Telstra shows off its holiday line-up, makes it a very prepaid Christmas

If you were eyeing a new mobile phone handset for yourself or someone else this year, but didn’t want a contract, Telstra is giving you a few new choices in the smartphone space.

Introduced this week, the line-up is very much skewed to Android phones, with three models released sporting different features and price points, all under $300.

First up is the Telstra’s own device, the Telstra Qwerty-Touch, a handset that features exactly what the name says: a QWERTY keyboard and a touchscreen.

Telstra's Qwerty-Touch will come in black and pink.

Manufactured by ZTE, the Qwerty-Touch will come in two colours – Raven Black and Flamingo Pink – and features a 2.6 inch capacitive touchscreen, 2 megapixel camera, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, as well as WiFi, Bluetooth, a speakerphone, and expandable memory.

With the QWERTY keyboard, Telstra is looking at kids and anyone who prefers sending messages on a physical keyboard. It won’t be super thin like a lot of the devices we’re seeing come out, but with a price point of $129, we don’t expect it to be.

LG's $149 prepaid Optimus Spirit.

Next up is the LG Optimus Spirit, a 3.2 inch touchscreen phone that LG and Telstra will be pushing for $149. You’ll find Bluetooth 3.0 support, a 1500mAh battery, WiFi, support for DLNA, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 3 megapixel camera, and expandable memory.

It’s also got Blue Tick support, meaning it’ll perform better in rural areas where mobile coverage normally worsens.

HTC’s Wildfire S is still here (above), introduced earlier this year as a 3.2 inch touchscreen Android handset with a 600MHz processor, 5 megapixel camera, social networking integration, WiFi, and GPS of $199 on prepaid.

Finally, Motorola will be updating its Defy with the $299 Motorola Defy+, updating the “Summer-proof” water-resistant, scratch-resistant, dust-resistant handset. With its predecessor released last year, the new Defy handset has an even faster set of specs, upgrading the 800MHz processor to a 1GHz model, a slightly bigger battery, and shifting Android 2.1 to the latest version of Android, 2.3.

Other than that, the specs are all pretty much the same, with a 5 megapixel camera with flash and auto-focus, Bluetooth 2.1, Blue Tick certification, WiFi, DLNA, and GPS.

Motorola's Defy+ doesn't look different from the original Defy model, although the innards have been upgraded.