Sprint's first Windows Phone 8 device meets FCC dressed in HTC brand

During CES, word got out that Sprint was going to be offering a Windows Phone 8 model soon, which is why it is not hard to imagine the device already getting invited to meet with the FCC. While the documents that accompanied the phone through its journey around the FCC say in plain English that the model wearing the visitor's pass is a Windows Phone flavored device, the numbering scheme used by HTC would suggest that this is something different.

According to the model number, the phone visiting the FCC would be the HTC One SV. This is a device with a 4.3 inch Super LCD 2 display, dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of native storage. The story gets even stranger. Back in December, we told you that the phone had visited the FCC, but while the label in the documentation showed that this version of the HTC One SV supported  LTE, the actual specs listed never mentioned any LTE connectivity. Instead, the  FCC paperwork included approval for WCDMA bands II and V, GSM bands 850 and 1900, dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC.

The specs listed with the mystery device show that it supports LTE Band 25 which is the spectrum used by Sprint, which is how we knew this phone was heading to the nation's third largest carrier. But wait...there's more! The HTC One SV just launched yesterday via Cricket in the U.S. The model number for the device is PL80120 versus the PL80110 on the FCC documents.

So we can narrow things down to one of two answers. Either there is a variant of the HTC One SV coming to Sprint, or else the carrier is indeed getting its first Windows Phone 8 model, albeit earlier than expected. As soon as the dust settles, we'll let you know what's happening!

source: FCC, PhoneScoop via Engadget