Sprint’s Dual-Touchscreen Smartphone Bows; 4G Version Possible

Sprint Nextel has launched the dual-touchscreen Kyocera Echo smartphone as part of a product platform that could eventually include 4G and LTE-based models, said John Chier, director of corporate communications at Kyocera.

With Sprint having widely deployed 4G, bringing new versions of the 3G CDMA-based Echo into the higher-speed technology isn’t much of a stretch, Trevor Van Norman, the carrier’s senior manager for handset product marketing, told us. Sprint has deployed 18 4G-capable products since launching with the HTC Evo last year. The carrier also owns 54 percent of 4G service provider Clearwire. The Android 2.2-based Echo, the industry’s first smartphone with dual LCDs, will be available at Sprint in April at $199 on a two-year contract after a $100 mail-in rebate.

The Echo looks like a standard single-screen touch phone when folded closed. But the first screen pivots up and over on two metal hinges to reveal a second display. The first LCD locks into place and stays in the same plane as the second. The LCDs also can be angled on hinges for a notebook PC-like appearance, and the bottom screen provides access to a large capacitive touchscreen QWERTY keyboard.

"It’s the first generation of what we see as a platform,” said Chier, whose company co-branded the phone with Sprint. Echo has “obvious applications” for a 4G network, but there are no immediate plans for introducing a dual-screen model for the high-speed service, Chier said.

Sprint introduce the dual-screen design on its 3G network to bring the technology to market faster and at a lower price, Van Norman said. Coming up with a 4G version might have added six months to the development time and could have produced a phone priced about $250-$300 with a contract, Sprint officials said. The Echo is packaged with a spare 1,370-milliampere battery, has two 3.5-inch LCDs with 800x480 resolution and could have “priced itself out of the market” by adding 4G, Van Norman said. The Echo’s data plan adds $29.99 to a standard $59.99 monthly plan, Sprint said.

The Echo was built with four modes, including single-screen for serving as a standard touchscreen smartphone with complementary functions like previewing e-mail on one display and reading it on the other. It also has a Simul-Task function that allows two of the smartphone’s seven core applications to run separately on the two LCDs.

Among these applications is Photo Gallery, in which thumbnails can be viewed on one LCD while a full picture appears on the other. Sprint has released a software development kit for the Simul-Task mode and has worked with Electronics Arts for 2-3 months on a Sims 3 game, Van Norman said. Also available is VueCue, which will allow users to watch a YouTube video on one LCD while queuing and buffering up to four others on the second screen. The phone also can be switched to a tablet mode in which content can be viewed across the two screens to create a 4.7 inch screen with 800x960 resolution, company officials said.

The Echo is powered by Qualcomm’s 1 GHz QSD 8650 Snapdragon processor and uses the 3G EVDO Rev A CDMA network with average data download speeds of 600 kbps to 1.4 Mbps and uploads of 300-400 kbps, Sprint officials said. The phone can be upgraded to Android 2.3 and has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, five-device hot spot, 1 GB of internal memory and a 5-megapixel digital camera with 720p video capture. It is packaged with an 8 GB MicroSD card and a 3-hour charger, company officials said.

In positioning the Echo below 4G phones, Sprint will emphasize social networking, such as the ability to access a Facebook account on one screen, while using Twitter on the other, Van Norman said. It also will target gaming through a developers network, including 10-20 Sprint software engineers who are creating Simul-Task applications, Van Norman said.

The new smartphone also will be introduced as Sprint this year starts combining its CDMA and iDEN networks. CDMA and iDEN operate in the 1900 and 800 MHz bands, company officials said. The carrier will introduce some new iDEN phones in the first half, but all new models will be CDMA-based starting in the second half, Van Norman. Sprint expects to complete the transition to an all-CDMA network by 2014, Van Norman said. The carrier had 49 million subscribers as of Sept. 30, up from 48.8 million a year earlier. It had 27.3 million CDMA customers, an increase from 26.1 million a year ago, while iDEN declined to 12.3 million from 12.7 million. Sprint is scheduled to release Q4 earnings Thursday.

The Echo also signals Kyocera’s dropping the Sanyo brand, which it acquired in buying Sanyo’s cellphone business in 2008, Chier said. The Echo is the first Kyocera brand phone for Sprint’s postpaid service. Kyocera’s ties to Sprint’s postpaid cellular date from phones first sold in 2001, shortly after the maker bought Qualcomm’s cellphone hardware business, Chier said. It later switched to supporting Sprint’s prepaid Boost and Virgin Mobile businesses, he said.

As Sprint weighs its 4G strategy, Best Buy will be the exclusive national retailer of HTC’s Thunderbolt, which will go on sale this month as the first smartphone for Verizon’s 4G LTE service, Best Buy said. The Thunderbolt is available for presale in Best Buy and 158 Best Buy Mobile standalone stores. Verizon is planning to field 10 4G LTE devices in the first half of 2011, joining USB modems that were introduced in December when it started turning on the 700 MHz LTE service. Other 4G devices include the LG Revolution, Samsung smartphone and Motorola Droid Bionic. Meanwhile, Best Buy will open its stores at 7 a.m. Thursday for the launch of Verizon’s 3G iPhone 4.