Sprint to offer iPhone competitor

LAS VEGAS, April 1 (UPI) -- U.S. wireless giant Sprint said Tuesday it would introduce a touch-screen music phone to compete with Apple's iPhone.

Sprint announced at the CTIA Wireless convention in Las Vegas it would offer the Samsung Instinct, which features a large screen, full QWERTY keyboard and a voice-to-action button. The phone is expected to have peak download speeds of 3.1 Mbps and upload rates of 1.8 Mbps.

Sprint Senior Vice President of Product Development John Garcia said the phone is designed to simplify the user-experience.

"The end result is a great-looking phone that makes the value of Sprint's fast NOW Network come to life but, most importantly, it is fun and easy to use," Garcia said in a release.

The phone multitasks to some extent, allowing users to play music in the background while surfing the Internet, texting or playing games. The phone comes with a 2GB microSD card. Memory is expandable to 8GB.

The price hasn't been set for the device.