Sprint Nextel said Thursday that it’s poised to begin shipping the carrier’s first smartphone based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. The CDMA HTC Arrive is slated to debut March 20 at a post-mail-in rebate price of $200 when subscribers sign a two-year agreement for a new activation or eligible upgrade featuring Sprint’s Everything plan with data plus its premium data add-on.
According to IDC, Windows Phone 7 vendors shipped more than 1.5 million units during the platform’s first three months of availability at the end of last year. Now that Microsoft has released Phone 7 and has begun to evolve it, “they are now in the game,” noted Al Hilwa, director of applications software development at IDC.
“Coming to CDMA is another milestone,” and Microsoft is “about to reach 9,000 apps in the store, which puts them in good stead,” Hilwa said. “While Nokia and RIM have more apps in their stores, their large and varied installed base of devices means that not every phone can run every app, while the apps in the Microsoft store run on every WP7 phone.”
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Sporting a 3.6-inch capacitive touchscreen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, the HTC Arrive is equipped with a one-gigahertz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, 16GB of internal memory, and both Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) and Bluetooth 2.1 radios. And the standard 1500 mAh Lithium-ion battery that ships with the device delivers up to six hours of talk time.
The 6.5-ounce HTC Arrive also integrates a five-megapixel camera with autofocus, digital zoom, and flash that doubles as a high-definition 720p camcorder. According to Sprint, the smartphone’s camera can upload photos without the user having to unlock the handset.
Tight integration with Microsoft products and services means business professionals will be able to produce Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents that can be…