This morning brings a glimpse of the near mobile future.
Two announcements—one about Sprint’s Evo 4G Phone and one about Android’s next version—paint a picture of what this summer holds for early adopters with cash to burn.
First, Sprint released more details on the two-way video chat functionality of the Evo 4G, set to go on sale June 4th for $199 with a Sprint subscription. The video chat, enabled by a front-facing camera, will be run on Qik, a third-party app and early developer of mobile video streaming. The functionality will cost users a Qik upgrade, which will probably be negligible compared to the monthly data connection.
For an extra $29, users can also turn their Evo’s into wifi hotspots for up to 8 devices.The phone comes with a mandatory $10/ month fee for premium data service (regardless of whether owners are using a 4G or 3G network).
The phone runs on Android 2.1 for now, but that could change soon. Over in Mountain View, CA, Google employees placed a sculpture of an oversized frozen yogurt on the company’s front lawn Thursday.
The Android team names each new release of Google Android with a confectionary alias. Cupcake was 1.5, Donut was 1.6 and Eclair was 2.0. It turns out that 2.2 is Froyo. Froyo will allow users to turn their phone into a portable wifi hotspot and tether it via USB to share the data connection with a laptop. It also has full Flash support.
The new sculpture means an official announcement is likely at Google’s I/O event next week in San Francisco, just ahead of Evo’s release June 4.
