Prepaid carrier Boost Mobile today launched three new iDEN phones from Motorola, the Motorola Clutch + i475, Motorola Theory and Motorola i412.
All three Motorola phones will be available with Boost Mobile's $50 Monthly Unlimited with Shrinkage plan, where the longer a customer stays with the company, their monthly bill decreases. For every six on-time payments, a Boost Mobile customer's monthly cost will shrink by $5, bottoming out at $35 a month for unlimited nationwide talk, text, Web, email, IM and calls.
The Motorola Clutch + i475, successor to the Motorola Clutch, is a candy bar qwerty device with an improved keyboard for text messaging and walkie-talkie functionality. The phone includes Bluetooth, Web, email access, GPS and VGA camera. The Clutch + i475 is available now for $99.99.
Motorola Theory, also a candy bar qwerty device, features Bluetooth, 1.3-megapixel camera and 2.4-inch QVGA screen. The Theory will be available June 7 and is priced at $79.99.
Last but not least, the Motorola i412 is a no-frills straightforward flip phone that will go on sale in late June for $69.99.
The Clutch + i475 and i412 are the latest push-to-talk (PTT) offerings that run on Sprint's iDEN network. Last December, Sprint announced its "Network Vision," a multi-year initiative to provide an enhanced network experience for its customers that will include faster, more robust broadband PTT service. As part of that initiative, Sprint said that it plans to continue to offer devices on the iDEN network into 2013, when it expects to begin to phase out iDEN cell sites as the newer push-to-talk broadband capabilities become more widely available on the company's CDMA network.