By Patrick Avenell

India and New Zealand might have beaten Australia to the punch, but the HTC Sensation is coming, with Telstra this morning announcing it will be the exclusive carrier of the Android smartphone from next month.

Australian HTC fans dedicated to getting the Sensation have had to patiently sit through launches of the Desire S, the Wildfire S, and several WinMo7 phones in anticipation of this release.

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Telstra has provided no exact date or pricing for the Sensation, though it has provided some chagrin for Vodafone, who will be joining HTC to launch the Salsa and ChaCha handsets on Thursday. Considering the anticipation for this smartphone – we’ve received more enquiries about it than any other handset this year – discussion of the Sensation threatens to disrupt Vodafone’s big day.

Key features of the Sensation include Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) with HTC Sense 3.0, 4.3-inch qHD touchscreen, 1.2GHz dual processor, an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash, 1080p video recording and 1GB of internal memory (backed up with an included 8GB MicroSD card).

As mentioned above, there is no pricing as yet for the Sensation, though we predict it will be available on Telstra’s Freedom Connect plans, plus a monthly payment, most comparable to the Samsung Galaxy S II.

Telstra has established a pre-release information site in the lead-up to the launch of the HTC Sensation.

The new HTC Sensation.