Man, just look at these puppies — a silver Wildfire nestling against a snow-white Desire. If this cute image is making you smile, you can thank our friends over at Android Community for stumbling upon these special edition HTC phones, which are headed to The Carphone Warehouse’s exclusive club in good old Blighty (sorry, US readers). There’s no date confirmed just yet, but given that these Android phones will be slapped with the regular price tags, you’d best be ready to dash to your nearest store before it’s too late. Head over to the source link for more eye candy while you camp out.
O2 UK has been a little late to the Desire’s Android 2.2 party, but of course, it’s a “better late than never” sort of situation — or is it? After getting a “small number” of reports that the just-released update for O2-branded units was causing problems, the carrier has put the software on ice for the moment; there appear to be several failure modes ranging from freezing to having Sense get stuck in a crash loop, but the net result is that there’s definitely some wonkiness with the binary O2′s put out so far. Though we imagine you can probably find an update.zip floating around, we’re not sure attempting an install is a hot idea — we might wait for this situation to get sorted first. In the meantime, here’s O2′s full statement in its official forums:
“Hi all
As some of you will have noticed the Android 2.2 Froyo update for HTC Desire on O2 went live this morning. While we’re pleased that so many of you have been able to download it successfully and are enjoying the benefits of 2.2, we have seen that a small number of people are having problems installing the update.
While we check out these issues we’re putting the 2.2 update on hold. We’ll update you as soon as possible and would like to thank our HTC Desire customers for their patience.
HTC’s Desire is undoubtedly one of the headline Android devices of 2010 so far — and heck, when you’re using the already-great Nexus One as a starting point and re-upping it with an optical pad, physical buttons, and Sense, it’s hard to argue otherwise. US Cellular has now become the first carrier to bring the device to the States (nearly five grueling months since its first spats of international availability, we’d like to note), and because USCC’s a CDMA carrier, this is naturally a slightly different device than you’re getting elsewhere. Don’t get us wrong, most of the thoughts in our first review of the Desire still apply — but needless to say, this launch is notable enough to warrant a second look. Read on!
Right on time, US Cellular’s CDMA-flavored version of the HTC Desire is now available for a nickel under $200, making it the undisputed big dog in the regional carrier’s lineup (its first Android device, the Samsung Acclaim, launched a few weeks back). What you get for your hard-earned money here is a surprisingly accurate recreation of the GSM Desire the rest of the world has been enjoying for much of this year, with the same optical pad, 3.7-inch display, 5 megapixel cam, Sense, 1GHz Snapdragon core, and identical industrial design (which, considering how good the original looks, is just fine with us). With the Droid Incredible on tap, Verizon doesn’t really need this thing — but it’d be kinda nice if Sprint picked it up to slot under the EVO, wouldn’t it? Follow the break for the full press release.
mobiles.co.uk — which is a subsidiary of European phone giant Carphone Warehouse — seems to be talking in some very matter-of-fact terms about a couple new Android models from HTC, presumably devices that we’ll see at this upcoming September 15 event. First up is the well-leaked Desire HD, which these guys list as a Froyo device equipped with a 4.3-inch display, 1GHz core, 8 megapixel camera with 720p video capture, and 4GB of internal storage (in other words, precisely what we were expecting). More interesting to some, though, will be the Desire Z, which is described as an Android 2.1 device (yes, 2.1, not 2.2) with a full sliding keyboard — quite likely the Vision, if we had to guess. Gonna be hard to wait for the next month to find out, isn’t it?
Like many carriers these days, US Cellular is looking to go all-in on Android — but it’s just getting started, having launched only the Samsung Acclaim so far. We already knew we’d be getting the Desire in August, and now we’ve got a date: August 27, to be exact. Pricing has yet to be announced — and unfortunately, they specifically call out Android 2.1 in the press release, so it apparently won’t have Froyo at launch — but from an Android perspective, USCC’s still at a point where they’ll take what they can get. Things are looking up, though; in June, the company had promised a total of four Android models in 2010, but in this latest announcement they’ve upped the total to five with the Samsung Galaxy S launching in October and two models from LG “following closely behind.” Follow the break for the full release.
We’ve just heard directly from HTC regarding that hotly anticipated upgrade to Android 2.2: it’s happening this weekend for lucky Euroland owners of the Desire. Provided your Sense-laden 3.7-incher is not carrier-locked, you should be receiving your serving of Froyo by the end of the week, together with a new 720p video mode and iTunes sync for your music. HTC is also throwing in its App Share widget that it first introduced with the Wildfire, along with its smart Caller ID feature. Very nice, though it’s quite a shame that operator-specific versions of the update are still stuck in testing and are expected “in several weeks’ time.” Ah well, guess that’ll teach us to buy our gear unlocked.
Update: Owners of unlocked Desires around Europe (and for that matter, the world) have informed us that OTA Froyo is being dished out in earnest. Enjoy!
A wordy headline, to be sure, but a pleasing one nonetheless. We came across HTC’s Chinese web portal listing the Desire as coming with Android 2.2 (with Sense!) and simply had to ping the official source for confirmation. It turns out the info up there is no mistake: all HTC Android handsets shipping to China — which includes the Wildfire and Tianyi — will do so with Froyo preloaded, cutting down on your upgrade angst at least until the Gingerbread man comes a’knocking. HTC has also reiterated that a 2.2 update for its phones already on the market will be delivered “very soon,” so if all goes well, we should be looking at a Froyo-dominated August in the land of High Tech Computers.
HTC Europe director Mark Moons caused quite a stir this morning when he tweeted that the company would begin rolling out Android Froyo updates to devices tomorrow, starting with the Desire, but we wouldn’t get too excited yet — HTC tells us that it’s possible a rollout will begin tomorrow, but nothing’s finalized yet pending some final testing. We’ve certainly got our fingers crossed — and we’re sure Desire owners the world over will be hitting that System Updates button nonstop for the next few days.
It’s long been the case that if you wanted a HTC handset over in the world’s most populous nation, you’d have had to look for its rebadged variant under the Dopod brand. But, as of today, that is no more. The prolific Taiwanese phone maker has decided that its name is now recognizable and valuable enough in China to be put on its own hardware and is kicking off a campaign with four own-branded phones. The Wildfire and Desire we’re all familiar with already, while the Tianxi looks like a mildly tweaked HD2 and the Tianyi is a mix-and-match of design elements from the rest of HTC’s portfolio. The company’s also announcing a partnership with China Mobile to bring these puppies to market, so it’s looking like smooth sailing ahead. Full PR after the break.
