T-Mobile confirms Samsung Galaxy 4G coming soon

By Geoff Duncan January 21, 2011

Samsung Vibrant — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Announcing a resurrection of its Sidekick phone, T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm indicated the company would be offering a “4G” version of the Samsung Galaxy S Android-based smartphone. Now, both Samsung and T-Mobile have confirmed the announcement, saying the Galaxy S 4G will be landing on T-Mobile “in the coming weeks” at an unspecified price. And the companies have let slip very little additional information about the device, save for one tiny tidbits: it’ll be running Android 2.2 “Froyo.”

“With Galaxy S 4G, T-Mobile will deliver its fastest smartphone yet on America’s largest 4G network, providing rich entertainment virtually whenever and wherever consumers want,” said T-Mobile USA’s chief marketing officer Cole Brodman, in a statement. “And with 4G data plans from $10 per month, we’re making blazing-fast 4G speeds and super smartphone experiences easily accessible to the millions who crave them.”

The companies have released no additional information about the Samsung Galaxy S 4G, although industry watchers expect it to follow along the lines of the Samsung Vibrant, the name T-Mobile attached to its version of the original Samsung Galaxy S smartphone. The Vibrant features a 4-inch AMOLED display, SD card slot, and a 1 GHz processor.

T-Mobile continues touting its HSPA+ network as “4G,” and the company can make a pretty solid case in the sense that the technology can deliver theoretical download speeds in excess of 20Mbps in a handful of markets. Currently, T-Mobile’s lower-bandwidth HSPA+ service is available in 100 major metropolitan areas covering about 200 million people; T-Mobile expects to extend that coverage to 140 million Americans in and make high-speed HSPA+ service available in 25 major markets by the end of 2011.

Speaking of Android 2.2 “Froyo,” T-Mobile today began distributing Android 2.2 updates to owners of the Samsung Vibrant, its current version of the Galaxy S smartphone, making T-Mobile the first U.S. carrier to update the Galaxy S to Android 2.2.

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