Sprint’s newest 4G phone is just $99

If you’ve been ooing and ahhing over 4G but don’t feel like buying an expensive phone, the Conquer 4G may be for you.

Built by Samsung and powered by Sprint, the Conquer has everything a novice smartphone users could want, including a 3.2-megapixel camera, a 3.5-inch touchscreen, 320×480 resolution, and Android 2.3 (“Gingerbread”), the most recent version of Android available for smartphones.

Of course, the most tantalizing thing about it is the price tag. At just $99.99, it is easily one of the cheapest 4G-powered, Android 2.3 phones on the market.

It doesn’t really make too many compromises. With a 1 GHz Snapdraggon processor and 2 GB of storage in a pre-loaded microSD card, there is plenty of stuff here for any phone user. It even has mobile WiFi hotspot functionality and a front-facing camera for video calls and such.

The $99 price point sets it at half the price of what has become the industry standard of a $200 top-of-the-spec-list price.

What’s interesting, though, is that the device is powered by Sprint’s Wimax 4G network, a network that was revolutionary when first brought online two years ago but has fallen behind the race thanks to companies like Verizon and MetroPCS that have leapfrogged ahead.

Sprint is likely to move to a new, LTE-based 4G network in the future, so it makes sense that the company has to come up with new ways to entice customers to Wimax. And price will always work as a customer enticement.