At the briefings for its 4G service that isn’t quite 4G, Telstra also showed off the first LTE phone it’ll offer early next year. First impressions and video after the jump.
For once I would have liked that video to run for more than 30 seconds, but that was about all the time I had to play with an early sample of the phone that Telstra’s simply calling the HTC 4G. I’ve got to tip my hat here to Ross Catanzariti at PC World; he’s figured out that the phone is a modified version of the HTC Raider 4G, something that eluded me when I was cutting that video together. That means that, unless Telstra modifies the recipe, it’ll have 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and a 1620 mAh battery to run the qHD display screen.
The claim yesterday was that Telstra was ‘working’ with ‘most’ of its device partners on LTE phones, as well as tablets, but the HTC 4G would be its launch effort, due in the first half of 2012. The look is interesting; it’s not quite what I’d expect from HTC, with tones of the design of the Samsung Galaxy S II in there, but as it’s an early sample, the final build models might be slightly different, and probably Telstra branded to boot.