Samsung Stratosphere 4g: The HTC Thunderbolt was the first smartphone released on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Motorola’s Droid Bionic 4G was the first phone with a dual core processor to land on Verizon’s LTE wireless broadband network. And the Samsung Droid Charge was the first “Droid” phone to receive Verizon 4G LTE support. Well, three days ago Samsung just achieved another first for Verizon’s LTE mobile broadband platform. In the form of the Samsung Stratosphere, the first QWERTY keyboard slider has landed at Verizon’s LTE.
Featuring a five row, side sliding, full QWERTY keyboard and a 4 inch screen, the Samsung Stratosphere 4G is now the sixth phone that offers support for Verizon’s 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband network. Arriving a little heavier and slightly larger thanks to the keyboard underneath the display, the Stratosphere measures 4.96 x 2.54 x 0.55 inches (126 x 65 x 14 mm) and weighs 5.80 oz (164 g). A familiar smartphone body style is employed, as Samsung built the Stratosphere as a rectangular, black slab, though the corners have been rounded more than the standard 4G phone, and the top and bottom extended, giving it more of an oval appearance.
Samsung has done well with their Super AMOLED Plus display technology, and they employ it here on the 4 inch capacitive touch screen which supports multitouch gesture navigation. Standard light and proximity sensors are built into the screen, and the Samsung Stratosphere delivers 480 x 800 pixel resolution. Some of that extra weight is explained by the 1800 mAh battery which offers 8 hours of run time, and 9 days of standby on a single battery charge. Most second generation 4G handsets benefit from an upgrade to Android’s 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, and the Samsung Stratosphere comes loaded with Gingerbread out-of-the-box as well.
A single core ARM Cortex A8 processor of 1.0 GHz and 512 MB of RAM memory are on board. As with the majority of Android 4G smartphones, dual cameras are built-in. The rear facing camera is a 5.0 megapixel camcorder which offers autofocus, dual LED flash, digital zoom, special effects and a panorama mode. That camera does record video, and the front facing 1.3 megapixel chat cam also allows for placing video phone calls. Buy the Samsung Stratophere 4G smartphone for only one penny!
The on board audio and video players support all major file formats, and a YouTube video player is also present. Adobe’s Flash media player is supported, as is HTML web browsing. MicroSD and microUSB slots are built in, wireless Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity options are on board, and the Samsung Stratosphere offers video mirroring through DLNA technology.
