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Who woulda thunk it? Canada has just proved to be the first North American market to offer the hottest new touchscreen flavor from HTC. Our favorite Taiwanese ODM-turned global smartphone-manufacturing powerhouse has finally made good on their promise to bring their highly acclaimed HTC Touch Diamond to the North American market. Unfortunately for us Stateside, Canada will be the first North American market to show off the HTC Touch Diamond.

The full-body touchscreen, sleek design, and slim-waistline of the HTC Touch Diamond aren't going to be exclusive European treats for much longer. HTC is bringing the HTC Touch Diamond to Telus later this summer.

A $149.99 admission price (with 3-year contract, of course) gets you all the Windows Mobile 6.1-powered, 2.8-inch VGA display (complementing the new TouchFLO 3D UI), GPS, WiFi, and 3 megapixel camera goodness that you can handle. Oh, and EVDO Rev. A data connectivity rounds out the HTC Touch Diamond's massively impressive feature-set - ensuring that you're never more than a button click and a few seconds away from accessing all the web's knowledge-base.

And, with Telus offering a $15 unlimited email and IM (instant message) data package alongside a $30 unlimited internet, email, and IM data add-on, the HTC Touch Diamond will likely be ready to throw down with Bell Mobility's Samsung Instinct. Of course, there's the iPhone 3G hitting Rogers next week, but with a cheaper data plan and that glorious VGA display on the HTC Touch Diamond, Rogers is going to have to work hard to keep customers interested in the iPhone.

We can't wait to get our hands on the HTC Touch Diamond. VGA, WiFi, GPS, and TouchFLO 3D? Yes, please.

Update: EVDO is definitely more befitting Telus' network. Edited.

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LG enV2 has been launched in the U.S. back in April. Now Telus is reportedly working to introduce the texter's dream phone in Canada. The Nokia Communicator lookin' device may not be a smartphone, but has just the right specs for a modern young heavy texter.

Thanks to the full QWERTY keyboard, users will be able to type and send messages at lightning speeds. There's also 2 megapixel camera on board, as well as music player, Bluetooth support, microSD card slot, and dedicated gaming keys.

Unfortunately, we don't have any information about the launch date nor pricing, but it's kinda fair to argue it's all about the timing, so why wait?

[Via: MobileSyrup]

Canadian CDMA carrier Telus Mobility is considering a move to LTE technology. The report cites an interview with Telus' CTO Ibrahim Gedeon, stating that the operator "is evaluating LTE as its next-generation wireless network technology of choice."

Such a move would see Telus follow other CDMA players in transferring over to the GSM family of technologies. In the U.S., two CDMA carriers, Alltel and Verizon (which are in the midst of a merger) both committed to LTE, whilst Japan's KDDI and China Telecom have also been linked with a similar move.

From what I can tell, it's good to see more an more mobile operators jumping towards LTE. At the end, consumers will be the one that will benefit from a single standard, enabling them to freely roam around the world with a single device.

With 5.7 million subscribers at the end of Q1 2008, Telus Mobility is the third largest operator in Canada. Market leader, Rogers Wireless, has 7.4 million subscribers, while Bell Canada Mobility has 6.2 million subscribers.

[Via: Light Reading]

The latest hit to the US in the informal battle for superiority between the US and our neighbors to the North comes in the form of the Canadian AWS spectrum auction. Yes, there's an informal battle, it's true because I just said so.

It seems the Canadian AWS spectrum auction has so far garnered bids in excess of $3.11 billion, raising the cost of acquiring each Mhz of spectrum to more than $0.80 per person covered by said spectrum. Compare that to the $0.54 cents paid per Mhz per person for the US AWS spectrum, and it's clear that Canadian carriers are doling out the serious bucks to get their hands on the new spectrum - far more than we saw with the US AWS auction.

It should be interesting to see which of the Canadian big-dogs, Rogers or Telus, will come away the winner in this auction. But, you can bet that more advanced wireless services are in store for Canadians.

