A new release date has finally been announced for the HTC Evo 4G LTE (News - Alert) in the United States; a Sprint representative said Thursday that the Ice Cream Sandwich-running smartphone will be available on June 2 after being delayed from entering the U.S.

The phone was initially all set to hit Sprint stores as of May 18, but was stopped at customs due to a patent dispute with Apple (News - Alert). Although the suit was filed in 2010, two of HTC's (News - Alert) latest and greatest smartphones, including the Evo 4G LTE and the HTC One X, allegedly infringed on an Apple patent dealing with tapping on a phone number or address as a link.

HTC had reportedly done its best to avoid infringing on Apple's patents when designing its Sense 4.0 user interface for its new phones, but the International Trade Commission still held the devices for inspection earlier in May. The hardware made it through the review process on Tuesday.

The Evo 4G LTE is the successor of HTC's popular Evo 4G, one of Sprint's best-selling phones of all time. The 4G LTE builds upon the features that made the original Evo so popular, with the latest version of Android (News - Alert), a large 4.7-inch LCD display, a powerful 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 1GB of RAM and an eight megapixel camera.

"HTC has completed the review process with U.S. Customs and HTC devices have been released, as they are in compliance with the ITC's ruling," said HTC in a statement. "Future shipments should continue to enter the U.S. and we are confident that we will soon be able to meet the demand for our products."

The HTC One X, which managed to get out to some consumers in the U.S. before the injunction, is still listed only as "unavailable" on the AT&T (News - Alert) website; neither AT&T nor HTC have said when the phone will be available to consumers again.