The U.S. carrier T-Mobile announced plans today to sell to two Android tablets with 4G networking abilities in coming weeks, its own 7-inch SpringBoard and Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1. Each will come with the newest version of Google's tablet-oriented Honeycomb incarnation of the Android operating system, version 3.2, and will go on sale "in time for the holidays," the company said. Samsung's 10.1-inch tablet first debuted months ago, but without 4G networking abilities. It's at the heart of a swirling collection of patent infringement lawsuits with Apple, whose iOS-powered iPad models dominate today's tablet market.
The 7-inch SpringBoard, with a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, is built by Huawei, T-Mobile said. It has a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, which can record 720p video, and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. Its smaller size lets it fit into a jacket pocket. Installed media applications include Blockbuster on Demand, Netflix, and T-Mobile TV. Also built in is the TeleNav GPS Navigator app for turn-by-turn navigation. T-Mobile--the first carrier in the world to offer its own Android device--didn't announce prices.