Well, after being teased at presentations and making brief appearances at football-themed trade show events, Samsung’s elusive ATIV Odyssey finally has a price and a release date. According to a recent update from Verizon, the humble Windows Phone will make its debut on January 24 (i.e. tomorrow), and will set prospective buyers back $50… eventually. As usual, Verizon is sticking to their obnoxious mail-in rebate tendencies, so those who take the leap will actually shell out $100 at time of purchase.
In case you haven’t been keeping tabs on this little guy, it’s a far cry from the attractive ATIV S that Samsung showed off late last year. The Odyssey packs a 4-inch Super AMOLED display running at 800×480, a 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, a run-of-the-mill 5-megapixel rear camera, and 8GB of internal storage. Not the most exciting spec sheet, certainly, but plenty to provide users with a smooth ride as they fire up apps and scroll through live tile after live tile.
As annoying as the practice is, the mail-in rebate is far from the most peculiar thing about the ATIV Odyssey. What’s really got me curious is the timing of the launch — by pushing out the device only a day after announcing the thing, it almost seems like Verizon just doesn’t care about the thing. Granted, it’s not as sleek or as immediately impressive as devices like HTC’s Windows Phone 8X (and even Nokia’s Lumia 822 feels like a more solid device), but it just might be the right phone for a potential smartphone owner on the fence. I’m sure that’s what Samsung and its carrier partner are hoping, anyway.