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A WiMAX phone? Really? With Android?

Big kudos to Mark Sullivan, who has sniffed out the phone every mobile journalist really wants to see: an Android based phone that works over WiMAX.

Well, he thinks he might have.

"After talking to wireless carriers, handset makers and analysts here, I believe we'll be seeing an Android smartphone (possibly made by Samsung) and sold by Sprint next year. Sprint openly confirms plans to sell a 4G smartphone next year, but is quiet on the maker of the phone and the mobile OS."

Wow, exciting!

Well, maybe. First off, the term "4G" has several translations. For most mobile networks, it means LTE - Long Term Evolution. Inside Intel, perhaps, it means WiMAX - but Intel still doesn't operate a phone network.

Sprint is a shareholder in ClearWire, which is trying to create a WiMAX phone network for North America. To quote Sullivan again, this would be a dual-band 3G/WiMAX phone to run on that network: "if you live in a WiMax city (there will be 80 by the end of 2010, Clearwire says), you will get 4G until you leave your coverage area, then you switch to 3G."

The story isn't peddling Intel propaganda, nor Clearwire hype. It's not pretending, as many have done, that there are "dozens" of useful WiMAX devices. And indeed, there aren't, even now. It's six months since we pointed out the gap between 3G and WiMAX. And Sullivan isn't pretending things have changed. He quotes Todd Rowley, VP of Sprint's 4G business unit:

"[He] told me Sprint is currently in talks with a handset maker for the phone, but couldn't reveal details. Rowley also says Sprint won't begin selling the 4G smartphone until the Clearwire WiMax network reaches around 100 million people in the U.S."

That's likely to happen in late 2010, says Sullivan; Clearwire is saying it'll reach 120 million people by the end of 2010. A credibility gap even there, it seems.

Several WiMAX boosters have raved about the possibility of a Samsung Android phone doing WiMAX data "several times faster than 3G" soon. Meanwhile, in the real world - even in Clearwire cities - iPhone and iPod Touch users are doing data over Wi-Fi several times faster than 3G.

What is true is that the Android market really needs a properly ubiquitous WAN technology to hook into. Android is fine! - but more than rival platforms, depends on getting a signal.

Given a choice between getting your high-speed data link from a Wi-Fi hotspot, or a Clearwire WiMAX network, it's going to be a while before anybody will recommending buying anything other than a standard dual-mode phone with 3G/Wi-Fi.

As for the "Android" dimension, it's imposible to measure.

Yes, if you had access to a professional-level WiMAX network, guaranteed to be always on, it would have one clear advantage over Wi-Fi: it would hand off properly, and you wouldn't lose the line as you travelled between masts. And Android needs such a network more urgently than other, established mobile phone designs would. So it would make sense - if you had such a network - to consider Android more seriously than if you didn't.

If that sounds like "waving your hands in the air," that's probably because there's really not much more one can say.