Telstra gets exclusive on HTC Wildfire

It was revealed yesterday that Telstra had won an exclusive deal to launch HTC's Android-based Wildfire handset in Australia in August, but details remain scant as to pricing and availability.

HTC Wildfire (Credit: HTC)

The Wildfire is commonly seen as a smaller and cheaper version of HTC's flagship handset, the Desire, which Telstra launched to great success in Australia earlier this year. The Wildfire sports a smaller screen (240x320 pixels, compared with the Desire's 480x800) and a slower CPU, the Wildfire's chip is a Qualcomm model running at 528MHz, compared to the HTC Desire's 1GHz edition.

However, many of the other specification features between the handsets are similar — for example, both have a 5-megapixel camera, and they both run version 2.1 of Google's Android operating system.

In a statement, HTC Australia and New Zealand sales and marketing director Anthony Petts said the Wildfire would bring HTC's Sense user interface, which runs on top of Android, to a "young audience". And Telstra executive director of Mobility Products Ross Fielding described the Wildfire's price tag as "ultra-affordable".

Telstra will sell the Wildfire in white or black models, with pricing to be announced "closer to launch". Telstra's Fielding has also posted further information about the Wildfire in a blog post on Telstra's Exchange site. It remains unclear how long Telstra will have the exclusive on the handset for.