Hands-on: LG Viper 4G, Sprint's second LTE smartphone

Sprint's Network Vision upgrade to LTE won't be a top-down change, where only flagship devices will be able to hook up to the high speed network, among the carrier's first LTE devices will be the slightly cheaper, slightly less flashy LG Viper 4G.

The device is light and smallish (at least when compared to Sprint's flagship LTE phone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus,) and its primary selling points are its high recyclability and low energy footprint. While these qualities rarely prove to be majorly attractive to consumers, it's still nice to have them checked off when looking at new devices.

The Viper 4G is powered by Android 2.3 and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. It has a 5-megapixel camera and a VGA forward-facing chat camera, a 4-inch WVGA display, and multi-device hotspot capability.