The HTC Arrive, Sprint's first Windows 7 phone,is a solid effort that largely delivers, although it will disappoint those looking for a 4G smartphone.
The Arrive's phone performance is mixed. RF reception is downright excellent: I successfully made several calls in a very weak signal area. But while the earpiece is nice and loud, a few of my test calls were interrupted by audio artifacts, such as pops and clicks. Transmissions through the main mic were a bit blustery but perfectly understandable, with a slight hiss in the background. The speakerphone is quiet enough to be almost useless. I got 4 hours, 32 minutes of talk time, which is acceptable, but not great for a 3G phone.
The Arrive is a classy, businesslike phone, made of gray metal and soft-touch plastic. At 4.6 by 2.3 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and 6.5 ounces, it's a bit heavy, like it's made of some sort of neutron star material; that density helps it feel expensive. The front of the phone is a standard 3.6-inch, 800-by-480 LCD, but slide the screen to the right and something unusual happens: the display moves over and tilts up like a mini-laptop, revealing an excellent five-row QWERTY keyboard.
HTC, Sprint, and Microsoft have enhanced the standard Windows Phone software here with a couple of apps and one big feature: Copy and Paste. Copy and paste worked for text in every app I tried, with one caveat: you need to zoom in beyond a certain point to be able to tap on words, see them highlighted, and copy them. That can be very frustrating.
You can get several useful apps through HTC's Hub portal. There's a notepad, flashlight, graphic equalizer, photo enhancer, but most notably a very cool app called "attentive phone," which does things like increase ringer volume if the phone is in a bag and mute the ringer if you flip over the phone on a table. That's neat stuff, and should be a default feature.
Sprint's major contribution is a TeleNav-powered GPS app that locked into my location quickly and accurately, and works perfectly in landscape mode. That's a big bonus over Microsoft's Maps app, which doesn't work properly with the keyboard open.
The Arrive's phone performance is mixed. RF reception is downright excellent: I successfully made several calls in a very weak signal area. But while the earpiece is nice and loud, a few of my test calls were interrupted by audio artifacts, such as pops and clicks. Transmissions through the main mic were a bit blustery but perfectly understandable, with a slight hiss in the background. The speakerphone is quiet enough to be almost useless. I got 4 hours, 32 minutes of talk time, which is acceptable, but not great for a 3G phone.
The Arrive is a classy, businesslike phone, made of gray metal and soft-touch plastic. At 4.6 by 2.3 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and 6.5 ounces, it's a bit heavy, like it's made of some sort of neutron star material; that density helps it feel expensive. The front of the phone is a standard 3.6-inch, 800-by-480 LCD, but slide the screen to the right and something unusual happens: the display moves over and tilts up like a mini-laptop, revealing an excellent five-row QWERTY keyboard.
HTC, Sprint, and Microsoft have enhanced the standard Windows Phone software here with a couple of apps and one big feature: Copy and Paste. Copy and paste worked for text in every app I tried, with one caveat: you need to zoom in beyond a certain point to be able to tap on words, see them highlighted, and copy them. That can be very frustrating.
You can get several useful apps through HTC's Hub portal. There's a notepad, flashlight, graphic equalizer, photo enhancer, but most notably a very cool app called "attentive phone," which does things like increase ringer volume if the phone is in a bag and mute the ringer if you flip over the phone on a table. That's neat stuff, and should be a default feature.
Sprint's major contribution is a TeleNav-powered GPS app that locked into my location quickly and accurately, and works perfectly in landscape mode. That's a big bonus over Microsoft's Maps app, which doesn't work properly with the keyboard open.
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