Earlier this morning, a wave of excitement broke out amongst HTC Touch HD hopefuls here in the US after some eagle-eye spotted 850 / 1900 MHz UMTS (AT&T’s 3G frequencies) bands in the not-for-public-consumption service manual. This, of course, went against October’s announcement that no such version was in the works, leading some to believe that HTC had silently changed their mind.
Not so, says HTC. We reached out for comment, and here was their response:
We were as surprised by these documents as you were. There are no plans to launch a version other than the 900/2100 model on the market today. Our belief is that since service manuals are not public facing documents, they are not fact checked with the same rigor as our product releases, but we are checking into how or why this information was included.
Now, you might see the word “today” at the end of that sentence and think they were sneakily trying to say “There are no plans to launch another version… today.”, so that they can go and launch another version next week. So, we reached out for a comment on their comment, and they verified that there are no plans to launch a version other than the 900/2100 model, period.
So the Touch HD might do 2100Mhz. I believe that T-mobile operates on this frequency. Maybe this bad boy will work on T-Mobile in the US. Even better would be if Android gets ported to this phone as well.
What I’d like to know is “Why?” It seems HTC has been asked to comment on various questions. But has anyone asked them why they won’t make a version of the touch HD for the US?
The reasoning was put out there right off the bat.
From the original announcement:
“sad news, US. we looked into it- by the time we could bring Touch HD to the states, it would be old news. we do have other cool stuff coming”
That reason doesn’t cut it. HTC made the decision not to make a version for the US many months ago. They could have brought it to the US market much sooner had they simply made the decision to do so.
So the question remains: why didn’t they originally decide to make a version of the Touch HD for the US market?
I purchased a imported unit in Chicago at Overseas Electronics last Wednesday. I have T-Mobile and it works great. I can bluetooth tether to a HTC Shift, MacBook Pro, and two Sony Vaios. It was so easy to set up. I acually bought it as a alternative to one of those little Sony USB GSM modems. The thing I’m looking into is if this phone is a 3G phone. T-Mobile has 3G in Chicago and they say my data plan includes 3G service but I only get the Big E.
Probably won’t ever work, unfortunately. You would need both 1700mhz (for incoming data) and 2100mhz (for outgoing data) for it to work. Most European 3G networks that run on the 2100mhz band only use the one.
HTC Engineers they don’t have the vision to realize that phones travel to different countries. or maybe someone transfers to us for limited time and wants to use the 3G service. what do you expect from engineering team that has been looking 3 years at Iphone and cant even copy something close to it.
you expect them to see further ahead and design the phone that would work everywhere. they only care for their new product. you want a company to care for customers and upgrade them as they go, to say thanks to people support them. you buy apple product. they make money with new product and don’t forget their customer base. dont expect that from HTC