Remember that Motorola Opus we’ve seen back in December of 2009? The iDEN based device seems to be heading towards the official announcement, possibly at the CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas next month. The new thing is the name – instead of Opus, Motorola will call it i1 (meaning the i2 and maybe even i3 is in development?).
We don’t have all the details, but we’ve heard the i1 will run Android 1.5 (why not 2.1 or at least 2.0?) and will come equipped with 3-megapixel camera. Since it’s an iDEN device, push-to-talk functionality will presumably be incorporated, as well.
The way I see it, releasing an iDEN-based Android smartphone is easy money for Motorola. It’s not a large market, but at the same time there is no much competition. MOTO is already ruling Nextel’s offering and with the addition of an Android device they could at least bring their margins to some higher level — as we guess the i1 will be at least a bit more expensive than some other MOTO phones sold via Sprint-owned networks, Nextel and Boost Mobile included. We’ll keep watching, have no doubts about it. 😉