Sprint today announced their first Android phone, the HTC Hero. It will be available at Sprint stores and Best Buy for $179.99 after a $50 instant savings and a $100 mail-in rebate with a two-year Simply Everything plan.
The HTC Hero (specs and review) resembles the T-Mobile MyTouch in that it doesn’t have a slid out keyboard. The 3.2-inch capacitive touch-screen supports pinch-to-zoom capability (available with Android 2.0) and HTC Sense, which offers seven home screens and a broad degree of customization.
Other features include:
- 5MP camera and 3.5mm headphone jack
- Stereo Bluetooth 2.0
- Android widgets, with more from the Android Market
- Supports cut, copy and paste
- Wi-Fi and 7.2Mbps HSPA or EVDO Rev A (for Sprint)
- Flash support
- Facebook integration
- HTC Footprints, which lets users create digital postcards with photos, an audio clip and GPS coordinates.
HTC Sense is the seven-panel wide home screen that can be populated with customizable widgets that bring information to the surface. For example, a work Scene can be easily set up to include stock updates, work email and calendar, a play Scene could have music, weather, and a Twitter feed.
Sprint is encouraging developers to download the Android 1.5 SDK and plans an Open Developer Conference on Oct 26.
Sprint’s Simply Everything plan costs between $69-$99/month and includes voice, messaging and internet access.
Smartphones, like Apple’s iPhone, have caused headaches for the AT&T network, explains the NY Times today. More than 20 million other smartphone users are on the AT&T network, but other phones do not drain the network the way the nine million iPhones users do.
The problems seem particularly pronounced in New York and San Francisco, where it’s estimated AT&T’s network shoulders as much as 20 percent of all the iPhone users in the United States.
“It’s been a challenging year for us,” said John Donovan, the chief technology officer of AT&T. “Overnight we’re seeing a radical shift in how people are using their phones,” he said. “There’s just no parallel for the demand.”
AT&T says that the majority of the nearly $18 billion it will spend this year on its networks will be diverted into upgrades and expansions to meet the surging demands on the 3G network.
The company intends to erect an additional 2,100 cell towers to fill out patchy coverage, upgrade existing cell sites by adding fiber optic connectivity to deliver data faster and add other technology to provide stronger cell signals.
According to analyst firm Telegeography, by the end of 2013 the market for 3G and 4G cellular services will have grown to more than 4.5 billion — or about 71 percent of all wireless subscribers.
