Ridgeland, Miss. – Regional
carrier Cellular South became the second U.S. carrier to announce plans to
offer HTC’s first Android-based CDMA world phone, the
.
Carrier Alltel Wireless of Little
Rock, Ark., recently announced plans to sell the Merge beginning April 7
in stores and on its web site for $124.99 after a $50 mail in rebate and a new
two-year service agreement.
Cellular
South will offer the Merge sometime in April at an unannounced price.
On the Cellular South network, the
Merge will be the preloaded with the new Amazon Appstore for Android, making
the carrier the first to offer the app preloaded on a phone. The app lets users
download Android apps from Amazon, although consumers could also download apps
from Google’s Android Market.
The Android 2.2-based Merge operates in U.S. 850/1900MHz 3G CDMA Rev. A
networks, in overseas 2.1GHz 3G HSPA networks, and in U.S. and overseas
GSM/EDGE networks.
The Merge features a slide-from-the-side
QWERTY keyboard, 3.8-inch capacitive touchscreen with haptic feedback and pinch-to-
zoom capability, 720p video capture, GPS, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, 5-megapixel camera
with flash and autofocus, HTC’s Sense user interface, and HTC’s FriendStream
social-media aggregation service, which delivers Facebook, Twitter and Flickr
updates in a consolidated view.
The phone also features a 800MHz
Qualcomm processor, 2GB embedded memory, included 8GB MicroSD card, stereo
Bluetooth 2.1, and integration with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync
From the phone’s preloaded Amazon Appstore
app, or from any web-browsing device including PCs, users can find, try and buy
Android apps and take advantage of such Amazon features as personalized
recommendations, customer reviews, one-click payment options and product
descriptions that include screenshots and video content showing the apps in
action.
All apps will be Amazon-tested before they are
made available in the Appstore, Amazon said.
