Sprint announces upcoming LG Optimus F3 availability, LTE for $29.99 on contract

Some people would prefer a smartphone without all the bells, whistles, and expense that come with some of the higher-end models. Sprint now has an answer for those folks:  the carrier announced today the upcoming availability of the LG Optimus F3, a $29.99 (after a 2-year contract and $50 mail-in rebate) phone compatible with the Now Network’s LTE towers. That’s the cheapest 4G LTE phone Sprint’s offered yet.

The specs are, as you might expect for a phone of this price, nothing special. The Optimus F3 sports a 4-inch 800×480 IPS display and 5MP camera. Internally, it packs a 1.2GHz dual-core ARM CPU and an NFC-capable wireless chip with Wi-Fi Direct compatibility. The whole thing’s powered by a 2,460mAh battery, which should keep the Optimus F3 humming along for a good long while.

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In addition to LG’s suite of applications, Sprint’s included some bloat, albeit useful bloat. As “the first phone to come preloaded with TalkBack,” Google’s text-to-speech accessibility app, the carrier is marketing the Optimus F3 as a device accommodating to those with disabilities. Sprint says blind and vision-impaired customers will have an easier time setting up and using the phone with TalkBalk enabled.

Sprint will begin selling the LG Optimus F3 starting June 14 online, before expanding availability to retail locations. Color options are unfortunately limited to silver and purple, but you can’t beat the smartphone’s price tag.

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