No. 3 domestic carrier Sprint Nextel (S) today published details of a Sprint-branded smartphone, the Sprint Vital, that will cost $100 with a two-year contract and be available this Friday.
The company is positioning the device as an "affordable smartphone with all the high-end features." The Vital will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor found in many high-end devices from 2012, the Snapdragon S4, and include 4G LTE support. Sprint's new phone will have a 5-inch display.
The phone will run a stock version of Google (GOOGL 9.85%) Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, and feature all of Google's most popular services like Search, Gmail, and Maps, among others. Sprint said that it is keeping the Android experience "closer to the way it was intended," bucking the broad trend of overarching third-party software modifications. Sprint will pre-install some of its own software, though.
