Here we go with the leaked product roadmaps again. It’s great when the carrier actually leaks this kind of information, because it tends to be fairly accurate (assuming this is all legit, of course). Phone News‘ sources are saying that the upcoming product roadmap for the rest of 2007 and part of 2008 will cement Sprint position as the carrier with the largest smartphone offering of any carrier in the US.
Of the more notable product releases are the HTC Vogue (CDMA variant of the HTC Touch) that we confirmed on Sprint as the Sprint Touch – slated for a November 4 release. The BlackBerry 8130 Pearl 2 should be bringing Media Player and Sprint Music Store support (the first multimedia BlackBerry on Sprint networks) in that sleek and slim body at the same time – November 4.
November 23 should bring us the Motorola Q9c to Sprint’s CDMA network (the “c” in Q9c denotes the CDMA version) but will may not include support for the Sprint Music Store. GSM roaming is rumored, so we’ll keep an eye out for that.
And, sometime in Q1 2008, we should be seeing the Palm Treo 800w. The CDMA Treo will be rocking the Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional OS that will finally bring a Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional Treo to Sprint’s network, and is basically a WinMo6 variant of the Palm Treo 755p. The first quarter of the new year will also see the launch of the Samsung BlackJack International. With AT&T’s exclusivity agreement with Samsung on the international roaming capable Blackjack about to expire, Sprint will be picking up the GSM and CDMA compatible Blackjack to pull international roaming duty for Sprint customers.
We also noticed the Palm Gryphon is expected to launch on October 14 of 2007, which is interesting because it’s marketed as the low-cost, $99 Palm Treo aimed at the young and hip set – just like the Palm Centro (the rumored Gandolf). Could the Palm Gryphon be code for the upcoming Palm Centro? We think so, but we’ll just have to wait and see – good thing it won’t be too long of a wait, Oct. 14 is just around the corner.
Rounding out the roadmap (which we believe may be incomplete) are the Motorola RAZR2 V9m (September 4); Novatel Ovation U727 USB Mobile Broadband Modem (September 30); Sanyo S1 – a basic candybar phone to replace the aging Sanyo SCP-4930 candybar (October 14); Lg LX260 (November 4); UTStarcom PX600 – to replace the PX500, both manufactured by Pantech (November 4).
We’ll keep an eye out for more developments on the Sprint network, they’re likely to have more “dumbphones” in the pipeline (seeing as how smartphone-heavy this current roadmap is)
[Via: Phone News]