May 21, 2012 by Emily Price on Mashable
If you pre-ordered Sprint’s EVO 4G LTE, then your wait is almost over. Sprint announced via a forum post Monday afternoon that it expects to begin shipping the HTC EVO 4G LTE to customers who pre-ordered the device soon, with phones expected to arrive on or around May 24th.The EVO 4G LTE was originally slated to be released on May 18, but was delayed in U.S. customs due to a “review of shipments that is required after an ITC exclusion order.”
The exclusion order came from a court ruling last year when HTC was accused of violating 10 Apple patents. The judge ruled in favor of Apple in the case, and required HTC to adjust the software in its phones in order for them to be sold in the U.S. The problem in this case specifically centered around tapping a phone number in an email to launch the phone’s dialer to call a number.
The exclusion order went into effect on April 19, and both the HTC One X and EVO 4G LTE were both pulled for inspection last week. At the time HTC acknowledged the review, and issued a statement reading in part, “We believe we are in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with customs to secure approval” — approval which it now appears to have -– at least in the case of the EVO 4G LTE.
If you have already pre-ordered the EVO 4G LTE, then you can expect the phone to arrive on or around this Thursday. Customers will be sent a shipping confirmation email with a tracking number as soon as their devices ships, and you can check the status of your pre-order on Sprint’s website.
Sprint and HTC just unveiled an LTE version of the popular Evo smartphone that helped put HTC on the map in the U.S. Officially called the HTC Evo 4G LTE, it’ll will be available exclusively on Sprint this spring for $199.99.
