Virgin Mobile launches their first Android phone, the HTC Legend
In a surprise move, Bell launched the HTC Legend Android smartphone this past Friday, on their Virgin Mobile MVNO. Up until last week it was thought that the flagship Android phone in Bell’s line-up would launch on the main brand. On Friday Best Buy’s website was even updated prematurely, to show to Legend as available on Bell. Later that day, however, it was Virgin Mobile who was the first carrier in North America to officially announce availability of the Legend. At an event on Friday, Virgin Group Chairman Sir Richard Branson launched the phone with a “Legends Go-Kart Race” against Canadian Indy car race driver Alex Tagliani, and hockey star Vincent Lecavalier.
The Legend is HTC’s latest mid-range Android phone, the successor to the Hero (currently available on Telus, reviewed by us here). It features the same sized 320×480 3.2 inch screen, and general form-factor, with a few improvements. The Legend features a brighter AMOLED screen, a slightly faster CPU, an aluminum uni-body design, an improved optical track-pad, slightly more RAM (384MB vs. 288MB), and a built-in LED flash. Lastly, and for many most importantly, it runs Android OS 2.1.
The HTC Legend is available now from Virgin Mobile for $79.99, on a three-year voice and data plan, and an amazing $349.99 no contract price on a 30 day plan. Since you are required to pay for, at minimum, the $50 plan once, if you intend to buy it to unlock it (to use on another carrier) it will be $399.99.
You can find out more details here, at Virgin’s website, and Engadget’s review of the European model here. We are also expecting a review phone soon from HTC, so check back with us for our own hands-on impressions.
Sources: Virgin Mobile, MobileSyrup.com, Engadget.com
[…] Virgin Mobile launches their first Android phone, the HTC LegendThe HTC Legend is available now from Virgin Mobile for $79.99, on a three-year voice and data plan, and an amazing $349.99 no contract price. You can find out more details here, at Virgin's website, and Engadget's review of the European … […]
[…] mentioned in the article about the Virgin Mobile Legend, the Bell version was released, as the leaks indicated, last week, […]