Sprint has announced pricing and availability details for the sequel to the Motorola Photon tri-mode Android smartphone in the Photon Q.
The phone features Android Ice Cream Sandwich with a 4.3 inch display, 8.0 megapixel camera with 1080p video capture, 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 5 row QWERTY keyboard along with built-in NFC for Android Beam support. In a change of direction and reflecting its stance on its devices going forward, both the LTE and GSM SIM slots will be sealed off from consumer access and the GSM SIM slot will also be locked to Sprint’s international roaming service with no way to unlock and subsequently take advantage of cheap local rates with local SIM cards while abroad.
Motorola has also killed off Webtop support for this phone and every Android phone it releases going forward, substituting it with an HDMI mirror mode, signalling the quiet death of the Lapdock and Motorola’s own attempts to turn Android into a low-power desktop PC alternative.
Pricing for the phone is set at $199.99 after new 2 year agreement or qualified upgrade with a week-long pre-order campaign beginning today. Those that pre-order today will be able to get their devices as soon as this Friday, depending on pre-order levels and available units.
I was really looking forward to this phone, as it’s pretty much my ideal phone, but the locked in sim card is a non-starter.