Verizon updating and upgrading the Stratosphere, why?

It looks like Verizon is planning on refreshing the Samsung Stratosphere, their first 4G LTE slider, right before they kick it aside for its successor. That’s right, as shown in Verizon’s equipment guide, there will be a Stratosphere 2 (SCH-I415). It’s also going to be named just that, the Stratosphere 2, what a change. Wait, so what’s going to happen with the Pantech Star Q?

Anyways, the equipment guide isn’t showing anything spectacular in the area for specs, hopefully it’ll have a better screen and a better designed keyboard, Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as the wondrous Snapdragon S4 processor that is going in every LTE phone in the nation now. I’d be shocked if it was something different. Knowing the first Stratosphere, the second will likely also be a low to mid-range device.

Yet, before they introduce the second edition of the Stratosphere, they plan on updating the original, and still not even with Ice Cream Sandwich  (Android 4.0.x). What a joke. The new build, version FF1, is 53.8mb in size and although it’s not updating the phone to ICS, it will be bringing some of ICS’ feature to the Gingerbread plagued device. Some features that’ll be thrown into this update, besides the usually bug fixes and performance improvements, include: face unlock, new incoming call UI, and a new photo editor, among others.

Seeing that Verizon has posted the docs already for the update, we should start seeing it arrive fairly soon. Yet, this device hasn’t exactly be ground-shattering and the developer community isn’t grand, so are you really looking forward to get a 2nd-generation variant? This will mostly be for those who need a hard keyboard along with not spending a lot of money.

Thanks Verizon?

Via: Droid-Life; Verizon