DailyTech - Quick Note: Sprint Bails on Windows Phone, as HTC Arrive Hits End-of-Life

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Gadgets Quick Note: Sprint Bails on Windows Phone, as HTC Arrive Hits End-of-Life
Jason Mick (Blog) - August 23, 2012 5:12 PM

20 comment(s) - last by Wolfpup.. on Aug 28 at 9:51 AM

HTC Arrive was well loved, but not a sales hit

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has drawn a modicum of support from top phonemakers such as Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) and HTC Corp. (TPE:2498) with its Windows Phone smartphone operating system. However, it has struggled with these vendors devoting their premium product to Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android. And Microsoft first exclusive vendor, Nokia Oyj. (HEX:NOK1V), took its sweet time to deploy actual product to the market and has had mixed results since.

Now even as Microsoft looks forward to Windows Phone 8 and attempting to bring America's largest carrier -- Verizon Wireless -- onboard, word has come that its been essentially dropped by Sprint Nextel Corp. (S).

Sprint, the nation's third largest carrier, moved the HTC Arrive Windows Phone to end-of-life. The Arrive (HTC 7 Pro) came out in March 2011 and was somewhat limited due to being stuck on Sprint's CDMA network, a shortcoming that rendered it incapable of sending multimedia messages, and had a 160-character SMS limit.

_{The HTC Arrive on Sprint [Image Source: Sprint]}

Never a real sales contender, the phone nevertheless had a small and devote following boasting the highest customer satisfaction rating on the Sprint network, for a time (though not anymore). Sprint never updated the handset to Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, although it did deliver an earlier update that allowed copy & paste and some other improvements.

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bailed?

By kleinma on 8/23/2012 5:20:35 PM , Rating: 5

Is there more to this than Sprint moving an older Windows handset to end of life? The title makes it sound like they have no plans to try to push Windows 8 phones at all, but the article did not really touch on that.

So are they just end of lifing a phone that was more or less end of life already? Or are they ditching the idea of selling Windows Phones all together?

RE: bailed?

By mcnabney on 8/23/12, Rating: 0

RE: bailed?

By jnemesh on 8/23/12, Rating: -1

RE: bailed?

By kleinma on 8/23/2012 6:29:37 PM , Rating: 5

What does either of what you said have to do with my original question?

Remind me again which android models didn't get forgotten for new devices? Half the android population is running 2.x. If they are running 4.x it is more than likely because they.... upgraded to a new phone. And here you thought it was some sort of Microsoft specific phenomenon.

Your comment is as irrelevant as it is biased.

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RE: bailed?

By kmmatney on 8/23/2012 6:50:52 PM , Rating: 2

At least with an old Android phone, there's a chance you can root and install something newer. I'm not aware of being able to do that with any Windows phone. Why is everyone excited about the upcoming Windows phone again?

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RE: bailed?

By ritualm on 8/23/12, Rating: -1

RE: bailed?

By jnemesh on 8/23/12, Rating: -1

RE: bailed?

By ritualm on 8/23/12, Rating: 0

RE: bailed?

By mocyd on 8/23/2012 9:21:59 PM , Rating: 2

The government has nothing to do with how much excitement MS generates for a platform.

When MS omits things like copy and paste from the initial release of WP7 (when it had it on Windows Mobile 2003), I think we can pretty much conclude that Microsoft is shooting its own foot, and is going to have a hard time getting people to adopt when Android and iOS both trounce it in terms of features and device selection.

Microsoft is guilty on its own for poor product planning and execution.

On the other hand- Microsoft is generating plenty of excitement for Surface and Windows 8- I'm practically drooling over the x86 version as a replacement for my iPad+laptop (but I'm willing to consider dropping down to the RT/Arm version). They actually look like they're on the ball on this product.

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RE: bailed?

By kleinma on 8/23/2012 8:45:38 PM , Rating: 3

Android phones from 3 years ago will run news apps like crap sure. My S3 doesn't feel very fast and fluid to me. I don't have Sprint, or a Windows Phone. I was asking a question about the article, but you felt the need to respond with idiotic nonsense that has nothing to do with this article, so that you can sleep a little better at night hugging your smartphone preference and feeling like you know best so it's the best.

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RE: bailed?

By Samus on 8/24/2012 1:05:22 AM , Rating: 2

I'm sure its Obama's fault. People blame him for everything else, why not add this? I'm sure he's responsible somehow.

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RE: bailed?

By fic2 on 8/23/2012 6:58:04 PM , Rating: 2

I don't know the answer to your question either but since Sprint has guaranteed Apple that they would buy a huge amount of iPhones I would guess they are going down that road.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=windows+phone+on+sprint

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RE: bailed?

By Kyuu on 8/23/2012 10:57:25 PM , Rating: 2

From a quick gander at Sprint's website, I count exactly zero Windows Phones offered up. Based on that, I'd say they're ditching WP7 altogether. It's not clear if they're going to forgo selling WP8 devices, though.

Anyway, if they ditch the WP platform, that just guarantees I won't be signing up for service with Sprint (not that there was a big chance of that happening anyway, admittedly). I want to ditch my iPhone 4, Android's fragmented mess of an ecosystem doesn't appeal to me (and I've never much liked Android in general, really), and I really like the Windows Phone interface. So, any carrier without Windows Phones won't be getting my business.

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RE: bailed?

By Wolfpup on 8/28/2012 9:51:31 AM , Rating: 2

Yeah, by itself this doesn't mean anything at all...you'd expect it to be phased out.

The real issues is whether they're carrying Windows Phone 8.

I like WP7 pretty well, and WP8 seems like it's got some gigantic improvements...if they actually fix podcast support to make it more like the iPod/iPhone...I wouldn't have much of a reason to stick with Apple.

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The HTC Arrive DID get Mango

By Assimilator87 on 8/24/2012 3:09:39 AM , Rating: 2

My dad used to have an Arrive and it definitely was updated to 7.5. It even changed the lock screen wallpaper to a bunch of mangos, just to drive the point home.

RE: The HTC Arrive DID get Mango

By acer905 on 8/24/2012 12:33:03 PM , Rating: 2

Yeah, that is flat out mis-information. The Arrive most certianly has Mango, and it recieved it exactly when every other WP7 device got it. This isn't Android we're talking about here.

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RE: The HTC Arrive DID get Mango

By euclidean on 8/24/2012 2:38:13 PM , Rating: 2

I love Android, but had to +1 your comment....hehe.

However, I actually was geting so tired of not getting an updated OS for my original Sprint HTC EVO 4G, that I started sending emails to HTC support on what was taking so long. Apparently, each new release takes up more and more internal storage space and they don't want to cause users to have phones that can't install Apps....

...Lame excuse for them to continue to install all of their bloated HTC Sense apps in the Core OS...I guess that's the reason I opted to ROOT and install a custom ROM; processing speed, storage, and battery life have all improved exponentially since then :)

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This article is rife with inaccuracies

By sadffffff on 8/24/2012 12:22:36 PM , Rating: 2

I'm still using my Sprint Arrive, I can tell you first hand the following;

1) It did get 7.5 Mango officially.
2) It can send multimedia (picture) messages just fine.
3 sorta) The 160 character limit can be solved by a registry tweak.

RE: This article is rife with inaccuracies

By euclidean on 8/24/2012 2:44:05 PM , Rating: 2

Your #3: I had always thought the 160 character limit was an SMS requirement? My old Nokia, Nextel, HTC Mogul, and the EVO all had the 160 char limit....it would just send multiple txts (split them automatically) if you went over...

Maybe there's something else to the limit that I'm not aware of?

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