Being on Verizon’s 4G LTE network and having a smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard have been mutually exclusive features until now. Today, the carrier revealed the Samsung Stratosphere, a 4G smartphone with a slide-out keyboard.
The Stratosphere targets the business professional crowd, the folks who used to use (or still use) BlackBerries, but are looking to make the transition to Android or iOS.
The Stratosphere features a 4-inch Super AMOLED display with a 5-row QWERTY keyboard underneath. It runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) on a 1 GHz Hummingbird processor. For the biz folk, the smartphone supports some B2B services like Microsoft Exchange Active Sync as well as VPN, mobile device management and encryption.
Until now, if you wanted a phone with 4G and a hardware keyboard, you’d have to turn to another carrier like T-Mobile, which offers options like the Sidekick 4G or the MyTouch 4G Slide — not quite right if you’ve got enterprise on the mind. RIM will also be releasing five new smartphones this year, though, including the BlackBerry Torch 9810 series.
As far as Android goes, the operating system has had a stellar year so far. The OS dominates the smartphone market, and devices like the Samsung Galaxy S II are hitting record sales numbers.
The Stratosphere includes a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera, 5-megapixel rear facing camera and hot spotting for up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices.
The Samsung Stratosphere will be available October 13th for $150 with a two-year contract.
