14 DAY TRIAL // Announced in late February, HTC’s Merge GSM/CDMA hybrid smartphone is now available for pre-orders in India for Rs. 35,000 through online retailer Letsbuy. Additionally, customers who want to reserve a unit are required to deposit Rs. 1,000.
HTC Merge has recently been showcased at this year's SXSW (South by Southwest) festival in Austin, Texas, and is expected to be released in the U.S. “this spring.”
Even though the smartphone is in the mid-budget category, it has been tagged with a pretty high price, at about $775.
Beside its comfortable slide-out QWERTY keyboard, the only other thing that might attract customers who intend to purchase it is the dual-mode capabilities.
According to HTC, this is its first CDMA world phone that will hit the shelves this spring, with Verizon being the first to carry it.
Although Indian retailer Letsbuy already takes pre-orders of the smartphone, there are no details regarding the shipping date. The only information mentioned is the fact that the HTC Merge will ship 4-7 working days post launch date.
The CDMA/GSM hybrid slider is expected to be delivered with an average 800 MHz Qualcomm MSM7X30 processor on board, as well as microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
It runs on Android 2.2 Froyo with HTC Sense UI and features an S-LCD 3.7-inch capacitive touch screen display with 16 million colors support and 480 x 800 pixels resolution.
The HTC Merge packs a standard 5-megapixel photo snapper with LED flash, autofocus and video recording capabilities (720p).
Other features that appear on the phone's information page of the HTC Merge include Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, DLNA function, GPS with A-GPS support, and Stereo FM radio with RDS.
Indian customers should expect the HTC Merge to be available as soon as the device hits the U.S. market.