AT&T sideloading officially confirmed

We’ve previously reported about a leaked internal document from AT&T, detailing the update that would be arriving on the carrier’s older Android phones to enable sideloading. Now it seems that the carrier has officially confirmed the news. An AT&T representative has been reported as saying, “over the next few weeks, we will also roll out this capability to existing devices in our base for which an upgrade is possible.” when questioned about support for sideloading apps.

In case you’re in the dark – prior to the release of the Samsung Infuse 4G, all AT&T Android phones couldn’t enable the “Allow installation of non-Market applications” function without being rooted and modified. This meant that users were only allowed to install apps from the Android Market, prohibiting them from installing legit third party apps such as the Amazon appstore for Android or Gameloft games.

AT&T’s official statement didn’t mention which phones would be getting the update, but from last week’s leaked screenshot, we know that the HTC Inspire 4G, HTC Aria, and Samsung Captivate are the lucky ones to get the update first. For those of you with phones not mentioned on the list – fret not. We’re pretty sure that they’ll be supporting more devices in the future.