Sprint and Motorola announced a “reinvigorated alliance” which will see Sprint and its prepaid brands (Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile USA) offering more than ten new Motorola “wireless devices” in 2011, including smartphones and tablets. Two products were unveiled in the announcement: the Photon 4G (pictured), which is Motorola’s first device for Sprint’s WiMAX network with a dual-core 1GHz processor, and Triumph, which is the first Virgin Mobile USA handset from Motorola. Both are powered by Google’s Android platform. Also in the pipeline is Motorola’s Xoom tablet; Titanium, the vendor’s first Android smartphone with Nextel Direct Connect push-to-talk capabilities; and a brace of devices for Motorola’s Boost prepaid brand. Engadget reports that while using Motorola’s custom Motoblur user interface on top of Android, new Motorola devices (including Photon 4G) will no longer use the Motoblur moniker in its marketing. The company is now believed to be focusing on “the value proposition” of its handsets, rather than attempting to position Motoblur as a product in its own right.

While Motorola has been a device partner for Sprint for some time, in recent years much of the emphasis has been placed on the handsets the vendor offers for Sprint’s CDMA rival Verizon Wireless – it has been central to this operator’s flagship Droid product portfolio. Verizon is now offering the CDMA version of Apple’s iPhone, which has caused concern about the effect this will have on Motorola.