Click read more to see the latest from Sprint’s press conference, live from San Francisco.
Update: Photos from the announcement, and live demos, on the next article.
2:32 PM That’s a wrap. Photos will be up after we snap a few from the demo units.
2:28 PM Radio Shack’s CEO Julian Day takes the stage. RadioShack will be selling all three Sprint ID phones from launch, and they hope to profit by making it easier to customize the phone in-store for the buyer.
2:26 PM What we’re not hearing are costs. Small business packs and such probably will be a lot cheaper, but not have the home screen presence that the big companies will have. And, those major content providers will be paying a lot for the privilege of advertising above the app store.
2:25 PM Sprint is now talking small business. With the Small Business ID Pack, you can customize your app and widget payload, and then push that customized pack to your employees.
2:22 PM Anyone want a PhoneNews.com ID pack? Think the gatekeepers would allow that? Sound off in the comments.
2:19 PM MTV, and now HSN. This is getting boring, fast. HSN’s reel is not more than their commercials with some personalities saying “HSN and Sprint” in every few seconds.
2:18 PM Probably the only real news is the pricing on the LG Optimus, Sprint hopes to sell it for $50 with contract, and online retailers will be pushing it to a $0 or less offering at launch.
2:17 PM More bloviating from eBay now.
2:14 PM Disney and ESPN both plan packs, hope to make it easier for kids and sports fans to customize their phones.
2:13 PM No, we aren’t going to waste time talking about E! Online or the Keeping up With the Kardashians app.
2:11 PM It appears companies will be able to offer their own packs as well as being part of group packs. E! Online is demoing their entertainment iD pack.
2:10 PM ID Packs act a lot like themes, essentially transforming your home screen with pre-loaded widgets and pre-installing the apps needed to power them, along with a customized theme and wallpaper to match the toolset.
2:09 PM Sanyo Zip, LG Optimus, and Samsung Transform S will all be ID ready. Sprint hopes to enable all future devices.
2:08 PM Sprint’s today introducing Sprint ID, essentially similar to the Google Pack for PC. It’s a bundle of applications from large corporations. Sprint promises a mix of well known companies and startups in their ID packs. Several ID packs will be offered for different usage sets.
2:07 PM Dan Hesse has taken the stage. Photos of course will be posted afterwards, due to network issues on-site. Dan’s going over the “app explosion” you’ve all been hearing about.
2:05 PM The annoyingly loud welcome video is playing. We apologize for the last minute posting, we have three connections and none of them are working properly, due to congestion.
Update: Photos from the announcement, and live demos, on the next article.
I have not found a clear statement as to whether any of these 3 new phones will run Adobe Flash with official support. As far as I can tell, the Transform has the same processor as the Moment and Intercept, and the Zio and Optimus have the same processor as the Palm Pixi; and Adobe will never support Flash on any of these.
The problem with new phones is that Adobe doesn’t want to leak the phone… so announcement of Flash support has to lag at times.
All of these phones can run Flash, it’s simply a matter of performance. Zio and Optimus probably won’t perform as well with Flash video as Epic 4G and Evo 4G do.