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Rumor: T-Mobile USA training employees on HTC Desire

March 9, 2010 | by Andrew Kameka

Featured post, HTC

Rumor: T-Mobile USA training employees on HTC Desire

Someone I follow on Twitter claimed that his friend – a manager at a T-Mobile store – was being trained on several phones slated to come to the carrier this year. Among those phones was a little device known as the HTC Desire.

I reached out to a couple of contacts I have at T-Mobile retail locations and both told me similar stories: their managers went for training on new devices, and they strongly suspect that the HTC Desire was one of those devices. Neither person I spoke to could definitively say that the Desire is coming to T-Mobile USA, but both have reason to believe it. One person told me:

“My manager said that [he/she] trained on a phone but was sworn to secrecy. It’s probably the Desire…[he/she] said it was awesome and it was Android.”

The second source’s manager also copped to testing a new Android phone but wouldn’t tell the employee the phone’s name. It was all touchscreen and large, so it’s definitely not the CLIQ XT, according to the source.

The Desire has been confirmed for virtually every major carrier in the UK but not for any carrier in the U.S. I don’t consider this news as confirmation because phones usually don’t carry the same branding in the U.S. as they do in Europe. The fact that a retail manager would call a phone by its European name is cause for concern. However, I’m excited that three different people who have no knowledge of each other would share near-identical stories.

UPDATE: Some people have suggested in the comments and on Twitter that the sources may have been confused by the HTC HD2 or maybe it’s the Nexus One finally going to stores. I can say without doubt that it is not the HD2 they are referring to since both people specifically said it was an Android phone. One person contacted me and confirmed that the phone in question wasn’t the HD2.

The Nexus One finally being sold in stores is something I’m more likely to believe. Even though I think T-Mobile managers would know enough about the device to tell the difference between an N1 and a Desire, the Nexus would fit into the large screen Android description.

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