Sprint To Sell HTC Handset with Windows Phone 7

 Sprint Nextel will offer a handset next month from HTC that includes Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system.

It is Sprint’s first device based on Microsoft’s new operating system that the software king hopes will strengthen its position in the U.S. smartphone market.

HTC today announced the phone – the HTC Arrive – will be available from Sprint on March 20.  The smartphone will be available for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement or eligible upgrade and after a $100 mail-in rebate (excluding taxes) in all Sprint retail channels.

HTC also said that beginning today customers can pre-order the handset at any participating Sprint store with the purchase of a $50 Sprint card.

The smartphone features a sliding QWERTY keyboard and tilt-up display and integrates with such Microsoft services as Bing, Zune and Xbox Live.

For more details about the phone, check out Sprint’s fact sheet.

Sprint Snags First CDMA Windows Phone 7 Handset

Overland Park, Kan. - The Windows Phone 7 smartphone platform will come to a CDMA network for the first time with the March 20 arrival of the $199 HTC Arrive on the Sprint network.

The phone, priced after $100 mail-in rebate and two-year contract, is also the first Windows Phone 7 handset to combine a sliding QWERTY keyboard with a tilt-up display that creates the appearance of a tiny laptop. It also features such preinstalled Windows 7 upgrades as copy and paste.

The Arrive, which is similar to the HTC 7 Pro offered outside the U.S., can be preordered now at any Sprint Store with the purchase of $50 Sprint gift card.

Like the multiple GSM/HSPA Windows 7 phones available here in the U.S. from T-Mobile and AT&T,  the 6.5-ounce HTC Arrive meets Microsoft's minimum performance requirements, or "chassis spec," which mandates a minimum 1GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera, 800 by 480 capacitive touchscreen display, minimum RAM and flash-memory requirements, and the like. They also feature 720p HD video recording.

On top of these features, HTC added its HTC Hub weather and widgets, and Sprint added such services as Sprint TV and Movie streaming, NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, and Sprint Football Live.

Other features include 3.6-inch touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera with flash and autofocus, digital zoom, 16GB of non-removable memory, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, stereo Bluetooth 2.1 (+ EDR), and SRS Wow surround sound processing.

The Windows 7 OS was designed to achieve two basic goals: simplify basic operating tasks using as few taps as possible and organize information for easy access, Microsoft said. As a result, all phones feature six hubs where the most common applications and tasks are accessible and integrated. The hubs include an Office Hub with key Microsoft productivity applications, a games hub, a music and video hub, a pictures hub, a people hub incorporating contacts and social-network feeds, and a marketplace hub for downloading apps. The Office Hub features apps to read and edit Microsoft Office Applications (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), Sharepoint for on-the-go collaboration, and OneNote.

The OS's Live Tiles feature displays multiple tiles on a customizable home screen, each tile letting users see live information such as real-time news and weather updates from the Web, pending messages and appointments, the number of unread emails, or friends' status on social-networking sites.

Other ease-of-use features include the ability to take pictures quickly if the phone is off. Users hit the camera button, waking up the phone so they can immediately take pictures. Users can also set the camera to automatically send each picture to a cloud-based storage service as they are taken.

A dedicated search button helps people find data across applications, whether in contacts, the Microsoft Marketplace, in e-mail or on the Web. From the Start screen, the search button accesses the Bing for Mobile service to deliver Web search results, local information, maps, directions and the like.

 All phones are also integrated with other Microsoft services such as Windows Live, Xbox Live, Windows Marketplace to purchase or stream music, and the Zune Pass subscription-based music downloading and streaming service. Users also get access to the more than 4,000 Windows Phone 7 apps. Talk time is up to 6 hours.

Windows Phone 7 Update Bricks Samsung Phones

Earlier today we reported  about Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 update that was released to update the phone's software. However, within hours of its release, many Windows Phone 7 device owners reported that the update bricks the phone - makes it non-functional. Tom Warren of WinRumors noted on his blog that Samsung Omnia 7 owners who applied the update were left with phones that either didn't boot up correctly or suffered from Samsung backup issues.

Microsoft has released new update for Windows Phone 7 on phone updater. The recent update is meant to make the phone ready for the major one that is expected to release in March. However, instead of that this measly update gives number of errors to Windows Phone 7 devices users and made number of WP7 based Samsung phones non-functional.

Microsoft's Windows Phone Support Twitter account acknowledged the issues faced by the number of users and suggests taking the devices to the store for getting it fixed. Officially, Microsoft hasn't acknowledged the issue but the support team stated that the Windows Phone team is looking into it.

Note: We tried updating Windows Phone 7 based HTC Mozart on Windows 7 but Zune Driver error threw back. Apparently, the update was successfully implemented on MacBook Pro with Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Windows Phone 7 Update Today

A new update for Windows Phone 7 is expected today, but before you get all excited, we must tell you that this is not the March 8 update we had reported earlier. The March 8 update is highly anticipated because it will bring several improvements to the new mobile OS, including the blatantly omitted copy and paste feature and possibly improved Marketplace search.

This first update for Windows Phone 7 to be released today is meant to improve the software update process. This may seem to be less exciting, but it is a crucial step in getting future updates to the handset as smoothly as possible.

The update will be available today, but will not be sent out to everyone at once. Rather, it will be released in batches to users of Windows Phone 7, to ensure that the process goes smoothly. In order to get this update, you must connect your Windows Phone handset to the Zune software on Windows or the WP7 Connector for Mac and you will be guided through the update.