14 DAY TRIAL // Expected to be released on March 20th, HTC's first Windows Phone 7 smartphone, the Arrive is now available for pre-orders through Wirefly. The device can be purchased for as low as $49.99 with a new two-year contract from Sprint.
Customers who already have a Sprint contract and are eligible for an upgrade will have to pay $149.99 for the HTC Arrive
Wirefly's offer is much better than Sprint's, which is expected to retail the device for $199.99 with a new two-year service agreement or eligible upgrade and after a $100 mail-in rebate.
We have reported earlier that the HTC Arrive might be available three days earlier than it was expected, but only in the Seattle area. It seems that the official launch will coincide with Microsoft's NoDo update roll-out, which is scheduled for next week as well.
Rumors say that Sprint's HTC Arrive will be delivered with the NoDo software update pre-installed on March 20th, but the carrier did not confirm it.
HTC Arrive is the first CDMA Windows Phone 7 smartphone and its GSM version is known as HTC 7 Pro in Europe.
As a reminder, the HTC Arrive is powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, complemented by an Adreno 200 GPU. It has a medium-sized 3.6-inch WVGA capacitive touch screen display with 480 x 800 pixels resolution.
The WP7 smartphone packs a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, face detection and video recording capabilities (720p).
In addition to its slide-out QWERTY keyboard, the HTC Arrive sports 16GB of internal memory, 576 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support, as well as GPS with A-GPS support (Bing Maps).
When it comes to software, the device offers users the complete Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, PDF viewer), along with Facebook and Twitter integration.
