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While the folks in Australia have been able to get pretty darn close by means of the HTC Desire released through Telstra, today marks the launch of the Nexus One exclusively through Vodafone Hutchison Australia. The phone goes on sale for free on a 24-month contract at $79. Along with the announcement, VHA also began offering restructured data plans giving customers “anywhere from double to ten time the current data allocation, depending on the plan.” No word on whether the handset is launching with Android 2.2 pre-installed like in South Korea, but the report at the Sydney Morning Herald seems to indicate that it will ship with 2.1.
In related news, Telstra dropped the contract prices for the Desire to $49 and $79 while increasing bandwidth limits to 200MB and 500MB respectively. So if you’re in Australia, which one do you choose?
[via Sydney Morning Herald, thanks to Roni for the heads up!]
![Sydney Morning Herald](<img class="thumbnail" src="http://phandroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/htc-quietly-brilliant-150x82.jpg" alt="">){kind=link}
i work for VHA and i heard it first through here than i did through my retail store hahaha
“The phone goes on sale for free on a 24-month contract at $79. ” Maybe if they offered that kind of pricing in the US, the superphone wouldn’t have been a monumental failure.
Shayne – Do you know which version you’re getting there? I’ve got the tmo version and am hoping to visit some friends in Sydney at the end of the year, hoping to use my nexus one with a vodaphone prepaid sim. Will it work with your 3G?
Telstra is good and it does have the infrastructure. But until they get some sense into them with their data limits, they’re still not the best choice for an Adroid user. I wouldn’t switch to Telstra until I see about 1GB at their $50 cap point. I’m on Optus at the moment; and I do hate the service, but Telstra just doesn’t work for me.
I mean, if you’ve got a Desire on Telstra (which is their flagship Android phone) and use it even remotely frequently. You’re going to SOAR over the 200mb limit, at which it becomes $0.25 a KILOBYTE.
@Chimphappyhour, the tmo ones work on Aussie 3G but do not support Telstra NextG bands. We will most likely be getting the UK compatible one…
The links are not working… please repair the. I am talking about the Via link and other external link in the body of the article itself.
BTW, it’s great Nexus One still launching given the releases coming up shortly, like Droid X and Samsung EPIC 4G.
Shaun – Cool! I was told to go with a Vodaphone prepaid when I get there so no worries about the Telstra bands. Thanks! :)
It’s cool that the N1 has finally hit Australian shores, but it is going to be a tough sell when the Desire on Telstra’s far superior network is free on the $49 plan (albeit with less data) and the Samsung Galaxy S is free on the Optus’s $59 plan with 1Gb of data.
Is it crippled in some way, as in, does it have a more difficult to root ROM than the standard one if you buy directly from Google?
I switched from 3 & got 1 each for the missus & myself on the 30th May & are now stuck paying the extra $17 odd per handset each on the old $49 cap. I rang Telstra to complain but they wouldn’t budge & drop the handset instalments. I was planning on moving my home phone & internet to Telstra as well, but with that kind of service or total lack of, they can forget it!
@Chimphappyhour, what Shaun said is spot on!
i just went to a vodafone store and they knew nothing. they knew less than nothing. they didn’t even know that it had been released/may be released soon.
:'(