HTC Sensation coming in Ice White, ICS for all Sensations

A Dutch PR site broke the news that HTC will be releasing an Ice White color version of the HTC Sensation. To sweeten the deal, the phone will launch with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box. The whole Sensation line will be getting ICS too.

The press release goes over the selling points of the HTC Sensation - 4.3" qHD screen, 8MP camera and so on. The Ice White version will have all those things too.

HTC Sensation in Ice White

The Ice White HTC Sensation is supposed to launch on March 1.

The good news for owners of any Sensation (including the XE and XL) is that they'll be getting Ice Cream Sandwich as an Over-the-Air update soon. No separate date was given for the update, but those things are never simultaneous anyway.

The machine translation from Dutch is a little sketchy, but it seems that Sense UI will be updated too, with a shortcut dock at the bottom of the screen.

US Microsoft stores start accepting Nokia Lumia 900 pre-orders

LTE speeds, a 4.3" AMOLED screen, a 1.4GHz CPU and the oh-so-sweet non-painted polycarbonate unibody - the Nokia Lumia 900 looks like the smartphone to have if you are interested in the WP platform. And thanks to the Microsoft brick and mortar stores, you can now book your unit and make sure you will be among the first to get it.

It costs $25 to pre-order a Lumia 900 and you can have it in either cyan or black. Sadly, there is still no official confirmation of the rumored March 18 launch date, but barring any issues with the technical acceptance of the device, that should be the date to look forward to.

To get the actual Nokia Lumia 900, you will have to sign a two-year contract with AT&T and pay $99 upfront.

Meanwhile, Nokia's CEO, Steven Elop, went on record saying that salesmen are a part of the reason for the WP struggles in the market. According to Elop, the shop assistants aren't doing their best to promote Windows Phone devices, choosing to push other, easier-to-sell platforms instead. Mr. Elop went on to say that the guys and gals in the smartphone shops only "want their commission and tend to only show phones they think might sell".

To be honest that's a rather ridiculous claim - it's only natural that salespeople will show phones think they will actually sell and not waste both theirs and the customers' time instead. It's up to Nokia, Microsoft and the other Microsoft partners to make sure that WP smartphones are actually on that easy-to-sell list.