The largest phone carrier in Australia, Telstra, is looking to bring out the GDR3 update to Windows Phone 8 within the land down under. This is the same update that we have covered a bit when it was originally released back in the United States.
Being from Australia ourselves, we would love to cover the local carriers, but they don’t always offer much of anything to talk about.
What is being reported here is the testing phase being under way. That means that it will indeed be coming, that much is a given. It all just comes down to when exactly the real thing will be issued. From our experience, if all things go smoothly, it could happen within the next 5 to 7 days. There’s a good chance of that since this has already done the rounds to other areas.
When it hits, it will be for the HTC Windows phone 8S, 8X, as well as the Nokia Lumia 925 and Lumia 1020. The images for this update leaked out back in September for the American models. Sprint even got around to using this on the HTC 8XT by the time October was here. Verizon was next to get the goods in November.
In Australia, data is something that is expensive because we don’t get the “free data” deals that have come into many of the other countries of late. Because of that, the new Data Sense app that lets you check out what you are using, much like you would from the website, is a great way to stay on top of all of your charges.
If you have upgraded recently, you may also be eligible for the restrict background while roaming, which will cut the amount of data being used. This is only for certain people from now on. To find out more you can always ask your local dealer.
The Windows Phone received a big notification center upgrade along with this GDR3 update. That is something that the Redmond based firm never had up until now.
If you were to browse the Telstra website it shows January as the month that they had originally wanted to be where we are up to now. It also states February is the time it will launch, making it around a 30 day window between the two. To us, that seems like too long which is why we narrowed our guess, but it is only a guess. The facts are as we just mentioned. It could well be after the New year celebrations before this hits selected handsets.