AT&T announced earlier this week that it start pushing its spate of Windows Phones starting this Friday, and now rival carrier Verizon Wireless has come out with an announcement of its own.
Apparently, VZW plans to begin taking pre-orders for the HTC Windows Phone 8X and the slightly chubby Nokia Lumia 822 starting at 1AM Eastern tomorrow, but the carrier has chosen to leave out a few key details like, say, when the devices will actually launch.
Oh sure, Verizon has teased some vague timeframes in the past: it previously announced that both handsets would be in stores by Thanksgiving, but there’s never been any official word on a firm release date. Thanks to a few leaks though, we can make some educated guesses — WPCentral cited an internal roadmap and reported in late October that Verizon planned to push both devices into its sales channels starting on November 12. Also on that roadmap were purported prices for the two handsets ($99 for the 822 on a two-year contract, $199 for the 16GB 8X) as well as color choices for each device, all of which Verizon ended up confirming a few days later in an official statement.
Then again, things may have been shuffled around a bit since then — if you’ll recall, HTC and Verizon are holding a press event in New York City on the 13th where the two intend to show off their latest “collaboration.” HTC and VZW are widely expected to pull back the curtains on the oft-leaked, Android-powered Droid DNA smartphone, which seems like a curious choice of timing if the Lumia 822 and the HTC 8X are really slated to launch the day before. Stolen thunder, anyone?
Of course, that’s not to say it won’t happen, but I’d hope to see Verizon Wireless give its customers a little more time to digest the Windows Phone announcement before springing a top-tier Android device on the masses. For the time being though, we’ll just have to wait and see how Verizon’s plan unfolds, but here’s hoping they ship sooner rather than later. After all, Windows Phone devotees on Verizon are probably getting sick and tired of the single WP device in the carrier’s arsenal.