It seems the HTC EVO Shift 4G just can not stay out of the limelight for long. Engadget has just been sent more shots of the device in the wild sporting it’s blue-backed full QWERTY keyboard. For those of you who do not know, the Shift 4G will be the EVO 4G with a keyboard minus some features.
The differences between the Shift and the original EVO is that the Shift will sport both a lower res-camera (5 Megapixels) and a smaller display all while lacking a front facing camera. Being the starter phone of the EVO series, these three shortfalls could be an acceptable tradeoff.
We can definitely expect a retail release in the next few days, if all of these retail-ready leaks point to anything. We’ll keep you updated!
[Via Engadget]
I can take the camera resolution downgrade but not the lack of front facing camera and the smaller display as long as is not more than 4″. sad… I have the original Evo and not be downgrading.
It really is too bad that it’s lacking a front facing camera with 4G. Sprint seems to be going backwards and not forward in this space.
They should have called it the Evo Lite.
Seems a shame it comes with 4G, this would be a perfect phone for me if I didn’t have to shell out another $120 a year for 4G coverage that is nowhere near where I live. I like the Evo a lot, but the Shift is smaller, has a keyboard and tests out to be just as fast as the Evo. Most of the “downgrades” I take for positive features.
The $10 a month charge is not for the 4g service itself, its for all smart phone devices as they use much more data than non-PDAs. Sprint has considerably lower plan pricing than its competitors and because of this has seen a great influx of customers over the past several quaters–all of which seem to want smartphones. They simply havent been able to keep up with the data usage of so many customers so had to up the prices for these customers to continue to deliver reliable 3g data coverage as well as expand their 4g network.