The upcoming HTC Kingdom will be sold by Sprint as the HTC Hero 4G, suggests evidence from numerous sources, the most compelling of which is a DLNA certificate for a device by that name. The HTC Hero 4G has also started posting images to photo-sharing websites.

First revealed in early May thanks to a render along with a leaked ROM, the 1.2GHz Kingdom was already being tipped as Hero 4G by forum contributors as early as a few days after the first reports. Sprint was the only US carrier to stock the original Hero, a 528MHz, 3.2-inch handset running one of the first Android builds, version 1.5 Cupcake.

With Hero 4G having already passed the FCC — and with cases showing up on Amazon — it’s fairly likely that we’ll see a release before the end of the summer.