Last year, one of the hottest selling handsets in the Android lineup of Sprint was the Motorola Photon 4G. This didn’t come as a surprise back then given the impressive resume and even more impressive capabilities that the handset brought to the table. However, a smartphone’s longevity in the market is not guaranteed and there will always be newer and more powerful handsets that will enter the smartphone competition.
Because of this, Sprint partnered with Motorola to come up with a sequel to the once venerable Motorola Photon 4G and as early as April, there were already plenty of speculations that the handset’s sequel is already making its way over to the wireless provider. At that time, the name Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE was already mentioned quite a few times and early mug shots of the handset that surfaced showed that it packed a slide-out QWERTY keyboard similar to the Motorola Droid 4.
The handset got a semi-official announcement during the wireless provider’s Q2 earnings call when Sprint head honcho Dan Hesse said that the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE is about to get launched very soon. The was no mention of a specific release date during Hesse’s speech but news about Sprint employees already undergoing training for the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE only meant one thing – the release of the handset is close at hand.
Although the carrier said that it would share details about the availability of the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE within the coming weeks, word on the street is that the handset could hit the shelves of Sprint this August 19. According to our source, this is the date that is being targeted for the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE to make its debut in the shelves of the wireless provider but this is still unconfirmed as of the moment. Another tidbit of information about the handset that we managed to get our hands on is that the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE will come with an unlockable bootloader, a feature that Motorola plans to include in its future offerings. If this rumor about the unlockable bootloader on the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE pans out, the developer communities will definitely have a field day in cracking the code of the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE so expect better custom ROMs for the handset once it has already warmed in the shelves.
As for the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE, the handset is expected to ship with Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich and this will draw power from the handset’s dual-core 1.5 GHz processor. This processor will work in partnership with the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE’s 1GB of RAM to ensure the speed of its performance while the storage space onboard the handset is pegged at 8GB. Of course, a user also has the option to still have this expanded through the use of the handset’s microSD card slot. Display-wise, the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE has a 4.3-inch TFT panel with a 540 x 960 resolution while its dual-shooter configuration includes a rear-facing 8MP shooter and front-facing HD video call camera.
