LG's Revolution, Verizon's third LTE phone, arrives Thursday

Computerworld - Verizon Wireless announced the Revolution by LG, an LTE-ready smartphone, will be sold in stores and online Thursday for $249.99 and a two-year service plan.

The Revolution features a 4.3-in. touch screen and 1 GHz Snapdragon processor. It runs the Android 2.2 mobile operating system and is preloaded with the Netflix application for access to movies and TV shows.

Verizon called the smartphone an "entertainment powerhouse" partly due to the Netflix capability, but the Revolution also runs the Adobe Flash player, provides Dolby Mobile sound and features high-definition video recording and playback.

It also has two cameras, a 5 megapixel, rear-facing camera and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera that supports video chat. It includes a 16GB pre-installed microSD card, which is above average for today's smartphones.

The Revolution is Verizon's third LTE-ready smartphone, after the HTC ThunderBolt, introduced in March, and the Droid Charge by Samsung, which finally went on sale May 14, a full 16 days after it was due on store shelves. The delay was attributed by analysts to a Verizon LTE outage that lasted nearly two days starting April 26. Verizon has never fully explained what happened.

Verizon's LTE supports download speeds of up to 12 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 5 Mbps where LTE is available. Otherwise the signal switches to 3G, usually about one-tenth as fast.

Verizon charges $70 a month for nationwide talk and unlimited data under its service plans. A mobile hotspot capability supporting up to eight devices on LTE is included for free for a limited time.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

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