Dallas – AT&T plans Feb. 13 sales of its
first 4G smartphone, the Android 2.2-based
, priced at $99.99 with
two-year contract through the carrier’s company-owned stores and
.
The Inspire will be available Feb. 13 through AT&T-owned stores, the carrier’s web site, dealers, and select national retailers, the carrier said.
The device will
also be AT&T’s first Android phone with the 2.2 version of the OS, the
carrier’s first phone with embedded mobile hot spot, and the phone with the
largest screen size in the AT&T portfolio at 4.3 inches. It’s also the
first phone in the U.S. with HTC’s next-generation Sense user interface experience
and HTC cloud-based services, including Friendstream and remote wipe.
With 4.3-inch
screen and 1GHz processor, the HTC Inspire 4G “is the first true superphone to
launch at under $100,” said HTC Americas president Jason Mackenzie.
The Inspire is the first of more than 20 4G
devices that AT&T said at International CES would be available during the
year. Also at CES, AT&T said it would deliver two 4G phones in the first
quarter, including the Samsung Infuse 4G, and a total of five to seven 4G
devices in the first half.
The HTC Inspire operates in 3G/4G mode only in
its 850/1,900MHz bands, so it won’t operate in 3G/4G mode in other countries.
AT&T 4G phones using 700MHz 4G LTE technology, which will deliver faster
data speeds, will be available in the second half following the mid-2011 of LTE
service in select markets. The LTE rollout is expected to be largely complete
at the end of 2013.
The carrier also
plans to launch two 4G tablets — including its first LTE tablet — by mid-summer,
with additional LTE tablets planned for the second half of 2011.
HSPA+ capability has been deployed in almost
100 percent of the AT&T network, and when combined with an Ethernet or
fiber base-station backhaul, it delivers download speeds up to 6Mbps. AT&T
said it expects the backhaul enhancements to be installed in almost two-thirds
of its network by the end of the year.
For use in the HSPA+ network, the HTC Inspire
4G offers 4.3-inch capacitive LCD touchscreen, 1 GHz Snapdragon processor,
8-megapixel camera/camcorder with 720p video capture, dual LED flash,
autofocus, Adobe Flash, 4GB embedded memory, included 8GB microSD card, Dolby
Mobile and SRS WOW HD sound technologies, and an aluminum unibody design. It
comes preloaded with a Blockbuster application and e-reader app.
The next-generation HTC Sense user interface
includes HTC’s FriendStream service, which delivers Facebook, Twitter and Flickr
updates in a consolidated view. The Inspire 4G also lets owners pinpoint the
location of a lost phone on a map and send a command to make the phone sound an
alert — even if the phone is in silent mode — through the htcsense.com
website. Owners can also remotely wipe all of the phone’s data with a single
command in addition to forwarding calls and text messages to a different
number.
HTC Inspire
4G requires a minimum data service starting at $15/mo. Activating the mobile
hot spot capability requires a DataPro Tethering Plan on top of that.
