Australia's first official 4G smartphone has arrived at last!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 24 January 2012 12:55

Your IT - Mobility

Close encounters between Australians and the fourth generation of smartphones can officially commence today down under, as HTC's Velocity lands in the hands of those who pre-ordered, while anyone with the need to feel 4G's raw speed can undoubtedly visit one of Telstra's flagship T-Life stores for a rush of digital adrenaline.

4G phones are here in Australia at last, with HTC the first smartphone cab off the rank to seek paying passengers wishing to take the fastest of digital journeys across Australia's 4G spectrum.

Interestingly, for those who are unaware, 4G phones don't actually use the 4G network to place voice calls, as the 4G LTE network, in its current form, is a data only network.

Thus, your voice calls are taking place on either the 3G/Next G networks, or on 2G GSM networks as per usual.

But with voice calls just one way to use telephones these days, and with access to online information and communications such an integral part of the smartphone experience, getting ever faster access to online networks is what has driven the push towards 4G, and is why 4G modems arrived last year, and Australia's first 4G smartphone has arrived this year (despite 4G phones already having been on sale in the US over the past few months).

No doubt, we'll soon be seeing 4G smartphones from all the big name brands, including the expected 4G LTE additions for the upcoming iPad 2S or iPad 3 and iPhone 4GS and iPhone 5 - or whatever the heck Apple decides to call its newest iDevices.

But in Australia, HTC's Velocity is first, arriving at a launch event last night and now on store shelves today.

Telstra Mobile's very direct Director, Andrew Volard, stated that: 'The HTC Velocity 4G delivers mobile internet speeds unimaginable ten years ago. The leap to 4G means customers in Telstra 4G coverage areas can load web pages up to five times faster, video chat with fewer interruptions and use more mobile web services simultaneously.

'4G also opens the door to an exciting range of emerging smartphone applications such as cloud-hosted gaming and streaming music and video collections over the internet', he concluded.

Ben Hodgson, Country Manager, of HTC Australia and New Zealand was also direct, stating directly that: 'Just about everything is instantaneous, from web browsing and streaming multimedia to rich email attachments that you no longer have to wait for. We look forward to enabling Telstra customers to be the first and fastest smartphone owners in the country.'

No doubt Mr Hodgson looks forward to Optus and Vodafone getting its 4G LTE act together at some point this year too, but with Telstra directly responsible for being first to bring 4G LTE to Australians, the only surprise is that Australians had to wait for 2012 for 4G LTE phones to arrive, instead of late 2011 when, in theory, they could have been here - and undoubtedly were, deep in the testing labs of Telstra's 4G testing division.

Continued on page two, please read on!