Sprint HTC One will launch without carrier branding, clean as a newborn baby
Good news for those that don’t want their carrier tagging up their smartphones (I’m looking at you Verizon), the HTC One on Sprint will come completely devoid of any carrier branding. PocketNow discovered this after they received their review unit (our AT&T model will be arriving soon) and believe it or not, this isn’t really out of the ordinary for Sprint. You may remember the Galaxy Note 2 came without any of Sprint’s branding, not even on the back battery cover like on the AT&T model.
Apparently, this new trend at Sprint could have something to do with the carrier’s move to begin unlocking some of their handsets for use on Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile in the near future. Sprint’s Director of Product Marketing issued the following statement:
The movement has less to do with de-emphasizing our brand and more to do with the flexibility that it provides us in our multi-brand strategy. Increasingly, we are launching similar devices on both our Sprint brand and our no contract brands, Virgin Mobile and Boost. Removing the carrier brand gives us manufacturing and logistical economies in the event that we launch the same device on multiple brands. Also there is a difference between hardware branding and software branding. Sprint is still very focused on software branding which can be dynamic in nature.
While handsets may not have Sprint’s logo plastered anywhere on the hardware, as Sprint mentioned, they still offer “Sprint ID,” a homescreen/launcher tied to many of Sprint’s services via software. Of course, those can easily be replaced with one of the many launcher replacements available in the Play Store. When it comes to carrier branding, does it really bother any of our readers out there?