HTC Desire A8182 from Telus

I bought myself a new toy hot on the heals of loving the Nexus one, a Telus Desire. I did my research and confirmed that the 3G frequencies this phone uses 850/1900 are the same needed to work with Rogers/Fido. The phone is a BARGAIN. Telus are selling it off contract for $449. The catch is that the Telus stores won’t sell it to you off contract. Wait isn’t that false advertising? They even have displays advertising it. But they refuse to honor it. The authorized distributors on the other hand seem to be ignoring the Telus directive. I found a Blacks store (pointed out to me my J.T. thanks buddy) that had one in stock and was willing to sell it off contract. I grabbed it quickly. Be careful there are a number of Desire models. The A8182 is the ONLY one with the North American Fido/Rogers/AT&T frequencies. Check the box BEFORE you leave the store.

The phone is locked to Telus so you can’t put any SIM other than Telus’s in. Fortunately unlocking has become trivial. When you power on the phone with a foreign SIM in it it simply asks for the unlock code. You just need to get on for your phone. These are based on the IMEI for your phone, a unique serial number for every phone. You can find it on the box or in Phone Status inside Android. The phone will work with no SIM present so you can use it on WIFI and set it up while you wait for your unlock code.

On ebay and on the web I found a number of cheap unlocks. I found one for example from Unlock Freedom but they came back and told me they couldn’t get a code for my phone. So back to ebay and found one that explicitly said Telus Desire Unlock code. It cost more (30 Vs 10) but actually worked. I got it from mobilexpresscanada.com.

I can confirm once unlocked the phone works on Rogers/Fido 3G and HSDPA frequencies for voice and data. You will need to Add the Fido APN, needless to say Telus don’t include the settings for Fido. Who knew. To add this APN:

Menu settings on the home screen. Wireless & Networks, Mobile Networks, Access Point Names, Menu, New APN. Name fido, APN internet.fido.ca, Username fido, password fido.

Once setup you will see an icon around the middle of the screen with an arrow up and down. One indicates data incoming and one data outgoing. It will also show you the speed of the connection. An E means Edge (slowest possible), 3G, and H which is the fastest. I am seeing a speed of around 1.2Mb/s.

The phone is running Android 2.1 (pooh) update 1. Telus have not released a formal date that the 2.2 update will be sent out. You can download the 2.2 update directly from HTC (I haven’t done it) but it is not a trivial process and you could brick your phone. Been there done that (on my G1) never got the T-Shirt 🙂 The device is full HTC Sense UI, something the Nexus One lacked.

I’ll be working on a thorough review of the phone soon to come.