HTC One X, Evo 4G LTE Out of Customs, Headed for ATandT, Sprint

HTC€™s Evo 4G LTE and One X smartphones have finally cleared customs€”for real, this time€”where the devices languished following a patent dispute between HTC and Apple.

€œHTC has completed the review process with U.S. Customs, and HTC devices have been released, as they are in compliance with the ITC€™s ruling,€ HTC said in a statement. €œFuture shipments should continue to enter the U.S., and we are confident that we will soon be able to meet the demand for our products.€

Sprint updated its blog (though, weirdly, not the date on the posting) to say that customers who preordered their HTC Evo 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution) devices received them last week, though €œSprint continues to wait for our full inventory from HTC.€

The carrier added, €œWe recently learned that HTC devices have been released by U.S. Customs. We expect shipments of HTC Evo 4G LTE to enter the U.S. in the next few days.€

On the Sprint site, the Evo 4G LTE is listed as €œcoming soon.€ On the AT&T site, the HTC One X is said to be €œout of stock.€

The delay is surely frustrating for Sprint, which, struggling to keep up with Verizon and AT&T, needs all the sales it can get. For AT&T, the timing leans perhaps more toward unfortunate, as talk of the One X has grown with the initial release of Samsung€™s Galaxy S III smartphone.

The GS III, with its 4.8-inch display, quad-core processor, skinny-minny physique, Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), OS and 9 million preorders, is expected to become the summer must-have Android phone, when it finally reaches U.S. shores. (The May 29 release was for 28 countries, none of them the United States.)

While the GS III€™s early reviews have generally been positive, nearly all have compared it with the One X, with some reviewers preferring the HTC to Samsung€™s new headline-maker.

Such reviews are a welcome feather in HTC€™s cap. Since the success of its original Evo 4G smartphone, the company has seen its market share shrink as Samsung, with its Galaxy line, has seen its share explode.

The Engadget review called the GS III €œmore than the sum of its parts€ and a solid improvement over its predecessor, the enormously successful Galaxy S II. Still, the tech site€™s reviewer added, the worst thing about the GS III is that €œno matter how hard it tries, it just isn€™t greater than the sum of the HTC One X€™s parts.€

The One X is another pocket challenger, featuring a 4.7-inch, 720p high-definition Gorilla Glass display, as well as Android 4.0, or ICS), HTC€™s well-liked Sense user interface, Beats Audio and a feature-rich 8-megapixel camera.

On May 23, tech site Phonedog.com announced that the One X had topped both its People’s Choice and Experts€™ charts, while at the start of the month, ZDNet reviewer Matt Miller called the One X the best device he€™s ever used.

€œHTC kicked off their new strategy of quality over quantity this year, and the HTC One X shows what can be created with a serious focus on design,€ wrote Miller.