HTC Arrive debuts as Sprint's first Windows Phone 7 device

As if the tweets didn't already give it away, Sprint made it official and introduced its first Windows Phone 7 handset today, the HTC Arrive.

Dropping its original moniker of HTC 7 Pro, the Arrive will go on sale March 20 for $199.99 with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate. The smartphone offers all of the hallmark features of Microsoft's revamped mobile operating system, including Zune and Xbox integration and the people and pictures hubs.

In addition, the Arrive will ship with the features going out in the first Windows Phone 7 update, so you'll get copy-and-paste and faster app load times right out of the box.

With the HTC Arrive, you're also getting a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a 5-megapixel camera with 720p HD video capture, 16GB of internal memory (no expansion option), and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This is a 3G-only device.

The design of the phone will be familiar to anyone who has owned the HTC Touch Pro2, as the Windows Phone 7 smartphone also has a slider design with a full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.6-inch WVGA touch screen. However, during our brief hands-on time with the device at the Windows Phone 7 launch event, the Arrive felt more compact and slimmer than the Touch Pro2, which is good news.

Hopefully, we'll be getting a review unit in the next couple of weeks to give you the full rundown on the HTC Arrive, but in the meantime, you can check out some beauty shots below and, as always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the device.