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T-Mobile, Huawei Announce New MyTouch Phones

Two new midrange Android smartphones are coming to T-Mobile soon, and one has a QWERTY keyboard.

July 11, 2012

T-Mobile and Huawei today announced two new smartphones aimed at entry-level users, the myTouch and the myTouch Q.

These are the seventh and eighth phones in the very similarly named myTouch lineup, which has veered from early adopter Android devices to high-end HTC models to free-with-contract, entry-level LG units.

The latest MyTouches come with 4-inch, 800-by-480 screens and 1.4-GHz single-core Qualcomm S2 processors, so they're a step up from last year's LG models. Both phones have a 5-megapixel rear camera and a VGA front camera, and both run Android 2.3, even though the current version of Android is now 4.1.

I asked Huawei's U.S. vice president of external affairs, Bill Plummer, about the Android version situation, and he was frank. With other manufacturers also delivering phones running old code, Huawei isn't going to lead when it comes to delivering the latest versions of Android.

"I think Huawei is follwoing industry practices when it comes to delivering devices which do or do not have upgradeable software, but I think the industry practices are going to evolve over time as well," he said.

The Q has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, just like with the last generation of MyTouches; the Q-less model doesn't. The press release I got didn't provide details on the phones' Internet connection speeds.

So what makes a phone myTouch rather than, say, a Huawei Ascend G312? Software: specifically, the Dragon-powered "Genius Button" voice commands and a super-easy, hand-holding setup process to let new smartphone users choose themes and widgets. The new version of Genius Button allows voice-powered Web searches, bringing it closer to Siri and Samsung's S Voice than before.

The myTouch and myTouch Q will be available this summer for $49.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate; in other words, for $99.99 with a two-year contract.