Verizon and Samsung Officially Unveil 4G LTE Stratosphere

Confirming earlier rumors that we covered yesterday, Verizon Wireless and Samsung announced today that the Samsung Stratosphere smartphone will launch this Thursday, October 13.

The Stratosphere will be the newest addition to Verizon’s family of 4G LTE devices, and will be the first of them to offer users a five-row, physical QWERTY keyboard.

Powered by a 1 GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird processor, the Stratosphere will run Android 2.3 OS (Gingerbread) and will sport a four-inch Super AMOLED Touchscreen display. Other specs include a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, and Bluetooth 3.0 and WiFi connectivity.

The newly-announced smartphone will also be well equipped for the business market, as it is going to have Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync features including direct push, email, calendar, contact sync, Global Address List, and storage card and device encryption. The Stratosphere will also support Sybase Afaria mobile device management (MDM) as well as B2B-enabled connectivity services from Cisco, like AnyConnect 2.1 SSL VPN.

Come this Thursday, the Stratosphere will be available in Verizon Wireless Communications stores and online at Verizon’s website for $150 after a $50 mail-in rebate and a new two-year contract including a data plan, which start at $30 per month for 2 GB of data.