Slowly but surely, details are emerging about the HTC Dream for T-Mobile. Lets cut to the chase:
On September 17th, T-Mobile will announce the HTC Dream and pre-sale orders will begin immediately. ONLY existing customers will be able to pre-order and the Dream will cost $199 with a 2-year contract. Pre-orders will end on October 3rd at 5pm and the phone will become available at retail on October 13th. If you pre-ordered… your phone should arrive on the 13th as well.
Another thing… you HAVE to pre-order online. Sign up at HTC Dream for instant e-mail notification so you know when the pre-orders begin. T-Mobile isn’t exactly familiar with taking pre-orders for exciting new phones, so you’ll do yourself a favor by getting in early before any potential train wrecks occur.
A monthly $35 data fee is required for HTC Dream to work and you’ll receive unlimited data and messaging for your hard earned dollar. Actually, you can pay only $25 and you’ll receive unlimited data and only 400 messages but you get the idea.
HTC Dream Specs?
GPS isn’t listed in the specs we saw, but I don’t see how they can leave GPS out. SOOOO many of the Applications in the Android Developer’s Challenge are reliant on knowing the GPS location of yourself and your contacts. There’s a reason for this… the future of the mobile web is about providing information based on your current place/situation. You have to think that GPS will pop up on this device and if it doesn’t… its a huge loss for Google, Android, the Open Handset Alliance, T-Mobile and customers in general. It would be somewhat embarrassing to not have GPS on the first Android phone.
We can also see the phone supports only video playback and not video capture. Not necessary (like GPS) but with all the potential “life-streaming” apps that could pop up on Android, why leave it out? The first Android Phone should have been as feature packed as possible – perhaps they had difficulties including specs and decided it was better to release something less than optimal (first) than nothing at all?
A couple other quick notes:
The other big thing we’d like to see change is ship date of the pre-orders. Great, you’re rewarding existing customers by letting them pre-order… thats fantastic. But while you’re sitting at home waiting for your shiny new Dream to arrive, the rest of the world went to their local T-Mobile store bright and early and scooped up the device and now has it before you!
We understand it prevents you from waiting in lines… but for real, how hard could it be to ship the HTC Dream to those who pre-ordered a few days early? DO IT!
[Via TMOWorld]