Sprint to sell two qwerty handsets – Motorola Photon Q and LG Mach

Sprint to sell two qwerty handsets – Motorola Photon Q and LG Mach The Tuesday announcement by Sprint, about its plans to sell the LG Mach slider-style smartphone with qwerty keyboard, indicates that the third-ranking US carrier still feels that there is enough demand for handsets with qwerty keyboards, in spite of the increasing inclination of the users towards touchscree smartphones.

The LG Mach is the second qwerty-keyboard handset which will be offered by Sprint this fall --- the other physical qwerty keyboard handset to be sold by the carrier being the Motorola Photon Q.

While both the LG and Motorola qwerty-keyboard handsets will be compatible with Sprint's 4G LTE network, the Photon Q will cost $200 on-contract; while the mid-range Mach will be more aggressively priced, at $100.

Some of the key features of the LG Mach will be its 4-inch display and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor; and that of the Photon Q will be a 4.3-inch screen and a 1.5GHz dual core processor. Both the handsets will, however, run Android 4.0 `Ice Cream Sandwich' version; and there has been no official disclosure about their upgrade to the Android `Jelly Bean' version.

Elaborating on Sprint's reasons for offering handsets with physical keyboards rather than those with touchscreens, David Owens - Sprint's VP of product - said: "People actually like the comfort of a physical keyboard and say there are fewer errors. They want a two-handed device."