Skip to main content

Sprint gets some Torque and adds LTE coverage

Check out our full review of the Kyocera Torque rugged smart phone.

Sprint is busy this week, announcing a new Android-powered, LTE touting, rugged smartphone, as well as launching LTE in more than half a dozen more cities. The new smartphone, the Kyocera Torque, is the first rugged smartphone of its kind, and LTE coverage will be expanding to cities including Austin, and Boston. 

Recommended Videos

The Kyocera Torque is Sprint’s answer to those looking for not only a rugged, Android smartphone, but also LTE connectivity, and access to Sprint’s Direct Connect network for push-to-talk capabilities. The phone actually boasts an impressive Military Standard 810g, meaning it is extremely resistant to almost anything nature can throw at it, and likely beyond what the average person will experience. However, the phone is designed to be fully featured for anyone who wants a full Android experience, LTE connectivity, and a phone that won’t break on the job. The Kyocera Torque includes a dual-core Snapdragon processor, 4-inch Gorilla Glass display, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and a 5-megapixel camera.

Kyocera & Sprint say that the Torque also uses a “Smart sonic receiver” so that it can send HD Voice to your ears without even having a speaker. Unless you work in construction or you’re an absolute butterfingers when holding your phone, then this might be a little overkill for the average user.

As for the LTE expansion, Sprint is beginning its 2013 roll-out quite strongly, having promised just a week ago 28 more LTE cities to arrive in the coming months. It’s a good thing too, now that T-Mobile has promised to up the ante with LTE in 2013, and will bring Sprint closer to reaching its goal of finishing its LTE rollout by the end of the year. While regions such as New York are still waiting for the green light for LTE, Sprint has launched LTE coverage for more than half a dozen cities, including Austin, Boston, Western Puerto Rico, and Gettysburg. If Sprint keeps up with this pace for 2013, then its customers will have a lot to be cheering about come end of year.

Joshua Sherman
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Joshua Sherman is a contributor for Digital Trends who writes about all things mobile from Apple to Zynga. Josh pulls his…
A new OnePlus phone just leaked with a ridiculous battery spec
OnePlus Nord 4 Midnight black with metal back held in hand.

A new phone from OnePlus is on the horizon, and it should attract lots of attention thanks to its purported battery capacity. The OnePlus Ace 5V is expected to join the OnePlus Ace 5 and Ace 5 Pro in the Chinese market. It may also be launched internationally as the OnePlus Nord 5, according to GSMArena.

The OnePlus Ace 5V is anticipated to feature a substantial 7,000mAh battery capacity. In comparison, the forthcoming OnePlus 13 and OnePlus 13R will likely have battery capacities of 6,000mAh. By contrast, two of the bestselling phones on the market, the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Galaxy S24 Ultra, offer battery capacities of 4,685mAh and 5,000mAh, respectively.

Read more
The next iPhone SE may get a surprising name change
iPhone SE (2022) held in a mans hand.

The iPhone SE 4 is the long-awaited next entry in the iPhone SE lineup. Information about the device has been scarce, with only a few bits of information leaking out here and there, but now there's a newer, more surprising rumor: that the name of the next iPhone SE might actually be the iPhone 16E.

The news first broke in mid-December from a source that's relatively unknown in the U.S. and was limited to just Weibo. Now, Majin Bu, a tipster with a much more solid track record, shared a post on X recently that supports the news.

Read more
Samsung is going all-in on Snapdragon chips for the Galaxy S25
Samsung Galaxy S24 in Marble Gray standing on park bench.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 series rumor mill has been turbulent, and that's putting it lightly. An unbelievable amount of information has emerged about this phone, but one debate that was never settled is whether it would use the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip or the Exynos 2400 chip. Now we have an answer thanks to leaked benchmarks: it's all Snapdragon, all the way.

The most recent Galaxy S25 Geekbench results show a score of 2,986 single-core and 9,355 multi-core, a base frequency of 3.53GHz, and two separate processing clusters. The first has six cores clocked at 3.53GHz, and the second has two cores clocked at 4.47GHz, according to Tarun Vats on X.

Read more