Telstra to launch HTC’s latest Sensation

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Forget the Desire HD and the Samsung Galaxy S II. There’s a new top dog in Android smartphones in Australia, and it’s coming to Australia very shortly.

The nation’s biggest telco Telstra this morning confirming long-running rumours that it would bring HTC’s high-end Sensation smartphone to Australia, noting it would exclusively launch the handset in July. Dubbing the handset HTC’s “flagship” phone, Telstra said it couldn’t wait to make the device available to customers.

The Sensation features some technical specifications which are slightly above those of its competition, as well as HTC’s own extensive existing line-up.

Like HTC’s previous Desire HD model, the Sensation comes with a 4.3″ touchscreen. However, where most 4.3″ smartphones come with a resolution of 480×800, the Sensation boasts a resolution of 540×960, also known as ‘qHD’ for being one quarter of a full HD 1080p frame. In addition, the Sensation features a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU — slightly faster than the 1GHz rating several of its contemporaries are offering.

The Sensation ships with an 8 megapixel rear camera, 768MB of internal memory and 1GB of user-accessible internal storage, as well as a Qualcomm Adreno 220 graphics processing unit. It weights 148g.

Furthermore, the Sensation will be one of the first HTC smartphones to feature version 3.0 of the Taiwanese manufacturer’s customised Sense user interface, which it integrates on top of all of its Android smartphones. Sense 3.0 offers a reworked lockscreen and home screen, tweaked integrated apps and even new applications, such as HTC Watch, a digital distribution service for movies and TV shows to mobiles.

In its review of the Sensation, global gadget blog Engadget wrote that the smartphone is “an extremely accomplished device” and “a veritable pleasure to hold and operate”, featuring a better battery life than predecessors, but doesn’t quite have the user interface responsiveness of Samsung’s rival Galaxy S II handset (which will launch in Australia through all major local carriers). The blog’s main criticisms appeared to be the slow pace of development of the Sense interface, as well as a more brilliant display and speedier interface on the Galaxy S II.

Telstra hasn’t yet released pricing details for the Sensation, but customers can register their interest through its website.

The news comes as Australian consumers are currently spoilt for choice if they’re interested in a high-end Android smartphone, with a number of top-level models recently being launched locally. With the Desire S, the Desire HD, the Incredible S and now the Sensation, HTC has the most models available, but Samsung is also attracting notice with its Galaxy S II, and Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG also have new models on sale.

Image credit: Telstra

2 COMMENTS

  1. This looks pretty great, though not sure why they didn’t include NFC.

    it’s going to be hard to decide between this and the Samsung Galaxy S II to determine which is the top dog Android phone.

  2. Not sure you can reasonably describe the Desire S or Desire HD as “high end”. The original Desire certainly was at the time, and I guess the HD was too when it was released, but they can’t really compete with the newest devices and with the Desire S HTC has made the “Desire” line mid-range.

    The only genuinely “high end” phones HTC have right now are the Sensation and the EVO 3D, and the former is the only one we can be sure we’ll be getting here in Australia.

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