between the HTC Desire and the Desire HD. While in Europe and the USA which are markets that already have the Incredible S, HTC is rolling out their latest baby with an all new HTC Sensation model which reviewers are raving about.
The new device which has already been shown to journalists in the USA and Europe is not available in Australia according to HTC Australia, PR consultants.
The Sensation, which has a multimedia slant, is shipping with the new Gingerbread version of Android. The HTC Incredible, which Australians get tomorrow, has the old Android 2.2 Froyo operating system.
According to several reviewers who have been given versions of the new Sensation the device has a “stunning new look case, a super-sharp screen, a dual-core processor, and the latest version of Android, dressed up with some terrific HTC enhancements”.
The new Sensation has a 4.3-inch 960-by-540 LCD super sharp screen and a Qualcomm dual-core 1.2-Ghz Snapdragon processor. It runs Android Gingerbread 2.4, and has an 8-megapixel camera on the back capable of recording 1920-by-1080 video at 30 frames per second.
There’s a VGA front-facing camera for video chat, an HDMI output port, 1GB of built-in storage along with a MicroSD card slot, and a very strong 1520 mAh battery keeping it all running.
It also has a new version of Sense which is packed with 3D effects and a set of lock screens that display animated information instead of static images.
HTC’s VP of products and services in the UK Phil Blair says that this update sees “the most changes we’ve made to HTC Sense in one go” and it’s mostly down to the dual-core capabilities.
The first thing is the new lock screen – now it’s interactive in more ways than before. For example, you can set four applications to launch instantly by simply dragging them down to the lock ‘hoop’ at the bottom.
There are more interactive lock widgets as well, with the ability to have pictures floating around the screen that you can simply drag down to open, or a weather widget that jumps to the current conditions.
Tech Radar in the UK said of the new sensation “What’s impressive about the phone when you first pick it up is the size – it’s a 4.3-inch screen but the footprint of the phone isn’t much bigger than the HTC Incredible S”.
The screen is technically the same size as the Desire HD, in that it measures 4.3-inches diagonally, but in reality it’s a little smaller thanks to packing in qHD (540×960) resolution, which basically means 16:9 movies will play without any black bars above and below.
HTC is not saying why Australia is not being given access to newer model HTC Smartphones at the same time as Europe or the USA despite HTC management admitting last year that Australia was one of Their “most successful and profitable markets in the world”.
