Samsung Ativ Odyssey comes to Verizon today, faces stiff competition from the Nokia Lumia 822

Verizon has announced the availability of the Samsung Ativ Odyssey, the latest addition to its range of Windows Phone 8 hardware, however it faces stiff competition from the Nokia Lumia 822.

Finally, the Samsung Ativ Odyssey’s journey is over, as it’s available to buy from Verizon today. The Ativ Odyssey has lived up to its name too, having been announced way back in October 2012 before disappearing, only to reappear occasionally in other stories until the beginning of this month at CES 2013. There, Verizon confirmed it would be bringing the Samsung Windows Phone 8 device to its network, but failed to provide a launch date.

It has now sprung the news on us just hours before the Ativ Odyssey was put onto shelves, so if you were waiting for Samsung’s little bundle of joy, then it should be for sale both online and in stores now. All the time we were waiting for some solid information on the Ativ Odyssey’s release schedule in the U.S., we’ve been hoping it would be the free Windows Phone handset Verizon promised to provide. Sadly though, the Ativ Odyssey isn’t it, however it’s up against one that is.

It’s not going to break the bank though, as it’s yours for $50 after a $50 mail-in rebate, and provided your scribble your signature on the bottom of a two-year contract. That puts it in the same price bracket as the Verizon-exclusive Nokia Lumia 822; which is bad news for the Samsung phone.

The 4G LTE Ativ Odyssey has a 4-inch touchscreen with a 480 x 800 pixel resolution, while a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor with 1GB of RAM powers the Windows Phone 8 operating system. The spec list continues with a 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of internal storage memory, a 1.2-megapixel video call camera, a 2100mAh battery and a microSD card slot.

You may recall the Lumia 822 dropped in price, from $50 to $0 with a two-year contract, just before Christmas. Why is this bad for the Ativ Odyssey? The Lumia 822 offers a 4.3-inch screen, an 8-megapixel camera, 16GB of internal storage space and can connect to Verizon’s 4G LTE network. The choice is yours, then, but we’d take a good look at both phones before making a decision. You can read our hands-on report of the Lumia 822 here.