The folks at Sprint seem to be having a busy day so far — this morning saw (among other things) the release of the carrier’s latest quarterly financials, an announcement about new LTE markets, and the revelation that birds are keeping the company from lighting up “hundreds” of LTE sites.
If that wasn’t enough Sprint for you, now the carrier has announced the Motorola Photon Q, a new LTE-capable handset with a physical keyboard for all those customers who could stand to do a little future-proofing.
Putting the sizable five-row QWERTY keyboard — which looks as though it’s been transplanted directly from a DROID 4 — the rest of the spec sheet looks rather familiar Like the recently-released Atrix HD for AT&T (which, if you’ll pardon the aside, was quite a treat), the Photon Q sports a lightly-tweaked version of Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, 8GB of internal storage, and an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera. Sadly it sports a slightly smaller 4.3-inch qHD ColorBoost LCD than its 720p cousin on AT&T, but its support for NFC may help to take the sting out of the switch.
As usual, Motorola is playing its cards close to the metaphorical vest when it comes to the Photon Q’s chipset. The last time Motorola did that, it was to conceal the Atrix HD’s Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 SoC, so here’s hoping for another pleasant surprise. Also up in the air at this point is when exactly the device is going to be released; all Motorola and Sprint will say for now is that the hefty-looking device is “coming soon.” With any luck, you’ll have some sweet LTE access in your neck of the woods when the little guy launches, but I’d advise against holding your breath.