[Via: RCR]

When it comes to stylistic and sleek designs, design-house Pininfarina, of Ferrari fame, is as good as it gets. The Ferrari designer has put their design genius to bring a new flip phone for Motorola. The Motorola Mike i877 has been launched on Telus with Bluetooth, multimedia player, microSD card slot, miniUSB, 1.3-megapixel camera, and PTT (push-to-talk).

The spec sheet is a bit of a letdown for a handset designed by Pininfarina. But, with a price tag as low as $149.99 (on 3-year contract), the Motorola Mike i877 is an attractive deal for Telus subscribers looking for a stylish PTT handset.

Head on over to Telus's website for more info.

Telus

[Via: MobileInCanada]

Telus has added LG's stylish semi-touchscreen device - Venus. The "semi" part is there to say only the lower display (240×176) is a touchscreen, while the upper one is a regular QVGA screen.

In addition, the LG Venus sports 2 megapixel camera, media player, stereo Bluetooth support, GPS, EVDO, 2.5mm headset jack and microSD memory slot. As for the Telus services supported, you can count on TELUS mobile music, TELUS mobile radio, Navigator, and TELUS mobile TV. The Canadian CDMA carrier is selling the device from CA$99.99 on a three-year term to CA$399.99 without any contract. More information is available on Telus' website.

[Via: MobileInCanada]

Our friends to the North will be happy to hear that Telus has followed through on rumors that they'll be launching a Canadian-flavored BlackBerry Curve 8330. The sleek, yet full-featured BlackBerry Curve 8330 offers BlackBerry fans a good dose of EVDO data, GPS, Bluetooth, and 2 megapixel camera. That is, when it finally launches on Telus's network - no word on exactly when that will be.

And, in a more solid launch, Telus has announced that the Motorola Q9c is ready to pull duty as the CDMA carrier's slim Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard handset. Moto Q9c fans in Canada can expect a 1.3 megapixel camera, EVDO data, and Bluetooth - all powered by Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard. The Motorola Q9c is available on Telus for about $150 CDN after 3-year contract(!).

Head on over to Telus for more details.

Telus

Thanks to the eagle eyed folks of MobileInCanada, we've spotted that the LG Venus — which is already available in the U.S. via Verizon — is ready to hit the Canadian mobile phone market. Telus is LG's carrier of choice and starting from mid-April, Canadians will be able to grab one of the coolest looking phones in black. The pink version is also scheduled to be released, but interested buyers will have to wait a bit more in order to get it. According to Telus' release — which goes after the jump — the the pink Venus will be available later in the spring. Pricing is not unveiled, but we don't expect it to be through the roof. Like the 3-year plan is not binding enough… And now the mentioned release.

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In Canada, Telus Mobility is launching a new discount wireless provider called "Koodo Mobile." And while they still haven't announced anything official we managed to get some early info.

There's no doubt that with tagline "Good Call", and sentences like "Get Fat-Fee Mobility", "Make every second count with per-second billing", "We stretch your budget with plans starting at $15 a month" and "We let you drop that chubby contact" Telus is targeting youth audience, which wants to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack while at the same time doesn't want to pay tons of cash for their bills.

The official launch of Koodo Mobile and the website at www.koodomobile.com is set for tomorrow, so we'll have more information within less than 24 hours.

As a reminder, two other carriers in Canada also have separate youth-oriented wireless brands - Rogers' Fido and Bell's Solo.

[Via: MobileSyrup]

We're not exactly sure what's Telus up to, but apparently they'll be rolling out two interesting devices in the near future - BlackBerry 8330 Curve and Samsung U740.

The first one was briefly spotted by HowardForums' member "blackdogs377" who even got the screenshot of the Canadian carrier's website to prove. Soon after he posted it, Telus put the Curve down showing the pink BlackBerry Pearl instead. Hopefully, this was just a temporary glitch and CrackBerry addicts across Canada will be able to grab the full QWERTY keyboard equipped device in the next few days or so.

Then comes the Samsung U740. Actually, Engadget was tipped that Telus will get the U720 soon and will call it "Flipper" so they assumed it's the same device as the U740, which was recently renamed to Alias by Verizon. As usual, we'll have to wait a bit more and see where all this goes…

[Via: Engadget Mobile]