Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC will now offer its Android users 5Gb of free cloud storage thru file hosting service Dropbox. HTC announced this new partnership on its Facebook page.

The Dropbox app will now come pre-installed on all Android phones running Sense 3.5 going forward. Users will now have access to 3Gb more of free storage on Dropbox in addition to the 2Gb of free storage Dropbox offers everyone when they sign up.

For now HTC is only offering the Dropbox free storage to any phone with Sense 3.5 which really means only HTC Rhyme users can avail of the offer because only HTC Rhyme is running Sense 3.5. The HTC Sensation XL, available next month will also have Sense 3.5. Users with older Android OS will have to wait until HTC announces when their phones can get Sense 3.5.

Cloud storage is emerging as a feature many phone manufacturers are using to persuade customers to choose their devices. Cloud storage is a way for users to store their data on the internet via file hosting services like Dropbox. Apple has the iCloud which allows iOS users to share and sync their data with other iOS devices. Microsoft is offering its own cloud service Skydrive on its Windows Phone 7 Mango OS. Skydrive has 25Gb of cloud storage.

The 5Gb free trial was rumored to last on 12 months but Dropbox hasn't decided how long it will offer the free storage to users. The hesitance on setting a cut-off period could in part be influenced by the upcoming new Google Drive storage which would compete with Dropbox on Android phones.