Mysterious Telus HTC Triumph revealed to be nothing more than a Desire
Almost 3 weeks ago, MobileSyrup.com posted a Telus internal inventory screenshot, listing a ‘HTC Triumph White Handset’. A few days later, the MobileNinjas posted that it had a 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, and that it ‘resembles the HTC Incredible’. Also, members of the Howard Forums Telus HSPA message board had been speculating for weeks what this mysterious phone could be, and all evidence from Industry Canada Certification reports pointed to the Triumph being nothing more that a variation on the HTC Desire — itself a variation on the Nexus 1 running HTC’s Sense UI interface. Yesterday, Mobilesyrup confirmed this with a leaked image.
This is quite a disappointment to many, myself included. The Nexus 1 came out almost half a year ago, and while there are no other carriers in North America offering the Desire yet (nor is there an out-of-the-box Android 2.1 phone in Canada yet), by the time the Triumph is launched it will not stand out from the crowd, since 3.7” screen 1GHz Android phones are becoming the norm, rather than the exception.
At the beginning of June, in the U.S., HTC is launching the amazing 4.3″ screen EVO 4G on Sprint, and at around the same time Google is releasing Android 2.2, that will support Flash and tethering out of the box. It is possible that HTC could surprise us and release the Triumph with Android 2.2, but I would love to see HTC launch something with better hardware instead. How about a HSPA version of the EVO?
How many more variations is HTC going to be able squeeze out of the Nexus 1 chassis? ‘Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigre? They’re the same face! Doesn’t anyone notice this?’
Of course there’s no official word from Telus on this phone yet, and all of the above could turn out to be an inaccurate rumour. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Thanks, great review to the important points. Some really great thoughts here, very comprehensive. I appriciate that!