14 DAY TRIAL // Today we have a chance to take a look at Sprint's plans for the ongoing year and to learn a little more about the mobile phones that the carrier will add to its offering, as well as find out a couple more details on the launch time frames for some of the highly expected handsets, like the Palm Pre.
Part of the devices that can now be seen in the leaked roadmap for the US mobile phone operator are already known to be heading towards its offering, yet there are some handsets that still surprise us. The aforementioned Palm Pre is already known to come to the carrier sometime in the first half of the year, and now we see that Sprint has it on track for a launch in the second quarter of the ongoing year, which could represent any of the months between April and June. Also coming from Palm will be Monk, mainly targeted at the operator's business customers.
Among the QWERTY devices that will be added to Sprint's lineup this year we should be able to see the HTC Cedar, which was reported a few days ago to be heading towards Verizon's offering. Cedar also appears on Sprint's roadmap under the name of HTC Willow, it seems. The carrier will also offer a new Samsung Ace starting with the third quarter, while an HTC Rhodium, which is most likely to replace Touch Pro, and the highly anticipated BlackBerry Niagara will both come during the third quarter as well.
In 2009, Sprint will also offer its customers a series of dumbphones, including the Instinct Mini and the Dash, which comes with an HVGA display and is stated to be the successor of Instinct. There will also be the Sanyo 2700, the dual-slide Samsung Cello, and the Samsung Chianti, which resembles a lot the already known Propel, all coming around as text-oriented handsets. The mobile phone carrier will also add some new devices to its data offering, including the MiFi portable hotspot from Novatel.
One thing that seems to be missing from the operator's plans is Android, as no devices to feature the platform can be seen in the roadmap, yet things might change by the end of the year, so we can still hope.
