Images and details about the upcoming LG Optimus Elite for Sprint and its prepaid subsidiary Virgin Mobile have made their way to the internet, and the only thing I can say about it is this is one confused device, and it couldn't be further from 'elite'.

While this device may not look half bad, under the hood it's the most underwhelming thing that we've seen in many months - save for one unexpected feature on a device like this.

  • 3.2-inch display
  • 800MHz single-core processor
  • 5MP camera
  • Android 2.3
  • NFC

See that last option? Yeah, this thing has NFC. It's unclear as to what market this phone is even for. The consumers who seek the most budget smartphone they can find (read: this) likely couldn't care less about NFC, so they'll probably never use it. However, the geeks among us who desire NFC wouldn't even think about touching this thing, even if the price is right.

Speaking of pricing, there's nothing official right now, but we fully expect Sprint's variant to land for free with an agreement, and Virgin's version to be in the sub-$100 range.

Honestly, I think anyone who picks this up should get paid to use it, not the other way around.

[via Pocketnow]