Looks like the Motorola i1 Android set (not graphic on top of will mount as a highest-end Nextel phone ever — Sprint just voiced which it’s phasing out the iDEN network sometime in 2013 as it starts the new 4 to 5 billion dollar network enhancement project called “Network Vision.” We’ve approaching this for the while — a Sprint / Nextel merger has been beset by subscriber losses and rumors of a dissection for years right away — but this is a initial time we’ve gotten the date. Sprint’s rolling out push-to-talk on the own network to support the 10.6 million Nextel business, but we don’t have the report for which nonetheless. Sprint’s also announcing vendors for Network Vision: Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung, as well as Ericsson will each handle a region as well as be tasked with expanding and fortifying Sprint’s existent 1900MHz 3G network while buying 800MHz, 1900MHz, and 2.5GHz spectrum for future make use of. Interestingly, Sprint’s really hedging the WiMAX bets a little — it can ascent its new gear to LTE with swapping in a baseband label and arising the program patch, which positively gives a company some 4G coherence should Clearwire not pull things together. We’ll see what happens — a underdog’s making some moves.

Via Engadget