Author: Greg Kumparak

Are you ready for your Windows Mobile 6.5 update, Sprint HTC Touch Pro2 owners? You should be — given that every other carrier threw 6.5 on the Pro2 months ago, you’re probably champin’ at the bit by now.

We knew it was coming this month — we just didn’t know when. Thanks to your friendly neighborhood Sprint store spy, we’ve now got an exact date.

PPCGeeks forumgoer 99accordv6 just posted the screencap you see above. “A software update is available for the HTC Touch Pro 2 on 3/19/10.” Doesn’t leave much to the imagination, does it?

Along with all of the WinMo 6.5 goodies, the update should also bring a few tweaks to HTC’s Sense UI, a few bug fixes, and vaguely referenced “social networking integration.” Check back for more news come Friday.

[via PocketNow]

If we were to take everything the rumormill said as gospel, we’d tell you that the Motorola Cliq XT launched in all of its Android glory on March 10th. Given that it’s now nearly a week later and the Cliq XT has yet to hit the shelves, we’d say that the rumormill is a dirty, dirty liar. Or, you know, something changed at the last minute.

Either way, now there’s a new, improved rumor to bank on! This rumor is stronger. This rumor is faster. Oh, and yeah, this rumor is most likely correct and includes updated pricing information.

Our friends over at TmoNews managed to dig up this T-Mobile intranet screencap which shows off just about everything any would-be Cliq XT owner wants to know. The price? $99 bucks on a 2-year contract, $199 if you opt for 1-year instead. The launch date? March 17th — otherwise referred to by the present time cool kids as “tomorrow”.

Come, friends! Circle ’round and let me tell you a tale of the finest fake in all the lands. Is your standard, completely not-shady iPhone too thick and legitimate for you? 12.3mm thick? That’s like a loaf of bread! What you need, friend, is the iPhone Air. Not only have they managed to completely rip off everything from the body design to the user interface (presumably poorly), but they’ve also stuffed it all into a package just 8.5mm thick!

Trademark infringement? Pah! This is China, friend! Plus, it’s got WiFi! And Edge! App Store? What’s an App Store? This has all the apps you’ll ever need. Like a random browser claiming to be Internet Explorer.

And how much will this plunge into crazytown set you back? For you, friend, just 880 Chinese Yuan — or roughly 117 dollars. Where are you going, friend? Friend?

[m8Cool via GizChina]

A new challenger has appeared! The Nexus One may not have sold all that well, but it’s still the beastiest Android handset available on US carriers. Speaking of US carriers, add one more to the Nexus One’s supported list.

Since day 1, the T-Mobile version of the Nexus One has worked with AT&T — as long as you didn’t mind that it couldn’t hop on AT&T’s 3G network. Today, with fanfare limited to a post on Google’s Nexus One blog, Google has released a version of the handset jam-packed with AT&T 3G-friendly radio.

This was a bit out of the blue for everyone – we expected to see it eventually after the AT&T’d-out Nexus One cleared the FCC, but then Google made no mention of it whilst heralding that the Verizon Nexus One was “Coming Soon!”. It may be a surprise, but it’s a very much welcome surprise.

Alas, the handset is only being sold unlocked, sans contract. There’s currently no way to get it subsidized with an AT&T discount, implying that AT&T wasn’t interested in offering the phone officially. I wonder why.

[Thanks Martin]

Oh, customer service agents, how we love you. You’re an endless source of knowledge — even if about 80% of it tends to be taken from gadget blogs, pushed through the fact distorting ears of the rumor mill. That other 20%, though.. there are some real gems in there.

Like the launch window for the Android 2.1 update for the Motorola Droid, for example.

Android fan site Droid-Life started nagging at CS agents for information about when we might see 2.1 land on the Motorola Droid – and sure enough, they got a hit:

Marcelo M.: Hi, my name is Marcelo M.. How may I help you?
Kellen B: Hey Marcelo! Since the Spain Milestone has Android 2.1 and the Bulgarian one launches at the end of this week with 2.1, should Droid users expect it this week as well?
Marcelo M.: Within the next 2-3 weeks
Kellen B: Really? That’s awesome news. So by the end of March?
Marcelo M.: Yes
Kellen B: Very cool! Any details on what will be included in the update?
Marcelo M.: Not at this time Kellen, I am sorry
Kellen B: Ok, well thanks for providing me with a more defined timeline than just “soon”. Greatly appreciated.

So, one rep says it’s coming by the end of March. One rep’s word is never enough to go off of (because, like anyone else in the world, they tend to pass on what they’ve heard, rumor or otherwise, as fact), so Droid-Life asked another rep. This one wasn’t quite as specific, saying only that it was coming in “Q1″ – which, as it turns out, happens to end in March.

Take it with a grain of salt for the time being, but Droid owners just might be in for the upgrade treatment before the month is out. We hopped on Moto’s support chat ourselves to try and confirm and, out of pure coincidence, ended up talking to the same guy quoted above. He wasn’t willing to spill the beans for me, though, leaving us with “No sir, we’re still waiting on information.”

Gratuitous shot from Mortal Kombat used here because A) Mortal Kombat is available via Watch Instantly and B) Mortal Kombat is fantastic. You know, in it’s own way.

Just about every smartphone has some sort of Netflix support at this point. Movie browsing… queue management.. all the basics. What they don’t have, unfortunately, is the one feature that everyone is asking for: support for Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming service.

Well, someone’s finally stepping up to the plate with Watch Instantly support — and it’s not Apple or Google.

Fresh out of MIX 2010, Microsoft has announced that Windows Phone 7 will have a Netflix app, complete with Watch Instantly. This is one hell of a pleasant surprise, though in hindsight it makes perfect sense; Watch Instantly on the Mac/PC is powered by Silverlight (which just so happens to be the same thing fueling Windows Phone 7 applications), and Netflix established a pretty close bond with Microsoft when they added Netflix streaming to the 360.

Man, oh man – if you’re not excited about Windows Phone 7 yet, you might want to get your headbone checked out.

[Via EngadgetMobile]

We love webOS around these parts. What we don’t love — not one bit — is how they’ve been advertising it. They kicked things off with creepiness, and then followed it up with mis-aimed cheesiness. Fortunately, it looks like Palm has finally, finally figured this advertising thing out.

Just minutes ago, Palm used a new commercial to debut the brand new slogan for webOS: Life moves fast. Don’t miss a thing. Given that two of webOS’ biggest strengths are how it manages notifications and contacts, we’d say that’s pretty fitting.

Plus, the commercial itself isn’t half bad. It shows off multi-tasking and app switching while riding the fine line between too abstract and too tech-y. Plus, as Youtube user zeo2k so eloquently put it, “Chick is FLY! damn…”

Lets hope this is just the beginning for a pretty massive marketing overhaul from Palm.

All naysaying aside, people are pretty excited about Windows Phone 7. Our readers are excited for it. I’d be outright lying if I said I wasn’t excited about it, too. Know who else is excited? The Windows Phone 7 team — but perhaps not for the reasons you’d expect.

With a few years of work finally coming to a head, some of the folks on the Windows Phone 7 team are taking a step back, looking at the fruits of their labor… and leaving. Not because they’re ashamed, and not because they’re being poached by the competition — but because instead of making Windows Phone 7, they want to make things for Windows Phone 7.

Earlier today, we received an anonymous tip that Microsoft Program Manager Mel Sampat was leaving Microsoft to do just that. After being one of the main voices behind the Windows Mobile blog for 4 years and helping to build the Calendar interface in Windows Phone 7, Mel Sampat (or “MelSam”, as he’s more commonly known) said in a letter to the team (see below) that he was departing to found mist labs, a company focusing on “helping big brands port their iPhone investments over to WM7″ along with a few original apps of their own. The company’s placeholder page also shows iPhone and Android handsets, implying that WM7 might not necessarily be the sole focus for them.

According to the tipster, MelSam isn’t alone; at least 6 other employees (who went unnamed) have recently left the team now that the product is almost out the door, many of whom seem to be interested in their own gigs rather than making the standard move to the competition.

Sampat’s letter follows:

Hey guys
after 4 amazing years in this team, I’ve decided to shake things up a bit. I’m leaving Microsoft and my last day will be Mar 12. Wtf? Well, as some of you know, I was an ISV before coming to Microsoft, and made a decent living writing Pocket PC apps way back in the good old days when we were kicking ass with WM5. After seeing the great reception 7 has received, the dormant entrepreneur in me has resurrected with a huge urge to write apps again. I see an opportunity in a few original ideas I have, as well as helping big brands port their iPhone investments over to WM7. So I’m starting a new company and hope to have some cool WM7 stuff “ready in time for holiday 2010″.

It’s been a pleasure & honor to work alongside so many of you. I will support Microsoft from the outside, and wish nothing but the best for 7. Thanks again for your friendship, comradry and “teachable moments” since 2006. Stay in touch and feel free to drop me a line if you ever need the ISV perspective on something. I leave my features in the able hands of Steve May and the rest of the Time Management team, who deserve credit for the Calendar experience I helped build.

How to find me:

[Removed]

See you down the road.
-MelSam

Got an idea in the back of your noggin that could be perfect for Windows Phone 7? (Pro tip: tip calculators and flash light apps are probably already covered.) It’s time to get to building.

Today at 11 am, Microsoft will be releasing a bunch of free tools for Windows Phone developers to start chipping away at.

Here’s whats coming:

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
• Windows Phone 7 Series Add-in for Visual Studio, for developers already working with Visual Studio 2010
• Windows Phone 7 Series emulator
• XNA Game Studio 4.0

Some people were worried that the Silverlight/.NET programming environment of Windows Phone 7 might not grant developers much access to the hardware; fortunately, most of those worries have been taken out back and shot. Microsoft today confirmed that developers will have access to the camera, multi-touch, hardware accelerated video playback, Microsoft’s push service (allowing apps to send notifications to the screen when not running), location, and the accelerometer, amongst other things.

Once Microsoft pushes everything live in a few hours, you should be able to find it here.

So what do you think? Going to jump into the WP7 development game? Is this the next goldrush? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Best comment gets an invisible cookie.

We know what you’re thinking. “Man! Now that Microsoft has confirmed (and re-confirmed) that the HD2 won’t be getting an (officially endorsed) upgrade to Windows Phone 7, I can only hope that it will some day be able to run a desktop OS from fifteen years ago!”

Well, friend, that day has come.

The always incredible folks over at XDA-Dev have successfully managed to get Windows 95 up and running on the QEMU virtual machine emulator. Stuff like this generally runs slow as dirt, but coupled with the HD2’s 1ghz processor, there seems to be enough meat here to muscle through the fairly complex emulation.

[Good find, WMpoweruser!]

Boy Genius tends to know what he’s talking about when it comes to BlackBerry leaks – so when he says hes got some new details, we tend to believe him.

According to his tipsters, the Verizon BlackBerry Tour 9630 will be seeing an upgrade to BlackBerry OS 5.0 sometime in the next month. With that upgrade, says the same tipster, comes the option of push-to-talk functionality for an extra 5 bucks a month.

But that’s not all! This all leads up to the release of a brand spankin’ new piece of BlackBerry kit — presumably a new Tour — launching some time around May, complete with OS 5.0 and push-to-talk functionality out of the box. Alas, that’s all we know about it at this point; keep your ears to the ground for us, won’t you?

[Via BGR]

If I lose my phone, it’s a bad day. If this guy loses his phone, he just lost the equivalent of a CEO’s salary.

According to Brandon Chang, the ridiculous piece of absurdity you see up above is wrapped in 18 karat gold. Because that wasn’t enough, they then went and glued on 4,150 itty-bitty diamonds, ensuring that you can see just how tacky it is in even the lowest of lights.

The final price tag? $200,000 bucks. If you’ve got that sort of money to throw around, more power to you – but really, there’s a line between “impressive” and “obnoxious”, and this is a few miles past it.

[Via BlackBerryCool]

The Tattoo might have been designed to be dirt cheap, but that doesn’t mean HTC doesn’t love it as much as the rest of their phones.

French Android site Frandroid shot a note to HTC to see whether or not the Tattoo would be getting the Android 2.1 treatment. Their response? Drumroll, please.

Yep! (See response below) They aren’t dropping any specific dates, but they did say it’ll be “just a little while longer”. The hang up? HTC’s still polishing up Sense on Android 2.1. Sense seemed pretty dang solid when we saw it running on 2.1 on the Desire – but given that the Tattoo is half as powerful with half the screen resolution, there’s probably some tweaking that needs to be done here.

HTC’s response:

“Kindly note that now we understand that a phone running Android OS 2.1 is available that you are excited to get an update for your Tattoo. We are still working hard to Sense for building this new version but we expect to have the upgrade finished and ready to go soon.”

[Via GSMArena]

Well, well, well — lookie here. See that screenshot up above? That’s allegedly a screen shot of the Verizon Nexus One spec sheet, right off of Verizon’s Intranet Equipment Guide. Now, look a bit closer. About 10 bullet points down. See it? “Sense UI (User Interface)”.

For those not keeping track, Sense is HTC’s user interface mod for Android. It started off primarily as a much-needed visual overhaul, then came to include features like Flash in the browser. It’s a pretty great addition to Android – and it’s one thing that the currently available T-Mobile Nexus One is lacking.

Before getting too excited: I’d take this with the grainiest grain of salt you’ve got handy. Even if this screenshot is real (which we don’t have reason to doubt, so far), it’s quite possible that it slipped in there unintentionally. The Nexus One is very much a Google-brand phone (albeit one made by HTC), and HTC has told us all along that it won’t ever get Sense through official means.

But hey, things change, right? Perhaps Google and HTC have just gotten a bit friendlier about the rules since Apple went on the offensive against them.

Also worth noting: according to the image, the Nexus One will only be available through Google’s online store, rather than Verizon retail spots.

[Good find, Android Central!]

Are you mysophobic? Oh, you don’t know what “mysophobic” is? It’s a fancy way of saying “germaphobe”, which, according to scientists or linguists or some other group of academics, isn’t actually a word. Go figure.

Now, I ask again: Are you mysophobic? No? Well, you might be after reading this. Because it’s naaasty.

CareerBuilders did a survey of 5,200 mobile workers (that is, people who primarily work on the road), and found that their cell phone habits are generally dangerous, a bit rude, and pretty friggin’ gross.

Some of the more notable stats revealed:

• 62% check their phones while eating – Eh, whatever. I get bored while I’m eating, too.
• 60% check while on vacation – Again, whatever. I love sand and sun as much as the next guy, but I need my daily dose of Vitamin SocialNetworking.
• 50% check in bed – Headaches happen.
• 57% check in the bathroom – You see, this is just friggin’ gross. Do I do it? Sure! But I don’t like to think that other people do.
• 50% check while driving – Inexcusable. To those of you thinking you have a special technique that lets you text while driving or that you’re a good enough driver to do this, you’re not. Everyone else thinks they’re wonderful drivers too, until they smash into a pole because they just HAD to forward that MMS of the baby chick riding the cat.

You can check out a few more stats over at InformationWeek. In the mean time: What’s the weirdest, nastiest, or most ridiculous place you’ve ever messed with your phone? Let us know in the comments below. We won’t tell anyone.

HTC Incredible shown above with battery cover removed.

Verizon’s not going to be too happy about this one. From everyone we’ve spoken to, they really wanted to keep details surrounding the Android-powered HTC Incredible underwraps for a while longer. That’s understandable, given that the Incredible blows their current flagship Android device, the Motorola Droid, to smithereens on just about every count.

Alas, all it takes is one device to slip into the wrong hands — and fortunately for us, it has! A bunch of new shots of the HTC Incredible (with brand new, Verizon-brand-friendly colors) have just leaked out, and a gaggle of spec details came with it.

All of these shots and details come by way of Androidforum user/super spy NKT.

The specs confirmed so far:

• 8 megapixel camera with autofocus
• Memory: 512 MB ROM, 512 MB RAM (320 free to the user)
• Android 2.1 with HTC’s Sense UI
• Optical Trackpad
• 3.7″ WVGA (800×480) AMOLED Screen
• 1300mAH battery
• FM Tuner
• 802.11b/g WiFi
• 117.5 mm (L) x 58.5 mm (w) x 11.9 mm (T)
• 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, underclocked to 768Mhz.

Go ahead – camp out on the edge of your seat for this one. It’s easily one of the most powerful Android handsets coming to the market; it’s a wee bit less powerful than the Nexus One, but packs a beefier camera as a trade off.

What do you think? Is this the Android handset that will rule 2010?

[Via EngadgetMobile]

While a lot of people are pretty pumped about Windows Phone 7, there are some people who definitely are not: everyone stuck on a now antiquated Windows Mobile 6.5 handset. Microsoft has already confirmed that if your phones running 6.5, it’s not going to be running 7 any time soon.

If you can’t join’em, beat’em, right? There’s a new project in the works which aims to breath new life into old Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.. by replacing the whole OS with Android.

As you can see in the video above, they’ve already managed to jam the OS onto an HTC TouchPro2. (Fun Fact: I’ve wanted an HTC TouchPro 2 running Android since before the TouchPro 2 officially existed. I’ll be buying one purely for hacking this onto it.) It’s not perfect just yet, but it’s damn near it; data works, SMS works, calling works, and that glorious, glorious hardware keyboard works.

They’ve also got it up and running in various forms of functionality on the HTC Diamond2 (AT&T Pure), HD, Diamond, and the original Touch Pro. Ready to get your hack on? Pocketnow has all the download links you need to get started.

Only yesterday we were drooling over the idea that Epic Games had managed to port their draw-droppingly beautiful game engine, Unreal Engine 3, to the iPhone. As it turns out, the iPhone isn’t alone – it’s heading to webOS, too!

Details are still a bit slim at the moment, but Palm just announced the deal with Epic Games at the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco. Anyone with access to Palm’s new PDK and Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 (read: everyone – both are free, though Unreal Engine requires licensing for commercial use) should be able to make use of the new friendship. At the very least, we ought to see some killer looking games from the major houses before too long.

Just yesterday we were saying that Casio’s built-to-be-beaten G’zOne Brigade would be launching today — and sure enough, it just went live on Verizon’s web site.

As a rugged phone, it’s flagship feature is that it’s.. well, a rugged phone. These things usually don’t pack much functionality beyond that. This one, however, sneaks a full QWERTY keyboard into its clamshell body, along with push to talk, visual voice mail, and a 3.2 megapixel camera with flash.

Alas, durability doesn’t come cheap; the G’zOne will set you back $299 on a 2-year contract, though they’ll knock that down to $249 if you buy it online.

Sure, Opera Mini may (or may not) already be the most popular mobile browser in the world — but why stop there? Following up on the Android release of Opera Mobile 4 just over a year ago, Opera has just launched Opera Mini 5 for Android into public beta.

The jump from version 4 to version 5 is pretty huge, introducing a handful of features that Opera says “makes your mobile browsing experience as close as it can be to your desktop experience.”

The biggest change here is probably the introduction of tabbed browsing — a must, given that just about every default smartphone browser supports it out of the box at this point.

Some of the other big new features:

• Speed Dial: Gives you one-touch access to 9 of your favorite sites.
• Password Manager
• Opera Link: Syncs your bookmarks (and Speed Dial) between your handset and your desktop (be it that you’re running Opera on your desktop, that is)

Is Opera Mini 5 a worthy contender to the default Android browser? I’d say so. Opera Mini’s primary selling point is that they pipe everything through a data compression proxy before sending it to your handset. For those days when 3G just isn’t as fast as it should be, it’ll save you time; for those of us not on unlimited data plans, it’ll save some money. Alas, the current Beta doesn’t support multi-touch, which may very well be a deal-killer for some

Still: throw in Opera Mini 5’s seemingly rock solid build quality and its pretty dang decent UI, and I’d say it’s worth giving it a serious test session at the very least. Look for it in the Android App Market.