14 DAY TRIAL // Exclusively sold by AT&T and Telstra carriers in North America, HTC Aria crossed the continent to reach Taiwan where it will be shipped starting tomorrow 5th August. This might be the first step to bring the smartphone to the European continent. Even though this is a mid-budget smartphone, the official announcement mentions that it will be sold for no less than 14,900 Taiwanese dollars, which is about 400 Euro.
HTC Aria is a sleek smartphone that features a standard bar form factor, and measures 104.1 x 58.4 x 11.7 mm (107.7g weight). The phone was released through AT&T and Telstra operators in June 2010. It is powered by a Qualcomm MSM 7227 600 MHz processor and runs Android 2.1 OS (Eclair). Aria seems to be HTC's replica to the older Motorola Milestone, but without the QWERTY keyboard. Fortunately HTC Aria will get the Froyo update before Milestone gets it.
The mid-budget smartphone sports a 5.0-megapixel camera with autofocus, a 3.2-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with 262K colors (320x480 pixels resolution), accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate, proximity sensor for auto turn-off, optical trackpad, touch sensitive controls, and HTC Sense UI.
Other highlights of HTC Aria include: quadband compatibility (GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) and dualband WCDMA (HSDPA 850 / 1900), Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support, microUSB, Stereo FM radio with RDS, built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, 512 MB ROM and 384 MB RAM, microSD slot for memory card (up to 32GB, 2GB card included), and 3.5 mm audio jack port. HTC Aria is officially available in Taiwan starting on August 5th for about 400 Euro. The phone is sold unlocked, hence the higher price. Hopefully Europeans will get a cheaper price, in case the Taiwanese manufacturer decides to bring the smartphone to Europe this year.