The HTC Sensation is a very big deal for HTC, and for smartphone enthusiasts. It represents HTC’s flagship for 2011, and with it comes several firsts. It’s the first shipping HTC phone to pack a dual-core CPU, what’s more, it’s the official debut of Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon CPU, which clocks at 1.2GHz, just like the Exynos chip found on the Samsung Galaxy S 2. It’s also HTC’s first phone to go beyond WVGA 800×480 resolution; the Sensation has a qHD display, making for 960×540 pixels. The Sensation is coming to T-Mobile later in June as the Sensation 4G, and we’ll be seeing a flavor of it on Sprint and in Europe as the EVO 3D, also due later this month. Expect to see the Sensation see a release on many carriers around the world, just like we saw with HTC’s 2010 flagship, the Desire HD. But it’s shipping now in Europe, and it happens to have the same bands as the upcoming Sensation 4G on T-Mobile, which means that if you’ve got the cash, you can have the Sensation early.

Right now you can get an HTC Sensation early from Negri Electronics where they are selling for $748 unlocked.

Some first impressions:

- The curved glass display feels very “soft” in the hand

- Screen sensitivity is fantastic

- HTC has done a lot to take advantage of the higher resolution display; built-in apps have been revamped to take advantage of more pixels, like email, calendar, and others

- After playing with the APN data settings, we’re running on HSDPA on T-Mobile, seeing speeds of up to 7mbps down in on etest. It’s possible that with further APN tweaking, we can get this to work on HSPA+ to get even higher data speeds