10/12/2007, 1:55pm, EDT
Friday, October 12thAT&T to offer LG iPhone rival
AT&T is poised to launch a second full touchscreen phone that will compete with the iPhone, says a source leaking photos of the device to Gizmodo. The American carrier is expected to receive the CU920, a close relative of the Prada and KU990 available so far only in Europe; like either predecessor, the phone will be dominated by a touchscreen and have little more than call and answer buttons on the front. However, the CU920 will have support for American-standard 3G over HSDPA, the insider claims -- potentially giving the LG device an advantage over the iPhone, which uses the slower EDGE protocol.
More important may be its web browsing technology, according to the tipster. The CU920 will run Mozilla's upcoming mobile Firefox browser and, like mobile Safari, will render pages as they would on a desktop copy. Viewers would zoom in to view page elements without disrupting the layout of the page but would have to take two steps versus the iPhone's single pinch motion, says the report. Other software enhancements are known to include an instant messaging client and may also involve picture or video messaging, either of which has been omitted from the iPhone's early software.
A release date, price, and other launch information have not been provided for the touch phone, though the existence of AT&T branding and working software suggests a release within the next few months.
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One more thing. I thought handset manufacturers said that virtual keyboards suck to high heaven. No company would be stupid enough to follow Apple down that road. No, they'll just say they did a better job an their virtual keyboards are 10x better than the iPhone.
So in the next few months [2008] - maybe the LG phone hits the streets - but it ain't gonna have Mozilla's official Firefox Mobile version on it until later in the year_