HTC Incredible S Makes Oz Foray With Optus
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It’s got a sculptured look and feel, and sports HTC’s own unique user experience ‘skin’, the Sense, which puts its own flavour to the Android experience, claims HTC, as its first Gingerbread offering, the Incredible S, which is also the company’s first Android smartphone of 2011, makes its entry into the Australian market.


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Offered exclusively on the Optus network from May, it will remain with the carrier for a three month period, says the telco, and will be ‘very competitively priced’, according to Optus marketing director of consumer, Gavin Williams. 

Ben Hodgson, country manager at HTC said the phone’s cutting edge design together with the Sense experience, which is a tight integration between the hardware and software, is a focussed attempt at taking a customer-centric approach. The phone’s 8mp colour camera, for example, is ‘only part of story’, said Hodgson.

Hodgson reckons HTC has raised the bar with the Incredible S’s contoured body, which sports a 4 inch super LCD touch screen with 480 x 800 resolution, super fast 1GHz processor, and the capacity to capture video at 720p HD and virtual surround sound gives a good multimedia viewing experience.

The phone also carries a 16GB class 4 microSD card on top of its own internal memory and is also a DLNA certified device which makes sharing pictures and video simple with other DLNA devices. Battery life has also been extended with a 1450mAH battery which gives talk time of 10 hours and lengthened standby operation, claimed HTC executives.

 


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Certainly, it has a weighty feel to the phone, but unlike other 4 inch Androids on the market, it feels relatively slim. There are quirkly little apps which make it a standout, including its iconic weather application, smart dialler which speeds up connection to 10 seconds, and wifi hotspots, which are aimed to grab the customer’s attention.

Optus’ Williams said the company had high hopes for the device, and said 50 percent of the carrier’s range in May would be Android phones, which now has 230,000 apps and is fast catching up with rival Apple.

Hodgson said the powerful new offering “exudes a mix of style, innovation and features that customers have come to expect from HTC”, a sentiment echoed by Williams, who said “the features found on the HTC Incredible S such as High Definition video recording and multifunctional cameras are becoming more important for our customers. When combined with the Optus Open Network we believe our customers will have the perfect combination to get the most out of this great handset.”