What would Sprint's "industry first" be?

Sprint was relatively quiet at CES thisyear, but was it the kind of silence just before a storm? The 4G-capableThunderBolts, Tegras and even Verizon iPhones of our time havesounded off and left us wondering what could Sprint bring to stir upour geeky imagination. That is when the carrier promised to put an“industry first” up its sleeve on February 7thand it won't be alone, but accompanied by illusionist David Blaine.

So while everyone waits for Sprint'sown Dan Hesse to pull a magic trick, let us analyze and weigh all thepossibilities behind the invitation-only event. First, let's see howSprint's lineup looks now. The company had no earth-shatteringdevices since the HTC EVO 4G and the Samsung Epic 4G, which took ourhearts by delivering amazing speeds for their time. The affordableHTC EVO Shift 4G unveiled just before CES can hardly compare with thedual-core 4G-capable Motorola Atrix 4G (AT&T) and Motorola DROID Bionic (Verizon).

So could it be that Sprint willannounce its first dual-core handset? Many are looking forwardto an EVO2 or a second generation of the Epic 4G, while some even hope(don't look at us!) that a dual-core Nokia handset will come to theNow network, which we find very unlikely. While dual-core handsets will imminently land on Sprint,they certainly would not be an “industry first”.

How about a Sprint-branded iPhone 4?While this would be far from a novelty, Apple's heavyweightrunning on the WiMAX network could make a big splash. But let's notoverspeculate here - even though many out there would love to see it,Sprint has a loyal and well-established relationship with Android andwe have no reason to believe it would end soon.

And combining Android with thepresence of illusionist David Blaine, we can think of oneproduct that stands out and that would match all the novelty – an HTC 3D Android phone.Will it be a stereoscopic 3D phone that Hesse has hidden up his sleeve? While itis still too early for this, we have seen rumors circulate for awhile and the technology is certainly out there. The stereoscopic Android phone could have 3 camera sensors installed and 2 cameras shooting side by side. Mostmajor Android blogs are invited as well, which makes this our pick.

Other options include a CDMA WindowsPhone 7 with WiMAX support, which is certainly on its way andactually the HTC 7 Pro would match this profile perfectly. While itis nothing that revolutionary, the HTC 7 Pro will in fact bethe industry's first CDMA phone with the latest mobile Windows. Let's not forget that Sprint could alsoconfirm RIM's PlayBook tablet running on a 4G network, but we seenothing magical or new about this either. There are many speculationsout there, but what do you expect to see and why?