Telstra dreams of an Android smartphone Christmas

Telstra has added new Android smartphones from LG, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, a Telstra-branded ZTE model and the BlackBerry Bold 9900 to its range in preparation for the Christmas sales boost.

Telstra has as well become the first telco in the world to offer the LG Ultimate Spirit, as well an Android 2.3 device, with 800MHz processor. According to Tom Lewis, general manager of LG Electronic, "It comes bundled with the LG Smartshare app. You can send photos and videos from the phone to the TV and you can as well use the phone to browse other DLNA devices and send content from those to the TV." It will sell for $149 as a Telstra prepaid phone. He added: "We think this is a device to bring smartphones to everybody."

Motorola's Barry Smyth described th new Motorola phone, the Defy + as "the Defy on Steroids." Motorola launched the Defy just previously Christmas last year. It was unequalled in carrying an IP67 rating. According to Smythe, the new version "has a 1GHz processor supporting Gingerbread [Android 2.3] and the IP67 dust and water resistance rating. We have preloaded some apps: the cardio trainer - because this devices lends itself very then to the active lifestyle and we have as well included the Zenio Reader. We have worked very hard with Telstra to sell this at $299 as a prepaid device."

IP67 rated device must offer no ingress of dust

An IP67 rated device must offer "no ingress of dust; complete protection against contact [and] ingress of water in harmful quantity shall not be possible when the enclosure is immersed in water in accordance with defined conditions of pressure and time," and Telstra and Motorola will be pushing this aspect of the phone heavily. Smyth said: "Last year we did a 'Summer Proof' marketing campaign for the Defy and we will be continuing that in conjunction with Telstra this year."

The new Sony Ericsson model, the Xperia ARC S, supports HD voice - which Telstra implemented in its network previously this year - and has a 1.4GHz processor. It is able to take panoramic 3D photos that can be viewed on a SD TV set using the active 3D glasses. It will be available for $10 on Telstra's $59 per month Freedom Connect plan.

The price of prepaid mobile broadband devices

Telstra has as well cut the price of prepaid mobile broadband devices: The price of the Elite mobile WiFi devices has been reduced from $129 to $99 and that of the USB Elite broadband from $99 to $79.

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