It wasn’t long ago (and it wasn’t unexpected, either) that we announced the HTC Desire S would come to Telstra. After their success with the first iteration of the HTC Desire, it was no surprise Telstra would follow up with the Desire S. Today we can share the launch pricing, following HTC and Telstra’s launch party last night in Sydney.
The HTC Desire S will sell through Telstra for $649 outright – available from 31 May 2011 – and will also be available for $5 per month on Telstra’s $59 Freedom Connect plan over 24 months. The plan offers $550 worth of calls and MMS messages, unlimited text messages to any mobile within Australia, and 1.5GB of data per month.
Of course, if you’re with another carrier and would like it (a) sooner and (b) cheaper, you can look at getting your Desire S from MobiCity for $499. Note, this version isn’t Next G compatible, so it’s recommended for Optus/Vodafone/3 users.
As with many Telstra launches of late, they’ll have the exclusive on this device until 31 August 2011, after which time you’ll probably see this phone picked up by Optus or Vodafone, or both, though there’s nothing confirmed yet.
An evolution of the original Desire, the HTC Desire S features the same 3.7in, capacitive touchscreen, 1GHz Qualcomm processor, and 5-megapixel camera as its predecessor, with a minor RAM increase being the biggest change — it has 768MB, up from 576MB in the original. The Desire S also has a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls – a welcome addition.
Unlike its predecessor, the HTC Desire S’s body is a unibody aluminium design and software-wise, it runs the latest 2.3 “Gingerbread” version of Android.
We hope to bring you a review of the Desire S really soon.
