LAS VEGAS -- International CTIA WIRELESS 2010 -- Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) confirmed the worst-kept secret of the CTIA show Tuesday with a glitzy unveiling for its first-ever WiMax smartphone, the High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC) (Taiwan: 2498) EVO 4G, here in Vegas. (See Sprint Launches 3G/4G Android Phone.)

Entering to the strains of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir", Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, declared the phone a new milestone for the carrier. "Today, we're announcing the world's first 4G smartphone," he told the invited crowd.

Clearwire LLC (Nasdaq: CLWR)'s WiMax network for faster data coverage. This means that the device can support data downloads at up to 10 Mbit/s. It will fall back to 3G for voice and data if WiMax is not available.

The phone, powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM) Snapdragon processor, was developed using Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s open operating system by Android kingpin HTC. The CEO of HTC, Peter Chou, was on hand to talk about the phone, stressing that it was the first device to really exploit mobile video. Certainly the 4.3-inch touch-sensitive screen is larger than many available on other smartphones.

The phone is equipped two cameras, a main 8-megapixel camera that can support HD video and one on the front of the phone for chat applications. The handset sports 1GB of built-in memory and 512MB of RAM. Sprint says that the device will be available this summer. There's no word yet on pricing or plans.

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile