Microsoft Lumia 650 is now up for pre-order in the US and Canada, ships by April 1

Well, that didn't take long. Just yesterday Microsoft said availability details for the Lumia 650 in the US would be coming later this week, and here we are one day later and the phone is already up for pre-order.

That's right, if you live in the US (or Canada) and insist on being among the first people in North America to sport a Lumia 650, you can pre-order one now for $199 (or CAD 199) straight from Microsoft's online store. The "ships by" date is the same for both countries - April 1 (and hopefully not a joke).

That price obviously nets you an unlocked device, and one that even comes with dual-SIM functionality (which isn't something usually seen in North America).

The Lumia 650 has a 5-inch 720p touchscreen, an 8 MP rear camera with LED flash, a 5 MP selfie cam, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 chipset at the helm (featuring a 1.3 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU), 1GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, LTE, and a 2,000 mAh battery. It runs Windows 10 Mobile.