Sprint is offering the "green" LG Viper 4G LTE smartphone for preorder sales on April 12. The device offers NFC, a $100 price tag and free cloud storage. The official sales date, however, is probably closer to Sprint's midyear LTE launch.
Sprint will begin accepting preorders
for the LG Viper 4G LTE April 12, continuing the pairs legacy of offering eco-friendly
phones. Before getting to the Earth-friendly details, however, a little news on
how the phone can also save you some green: Until July 22, users can download
Box from Google Play and receive 50GB of free cloud storage and sharingan
offer Sprint estimates to be worth $240 per year.
Sprint has yet to announce an exact
sales date, but it will be sometime later in April.
The Viper 4G LTE is priced at $100,
after a two-year contract and $50 mail-in rebate. Hows that for a pricing
head-to-head with the also-LTE-friendly Nokia Lumia 900? The Viper 4G LTE can
be paired with Sprints Everything plan, offering unlimited Web, texting and
calling for $80 a month. (Sprint would like to helpfully point out that this is
$40 less than a comparable Verizon Wireless plan with unlimited talk, text and
2GB Web and $10 less than the Verizon 450-minute plan with 2GB of Web.)
The very iPhone 3GS-looking smartphone
measures 4.59 by 2.44 by 0.46 inches and features a 4-inch WVGA touch-screen.
Android 2.3, known as Gingerbread, is on board, along with a 1.2GHz dual-core
processor, a microSD card slot that supports 32GB of memory, a 5-megapixel
camera on the back and a VGA camera up front.
The Viper 4G LTE can also act as a
mobile hotspot, simultaneously sharing 3G and 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology
with up to five WiFi-enabled devices. It supports Sprint ID, so users can
customize their phones with packs of wallpaper and ringtones and widgets, and
it includes near-field communication (NFC) technology.
NFC enables users to grab info from
posters or stickers embedded with NFC chips and is the key to Google Wallet,
which is also on board and is now accepted for quick payments by thousands of
retailers, including Toys "R" Us, CVS, Gap, Macys and Bloomingdale's.
As for those other green credentials,
the Viper 4G LTE:
is UL Environment (ULE) Platinum
Certified, the highest environmental performance recognized by the ULE and
Sprint.
is constructed from 50 percent recycled
plastics.
comes with a charger that only
consumes 0.03 watts of power when its plugged into the wall but not a phone.
comes in packaging that contains
up to 87 percent post-consumer paper, uses soy ink, is made with a glueless
construction and is 100 percent recyclable.
is RoHS-compliant (referring to
the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive), and thus is free of
hazardous stuff like PVC, phthalates, halogens and mercury.
The pairs earlier eco-friendly
offerings were the LG Remarq and the LG Rumor Reflex.
As for the Viper 4G LTEs ability to
hop on Sprints speedy 4G LTE network, well, its coming. Sprint, of course, currently
offers 4G via Clearwires WiMax network. Its LTE network, along with what it
calls enhanced 3G wont be live until midyear, when it launches in Atlanta,
Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and San Antonio.
Back in 2009, LG announced it wanted to
be the worlds No. 2 handset maker, which meant upsetting Nokia, the longtime
leader by a margin, or Samsung. According to an April 3 comScore report, LG
has at least achieved that goal in the United States,
where Nokia controls far less market share than across the pond and Samsung has
had tremendous luck with its Galaxy line of devices.
According to three-month study ending
in February, comScore found 25.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers to now be
using Samsung phones, 19.4 percent to be using LG phonesdown from 20.5 percent
during the three months ending in Novemberand 13.5 percent to be using Apple iPhones.
In December 2010, LG was also the first
manufacturer, with its Optimus 2X, to introduce
a dual-core processor on a smartphone. At the
time, LG CEO Jong-seok Park called it proof of LGs commitment to high-end
smartphones¦
Sprint will begin accepting preorders
for the LG Viper 4G LTE April 12, continuing the pairs legacy of offering eco-friendly
phones. Before getting to the Earth-friendly details, however, a little news on
how the phone can also save you some green: Until July 22, users can download
Box from Google Play and receive 50GB of free cloud storage and sharingan
offer Sprint estimates to be worth $240 per year.
Sprint has yet to announce an exact
sales date, but it will be sometime later in April.
The Viper 4G LTE is priced at $100,
after a two-year contract and $50 mail-in rebate. Hows that for a pricing
head-to-head with the also-LTE-friendly Nokia Lumia 900? The Viper 4G LTE can
be paired with Sprints Everything plan, offering unlimited Web, texting and
calling for $80 a month. (Sprint would like to helpfully point out that this is
$40 less than a comparable Verizon Wireless plan with unlimited talk, text and
2GB Web and $10 less than the Verizon 450-minute plan with 2GB of Web.)
The very iPhone 3GS-looking smartphone
measures 4.59 by 2.44 by 0.46 inches and features a 4-inch WVGA touch-screen.
Android 2.3, known as Gingerbread, is on board, along with a 1.2GHz dual-core
processor, a microSD card slot that supports 32GB of memory, a 5-megapixel
camera on the back and a VGA camera up front.
The Viper 4G LTE can also act as a
mobile hotspot, simultaneously sharing 3G and 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology
with up to five WiFi-enabled devices. It supports Sprint ID, so users can
customize their phones with packs of wallpaper and ringtones and widgets, and
it includes near-field communication (NFC) technology.
NFC enables users to grab info from
posters or stickers embedded with NFC chips and is the key to Google Wallet,
which is also on board and is now accepted for quick payments by thousands of
retailers, including Toys "R" Us, CVS, Gap, Macys and Bloomingdale's.
As for those other green credentials,
the Viper 4G LTE:
· is UL Environment (ULE) Platinum
Certified, the highest environmental performance recognized by the ULE and
Sprint.
·constructed from 50 percent recycled
plastics.
· comes with a charger that only
consumes 0.03 watts of power when its plugged into the wall but not a phone.
· comes in packaging that contains
up to 87 percent post-consumer paper, uses soy ink, is made with a glueless
construction and is 100 percent recyclable.
· is RoHS-compliant (referring to
the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive), and thus is free of
hazardous stuff like PVC, phthalates, halogens and mercury.
The pairs earlier eco-friendly
offerings were the LG Remarq and the LG Rumor Reflex.
As for the Viper 4G LTEs ability to
hop on Sprints speedy 4G LTE network, well, its coming. Sprint, of course, currently
offers 4G via Clearwires WiMax network. Its LTE network, along with what it
calls enhanced 3G wont be live until midyear, when it launches in Atlanta,
Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and San Antonio.
Back in 2009, LG announced it wanted to
be the worlds No. 2 handset maker, which meant upsetting Nokia, the longtime
leader by a margin, or Samsung. According to an April 3 comScore report, LG
has at least achieved that goal in the United States,
where Nokia controls far less market share than across the pond and Samsung has
had tremendous luck with its Galaxy line of devices.
According to three-month study ending
in February, comScore found 25.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers to now be
using Samsung phones, 19.4 percent to be using LG phonesdown from 20.5 percent
during the three months ending in Novemberand 13.5 percent to be using Apple iPhones.
In December 2010, LG was also the first
manufacturer, with its Optimus 2X, to introduce
a dual-core processor on a smartphone. At the
time, LG CEO Jong-seok Park called it proof of LGs commitment to high-end
smartphones¦
Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.
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