AT&T rolls out LTE 4G network and phones for it: HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket

AT&T today announced its first LTE phones: the HTC Vivid ($200) and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket ($249). The phones and the LTE network they'll run on will debut on November 6. The first cities will be Boston; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Athens, GA; Atlanta; Chicago; Dallas-Fort Worth; Houston; and San Antonio. The carrier says it plans to spread LTE to 70 million customers in 15 U.S. markets by the end of this year.

AT&T already has a 4G network based on HSPA+ technology and has deployed a number of devices to run on it in the past year, including the Motorola Atrix and Apple iPhone 4S. The company says it will continue to support HSPA+, and all of its LTE phones will automatically switch to it when LTE is not available. Verizon is the only other carrier to have a 4G network based on LTE technology, which in my informal tests does seem to be faster (often faster than 8 megabits per second) than the 4G technologies deployed by other carriers.

The HTC Vivid features a 4.5-inch qHD display (540 x 960 pixels) and a dual-core 1.2GHz processor. The Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket features a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display (800 x 480 pixels) and a 1.5GHz dual-core processor. Both phones have 8-megapixel rear-facing cameras capable of recording video at 1080p and 2-megapixel front-facing cameras for video chat.

The Vivid promises to record video at 60 frames per second, which in theory should help keep images maintain sharpness when the camera pans left or right. It will also have slow-motion playback and tools for scaling down the size of your video clips to accommodate social-media uploads.

Both phones will run on the Android 2.3.5 OS (Gingerbread) and come with 16GB of on-board memory, expandable up to an additional 48GB with an optional microSD card.

Stay tuned for our first looks of both devices in the next few days.

AT&T's HTC Vivid

—Mike Gikas