LG Viper to see launch on April 15th alongside the Galaxy Nexus
by Scott Johnson
Sprint 4G Rollout Updates
Saturday, March 17, 2012 - 8:59 PM MDT
S4GRU.com already broke the launch date of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus this weekend, and now we know that it won’t be the lone device slated to hit store shelves on April 15th. The same sources of our GNex story have also revealed that the LG Viper, Sprint’s other LTE smartphone unveiled at CES, will be ushering in Sprint’s LTE era at a Sprint store near you on April 15th.
You may recall the revealed stat sheet for the Viper, 4 inch 480x800 screen, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, and Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread (surely to be upgraded to 4.0 soon). The Viper will also be sporting the Qualcomm Gobi MDM 9600 for juggling the various data connectivity methods (LTE, EVDO, 1x). As with the Galaxy Nexus, the LG Viper will ship with the LTE radio turned off to save battery life. When more LTE sites come online, Sprint will enable LTE self-discovery, as early as June. LTE self-discovery will allow the phone to intermittently search for LTE, and if it is unavailable, it will turn itself off to reduce battery drain.
It's more "bloat"ed than the Nexus, but tolerable
Those worried about excessive bloatware on the non-Nexus offering by Sprint will be pleased to see the Viper coming preloaded with only Smart Device Manager, Sprint ID, Sprint Zone, Visual Voicemail, NFC, and Google Play. Those interested in Sprint’s application offerings such as NASCAR Mobile, Sprint Football Live, Sprint Music Plus, Sprint Navigation, Sprint TV and Sprint’s NBA Application will be free to download them at will.
While the LG Viper doesn’t have the hefty stat sheet of the Galaxy Nexus or the rumored stats of devices on the horizon, it also doesn’t have the same hefty price. The LG Viper is expected to come in at a noticeably less steep price tag than the Nexus.
4G photo courtesy of intomobile.com
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