Picked up the Arrive after a week with the Epic 4g. The epic had a beautiful screen - at least for the 4 hours I got to use during the week I owned it. The other 164 hours it was plugged into to a wall charger.
I waited almost a year to pick up a smart phone, torn between Android and WP7 - and WP7 wasn't even o the market when I started researching. But as a 4 year Zune user I know MS can make great products (MY 120gb Zune is still going strong 4 years later).
Well, I couldn't be happier. The only reason my wife and I picked up the Epics over the Arrive in the first place was the front facing camera/physical keyboard combo (how is it that the Epic is the only phone in the world that has both of those features?). I work crazy hours and the idea of being able to talk to and see my kids really appeals to me. Since Qik never did work well, the whole FFC requirement became moot.
We've had the Arrive for about two weeks now and constantly mention to each other how great this phone is. Pictures are stunning, the OS is smooth and FUN, there are enough apps to get me through my 4 hours of daily commuting (don't ask), and I have a bunch of my favorite Zune playlists right on my phone. And the battery life - oh the sweet sweet battery life. All day long with 4 different push email accounts, an hour of Netflix, a couple hours of games, and Zune playing music for another 3 or 4 hours and I don't need to plug it in to charge it up. I have about 25% of my battery left at the end of the day, charge it up (in two hours! Epic took 10) at night, unplug it before bed, and its good to last the whole next day.
I will never doubt the House of Bill again. =)
In fact, when we went back to Sprint to return our Epics for the Arrives we did it over 2 days - I returned mine on Saturday, and brought the wifes back on Sunday after she played with my Arrive and liked it. While there, I was talking with a guy a month away from hitting his upgrade who was rocking an old BB. After talking with him for 15 minutes I convinced him to grab the Arrive. I loved talking up the WP7 so much the owner of the Sprint store offered me $10 for every person I brought in the store =)
There are definitely some improvements needed (text resizing in IE being numero uno for me), but this is a sweet OS on a beautiful piece of hardware.