Sprint Reveals 2010 Smartphone Lineup [Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, WiMAX Phones Mentioned; App Store in the Works]

Hang on to your shorts, Sprint customers! The carrier is ready to dazzle you with its 2010 lineup and plans. Sprint has posted another subscriber loss, this time for Q3 2009, and it will surely want to start stealing subscribers from the other three main competitors in 2010.

Sprint has had a bad 2008 and it looks like the number 3 carrier in the U.S. is slowly recovering. Its current lineup includes a few hot phones already but more are to follow next year. Right now Sprint has the Palm Pre and the Pixi, the HTC Hero, various Samsung Instinct phones and quite a few BlackBerry smartphones to offer.

So what can we expect from Sprint next year? Windows Mobile 6.5 phones are currently being tested and you can expect the HTC Touch Pro2 from and other models to arrive in 2010. Sprint will also embrace Windows Mobile 7 as soon as it arrives but until then Windows Mobile lovers will only have version 6.5 to play with.

Sprint intends to launch plenty of Android and BlackBerry phones next year although we don’t have any names yet. Future BlackBerry handsets will all come with Wi-Fi enabled while Android phones will come most likely from HTC. Current Android smartphones, the HTC Hero and the Samsung Moment, will be updated to Android 2.0 and the most interesting future Android phone will be a GSM/CDMA hybrid.

Sprint is also preparing for 4G and while it’s busy deploying its network, the carrier is also testing WiMAX phones. At least one such phone will be available next year but we don’t know yet who is going to make it.

Sprint’s current Store will disappear in favor of a new App Store. Once Sprint’s future App Store is in place the carrier will not ship any smartphone with pre-installed apps. Instead customers will be able to choose what apps to download and what to ignore.

Unfortunately we also had some bad news for you earlier today. It looks like Sprint will not support tethering anymore and I predict that this will be a major concern among its subscribers. Better go get your mob ready and go trick-or-treating Sprint’s customer service.

We don’t have any specific details regarding what we have just told you but we will be back once Sprint clarifies everything. After all, 2010 is just around the corner!