Sprint set to sell HTC Evo 4G on Saturday

Computerworld - Sprint will start selling the HTC Evo 4G LTE smartphone for $199.99 and a two-year contract on Saturday, 15 days after originally promised.

On its community thread, Sprint blamed the delay on a U.S. Customs review of Evo and HTC One X shipments. The review was ordered by the International Trade Commission due to a patent dispute.

Customers who pre-ordered the phone began receiving them last week.

The Android 4.0-based Evo is designed to operate on Sprint's LTE network, which is slated to launch in mid-2012 in six U.S. cities.

Sprint hasn't disclosed a specific opening day for the network. A spokeswoman Thursday repeated the "mid-year" launch date.

HTC yesterday announced that the Evo and One X had passed the U.S. Customs review.

The ITC ruled in December that HTC had infringed on Apple patents and Customs had to ensure that the phones shipped to the U.S. didn't infringe on those patents.

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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