Motorola Photon 4G official for $199 on July 31st

If you have been waiting for a NVIDIA Tegra 2-toting Android handset for the Sprint network, your wait is coming to an end. Today Sprint officially announced the Motorola Photon 4G, which will arrive on store shelves on July 31st for $199 on a new two-year contract.

The Photon 4G features a 4.3 inch qHD display, 8 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash on the back, VGA front-facing camera for video chat, 16GB of pre-installed memory that’s expandable to 32GB, kickstand, WiMAX, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS, with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and NVIDIA’s powerful dual-core Tegra 2 processor running the show. The Photon 4G will the first handset to sport the Tegra 2 processor in Sprint’s lineup, and now there’s an Android device with the powerful CPU on every major US carrier.

Much like the Atrix 4G on AT&T, the Photon will also have a wealth of accessories available for it, including the questionable laptop dock that Motorola likes to push on us. You’ll also find accessories like a HD docking system and car navigation dock, as well a handful of different cases for the handset.

The Photon will also ship with the not so loved Motoblur custom skin but you won’t hear Motorola speaking a word about it. The skin itself does actually offer some nice tweaks and features but it falls flat on its face when it comes to aesthetic appeal. Still, the sheer power of the handset is what’s appealing and if Motorola stays true to its word, the Photon will like have an unlockable bootloader (or will at some point) and a user can change the software running on the handset so they will no longer be in the shackles of MotoBlah.

If you’re not sold on the EVO 3D, the next best thing is about to become available by month’s end.