AT&T announces the 4G Pantech Discover, a 4.8-inch, 720p Android phone for $50

AT&T has announced the availability of the Pantech Discover, a smartphone with a 4.8-inch screen and a dual-core processor, at a very competitive price.

AT&T has announced a new branded smartphone at CES 2013 in conjunction with Pantech, just an hour before its press conference is due to begin. The Pantech Discover is the device in question, and it’s going to be priced extremely competitively considering its specification.

The Discover has a massive 4.8-inch touchscreen with a 720p resolution, rivaling the Samsung Galaxy S3, while on the back of the phone is a 12.6-megapixel camera, which again trumps the 8-megapixel shooter on the rear of Samsung’s popular smartphone. Inside the Discover, things aren’t quite as impressive as the S3, but the 1.5GHz dual-core processor certainly won’t be slow.

The operating system isn’t quite as up to date as the S3 and other top-end Android smartphones either, as it runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This being an AT&T-branded phone, a 4.1 Jelly Bean update probably won’t be along very soon either.

Pantech has loaded the Discover with 16GB of internal memory, NFC, dual surround sound speakers, a 2100mAh battery and 4G LTE connectivity with AT&T. It’s also the first phone to come with AT&T’s DriveMode app, which is designed to automatically reply to incoming text messages when you’re driving along, or engage voicemail once the car reaches 25 miles-per-hour.

So how much are you going to have to pay for the Pantech Discover? It’s priced at $50 with a two-year contract, that’s $150 less than a 4G Galaxy S3, so it’ll be interesting to see how the device compares in a side-by-side test when it goes on sale. It’ll do so on January 11.