Amazon have “accidentally” broken an HTC embargo and revealed the CDMA version of the Shift UMPC several days early; up for pre-order at $1,499, the long-awaited device is equipped with EV-DO for mobile browsing.  Remember, this is an unsubsidised price, so buyers will need to add on a data plan (likely to cost around $60 a month) if they want to use the Shift to its full capacity.

Matthew Miller has been trying out the CDMA Shift, and while much of the functionality and capabilities of the system is the same as its GSM counterpart, he has been able to confirm that while it does support EV-DO it’s sadly not the higher-speed Rev.A variant.  That’ll come as a disappointment to Verizon and Sprint customers who had been eyeing up the HSDPA Shift already on sale and hoping for a similarly speedy experience.  He also heaps criticism onto the media support: “Skype is unusable, audio is shaky and video is virtually non-existent.”

I can’t help but think that the target audience for a device like the Shift is likely to find the CDMA-only cellular connectivity a drawback when it comes to travelling outside of the US.

[via TBG]