Samsung launching Android phones in Q2 2009

Samsung will release its first phone based on Google's Android operating system in North America in the second quarter of 2009 for both Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA.

Samsung is said to have 80 people working on the development team for its Android phone. The news was first reported on the South Korean news site ET News. 

"We are accelerating the development process for the Google phone in order to meet the specific need of local carriers," ET News quoted an anonymous Samsung official as saying. "We will be able to release the Google phone in the second quarter of the next year in the U.S. market."

The phone is said to look much like many of Samsung's other touchscreen phones, and will incorporate design factors from both the Omnia and Instinct. The news that it will run on both Sprint and T-Mobile's network indicates that Samsung will either include both a CDMA radio for Sprint customers and an HSDPA/UMTS radio for T-Mobile users, or make different versions for the different networks.

There is no exact release date or pricing details available. Currently, the T-Mobile G1, manufactured by HTC, is the only Android-based phone available in North America.

Huawei, which had announced that it was developing an Android phone for launch in 2009, indicated that it expected the launch to happen in the third quarter of 2009.

For more:
- see this article [1]
- see this article [2] on Huawei

Related Articles:
Sprint [3] poised to debut first Android device?
Sony Ericsson [4] to develop Android-based handset