Neither the just-announced HTC Evo V 4G on Virgin nor the HTC Design 4G on Boost Mobile are new. Both are Sprint devices that are being brought down to the pre-paid MVNO in a move that Sprint says is a part of a new trend where it will move top-tier devices into the low-range on pre-paid once they've spent some time in the market. Both phones are identical to what we remember and frankly, they seem like they should have a pretty good shot as they were devices that perhaps flew under the radar a bit in their original life. Sprint thinks the Evo V 4G in particular will be a winner for them, as apparently Virgin Mobile customers are more likely to gravitate towards higher-end devices than Boost. Interestingly, Sprint says that the change from Evo 3D to Evo V is an attempt to re-market the device on its own merits instead as just a 3D device.

They are both running Android 4.0 and Sense 3.6, which means a few of the new bells and whistles are missing on these devices as compared to the One series. Interestingly, one of those bells is HTC's new multitasking "card" interface — instead these devices use the traditional Android 4.0 vertical multitasking list. Frankly, we don't mind.

Finally, yes, they are both running on WiMAX, a decision that we find a bit boggling. Sprint says that because it's moving pre-existing handsets into pre-paid instead of creating new ones, it was able to shorten the development cycle and get them to market faster (which makes sense) and that it will support WiMAX on its networks until 2015. The other piece of good news is Sprint told us that while both devices will have "unlimited" data that still gets throttled after you use 2.5GB of data, Sprint says that it will not throttle 4G data at all.

Both devices launch on May 31st, Virgin's Evo V 4G will be $299.99 and Boost's Evo Design 4G will cost the same.

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