news Telstra will shortly launch its first smartphone based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system that will support 4G mobile speeds, according to a product catalogue seen by local Windows Phone enthusiast site WPDownUnder, with the model to be a HTC Titan II 4G.

It’s not the first time that the Titan II has been pegged for an Australian launch through Telstra. Several months ago international site Pocket-lint stated that an Australian launch (likely through Telstra) of the HTC Titan II had been confirmed at some stage this year, with word on the launch coming directly from HTC. At that stage it was believed that the Titan II was likely to launch through Telstra, as the phone supports the LTE standard, which only Telstra has so far launched on its network.

The Titan II was initially revealed in January as HTC’s Windows Phone 7 model to support the LTE standard. At that stage it was confirmed for AT&T in the US, but not for launch outside the US. The smartphone, if it does launch in Australia, will likely be Australia’s top Windows Phone 7 model at that stage. It comes with a 4.7″ super LCD touchscreen, a 16 megapixel camera and a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 processor.

In its review of the Titan II, global tech site The Verge in general praised the phone, although it noted that competitively, it wasn’t the best on the market, due to Windows Phone 7 being behind both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms when it came to functionality. In addition, the publication noted that Nokia’s top of the line Lumia 900 phone featured similar specifications to the HTC Titan II, but with a better overall design:

“… it’s all about the hardware, and the Lumia 900′s build quality and design simply blow the Titan II out of the water. The Lumia also has a number of good Nokia-specific apps available that you can’t get on the Titan, like Drive and Transit. The Titan II’s camera is certainly better than the Lumia’s, but it’s not superior enough to make the Titan II a more appealing option”

However, the Lumia 900 hasn’t launched officially in Australia, with the nation only recently receiving stock of the lesser Lumia 800 and 710. Nokia hasn’t yet confirmed any plans to bring the Lumia 900 to Australia, making the Titan II likely Australia’s top Windows Phone-based smartphone for now, if the Telstra launch is true. WPDownUnder wrote that it expects the Titan II to launch locally from around May 1st, on a $79 plan, with an outright price “around the mid-$800′s”.

opinion/analysis
If you’re a Windows Phone 7 enthusiast, and I know there are quite a few of you out there, this looks like the next top dog in Australia. If you’re not, and prefer Android, I’m currently recommending you hold off on a new purchase until we see whether Telstra launches a 4G version of the HTC One X (it’s called the One XL) or whether Samsung launches something decent with the Samsung Galaxy S III, which it has been teasing constantly recently. Of course, if you’re an Apple fan, you have no choice but to sit tight for another six months or so. But then, you’re used to that ;)

Image credit: HTC

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1. PeterA
   Posted 26/04/2012 at 9:14 am | Permalink | Reply

   OneXL… Except for the storage! Oh it pains me that they come so close to a perfect phone and then fail.

   On topic; is the Lumia 900 a 4g phone with the same Qualcomm processor? That Qualcomm (if I am properly informed) is the only SOC with 4g built in, making it slightly better battery life wise…

2. Robert Good
   Posted 07/05/2012 at 11:31 am | Permalink | Reply

   Bought a Windows 7 phone and it blows android/iPhone away. Icons are so 1985…where tiles tell me what is going on and what has changed since I ran that app. And it has a 2+ day battery life…becuase everything is suspended in the background except the 1 app showing.

   And all the apps on Windows 8 will run on my Win 7 phone.

   My wife dumped her evo, my brother dumped his iPhone 4s. Its the way to go.

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