Orange has confirmed that it will exclusively offer HTC's Shift Windows Vista-running UMPC to Brits from the end of this month.

HTC's Shift: comes to Orange later this month

Rumours appeared earlier this month that Orange would be the first UK network operator to offer that Shift. However, the network operator's announcement appears to have come at the expense of online retailer Expansys, which has pushed its availability date for the device back from 19 February to 3 March.

However, you’ll still save around £120 (€155/$240) if you buy the HTC Shift from Expansys because it’s offering the shift for a device-only price of £880, whilst Orange has priced the Shift at around £999 (€1135/$2000), depending on your chosen contract.

The HTC Shift, which runs Windows Vista Business edition, has a 7in touch-sensitive display that tilts up to unveil a Qwerty keyboard. It provides data connectivity over quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge and 3G HSDPA connections of up to 3.6Mb/s, in addition to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0. A fingerprint reader is built in too.

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