China is getting its first official Windows Phone, the HTC Triumph, or the Titan as it is known outside of China. HTC opened its very first Chinese flagship store in Beijing, with the company already taking in pre-orders for the US$700 Titan. Don’t let the naming convention confuse you, the non-Chinese HTC Triumph (known as the HTC Desire) is a totally different mobile to the Chinese Triumph, plus runs Android, not WP 7.5
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Slight localisation differences include retrofitting the OS. The HTC Triumph will run Windows Phone 7.5, known as Tango. Why Tango though? As Microsoft said, it’s primarily designed for low-end devices, but seemingly has its place in high-end mobile phones. Windows Phone senior product manager Greg Sullivan cements Tango’s position in the food chain. “This is Windows Phone 7.5. It’s a refresh.”
This is a top-notch mobile for the upper echelon of smartphone owners. The Triumph is a 4.7-inch, 1.5Ghz CPU-rocking, monster of a mobile phone.
HTC China also promises that social media integration will be part and parcel of the overall package. Facebook and Twitter are axed, and replaced with their Asian equivalents, namely Sina Weibo, Tencent and SkyDrive for cloud access.
Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like Chinese microblogging service (with more users than Twitter itself) brings us images of the HTC Triumph and the new HTC flagship store. With China being the homeland of knock-off mobile phones, can a high-end smartphone breach the gap between cheap crap and luxury smartphone? HTC hopes so. The HTC Triumph is pictured below.
