Canadians no longer need to rely on unlocked smartphones to get their Android fix. Canadian carrier Rogers Wireless has announced that it will bring both the HTC Dream and Magic (Sapphire) to the Great White North beginning in June. After months of not having a viable option other than purchasing an unlocked Dream, cell phone users in Canada will soon have an official plan and at least two Android devices to choose from.
Rogers gives itself a big pat on the back, announcing:
“Who else but Rogers would be the first carrier to offer Canadians the first chance to join the mobile revolution with a choice of not one, but two, handsets powered by the Android platform?”, said John Boynton, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Rogers Wireless. “[The Dream and Magic] offer outstanding wireless internet search capabilities and a full suite of applications that run two times faster on Canada’s fastest mobile network.”
I’m surprised that it took this long for Rogers to offer an Android phone. The company is the largest mobile phone operator in Canada and already owns exclusive rights to the iPhone. Though some may be reluctant to sign up with Rogers, there’s at least an easier solution for running Android in Canada now. Sign-up for more updates on price and availability at www.rogers.com/revolution.
May 7th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
I wonder if this means anyone with unlocked G1's here in Canada can get 3G now? Did HTC make a change to the phones to support Rogers' 3G, or maybe Rogers updated their network to support the 3G in the G1?
May 14th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Those of us with unlocked / dev phones might be in for a nice surprise – Roger apparently paid 1 billion last summer to acquire the Canadian rights to the 1700/2100 AWS spectrum (http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/July20... Starting to look like they might actually be rolling out a new data network with the Android phones…
May 16th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
i dont know guys i think globalive owns the 1700/2100 bands now…
it would be great if we could use t-mobile phones in canada with 3G, but dont get your hopes up
May 27th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
I'm not surprised that it took this long at ALL. Rogers is notorious for taking *forever* to come out with new phones, and the phones that they DO choose are almost always crap… Us poor Canadians have been stuck *well* behind the phone tech curve for quite some time now, thank GOD Apple was on the ball with forcing the iPhone 3G into multiple markets at the same time, otherwise we might only have been seeing it here this year. Rogers seems to be getting a bit better (and thankfully Bell is pushing them a little bit, finally, by snagging the Palm Pre out from under them) but it's still pretty attrocious the limited selection we have up here.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
I am glad that we got this now in Canada, and today I called up rogers and asked when they were pushing 1.6 to all of thief customers and they gave me some line about, it was only pushed to t-mobile users because of a phone hardware issue, I should be expecting 2.0 but there was no eta on that push. Anybody have any ideas on how to get around BS like that?