Although the HTC Aria is not that special an Android mid range smartphone, when the handset was first announced it was expected that AT&T would hold exclusivity over the device, but that expectation is quite wrong apparently.

According to an article over on Intomobile by Dusan Belic, the work is that the HTC Aria is heading down under to the land of the kangaroo, namely Australia and will be offered on the Optus network as an exclusive.

According to HTC, Australia’s Optus will offer their customers the HTC Aria as a free smartphone when signing up for a two year agreement at $49 per month, which isn’t too bad a deal I guess.

Reminder of what the HTC Aria offers…a 3.2 inch capacitive touch screen, 5 megapixel camera, Android 2.1 operating system, 600 MHz processor, 348MB RAM, 512MB ROM, HSDPA along with WiFi, microSD expansion and a 1200mAh battery.