Sprint Makes It Official, Announces The Direct Connect-Capable Motorola Admiral

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Sprint has officially announced their latest smartphone. More specifically, their latest Android running Direct Connect capable smartphone. The handset is the Motorola Admiral and it is set to arrive in just a few days time.

The Motorola Admiral will be available beginning on October 23rd and it will come priced at $99.99. Though worth noting, that price assumes a new two-year agreement and comes after a $50 mail-in rebate. In other words, those interested in making a purchase should be prepared to shell out an initial $149.99.

As far as the specs go, the Motorola Admiral will be running Android 2.3 Gingerbread and have support for the Sprint 3G network along with the push-to-talk capabilities of Direct Connect. The device itself comes as a rugged handset with a Corning Gorilla Glass display that is scratch-resistant and Military Standard 810G certification against dust, shock, vibration, solar radiation, low pressure and high and low temperatures.

The hardware features include a 3.1 inch VGA touchscreen display, hardware portrait QWERTY keyboard, 1.2GHz processor, 4GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and a 5 megapixel camera with 4x zoom, LED flash and 720p HD video recording.

In addition, the Admiral will be a Google powered device which means you can expect to find goodies such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, Google Voice and of course — access to the Android Market. Other software that will be pre-installed includes Quickoffice, which will allow you to view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

And lastly, as for the Direct Connect features, these break down as follows;

• Sprint Direct Connect – Instant, one-to-one push-to-talk calling nationwide on the Sprint network, with any other Direct Connect subscriber. Direct Connect is the core push-to-talk feature and is designed for interoperability across Sprint and Nextel network platforms.
• Guaranteed Talk Permit – The assurance that when you hear the push-to-talk “chirp” that your call was successfully transmitted.
• Call Alert with Text – Send an audio alert with an optional text message to let another Direct Connect subscriber know you are trying to reach them and why.
• Group Connect – Communicate with up to 20 other Sprint Direct Connect subscribers all at once – nationwide, at the push of one button.
• TeamDCSM – Communicate with up to 200 other Sprint Direct Connect subscribers at the same time nationwide2.
• NextMail – Send a recorded message to any email worldwide or mobile handset via text message by using the Direct Connect button.
• Availability Notification – Request the availability status of another push-to-talk member and, if they are busy, request a notification when they are free.