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Avantgo has been around for as long as I can remember, and hadn't thought much about the mobile application until we received a tip that Sybase Inc. (the parent company) was closing the doors on the service at the end of the month.

From the early PDA years to the days of the Smartphone. It spanned Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian and RIM operating systems showing no favorites, offering access to websites offline. It was the perfect solution during the time where data plans were limited or priced beyond most means to take your favorite website with you. It was the pre-cursor to RSS readers.

According to Avantgo.com;

"After June 30, 2009, AvantGo will no longer be providing mobile Web content for sync or online access, and you will not be able to access or update your AvantGo content or account."

We were asked if an alternative was out there that could replace Avantgo and the only thing that came to mind was Viigo. I imagine with data plans becoming more economical and unlimited, most find it easier to simply go to the URL of the website on their browser or rely more on RSS readers to stay tuned to current events.

Avantgo will go the way of the floppy disk and serial port; a valuable tool that played a key role in the technology's development only to give way to improvements that were built upon the foundation it created.  Admittedly, I haven't accessed my Avantgo account in ages but now that the end is near, I may update my channels one last time for old times sake.

It's browser day, apparently. This time, the venerable WEbkit-based Iris browser has gotten an update to v1.1.8. According to Torch Mobile's blog, here's what's addressed:

• Improved graphics performance
• Faster networking and loading of local files
• Improved memory usage
• Improved asynchronous behavior while loading pages
• Support for the W3C Geolocation API
• Support for HTML5 SQL databases and client side storage
• Rendering improvements, including for
• CSS transformations and effects
• Improved Thai support
• Right-to-left language fixes
• Many general bug fixes

If you're new to Iris, we've plopped a demo video after the break. For everyone else, head on over to the download page.

Want just the big news in the world of smartphones? Look no further!

•  T-Mobile myTouch 3G Box Art Leaked!
• 'Rosie' Available for Download
• HTC Hero & HTC Lancaster Launching June 24th?

• Facebook 1.6 Launches
• BlackBerry Tour Spec Sheet Leaked
• Verizon Officially Announces Pearl Flip 8230

• Facebook finally comes to S60 devices
• Shazam available in the Ovi Store
• Nokia N97 available in June

• Check out our COMPREHENSIVE Palm Pre Review
• No, seriously, there are 12 videos, 6 picture galleries, and 10k words on the Pre in our Palm Pre Review
• Launch day coverage with LOTS of line-waiting photos

• Join TiPb for Live Meta-Blog coverage of the WWDC Keynote Monday, 1pm EDT/10am PDT
• Third generation to be called iPhone video? Catch up on all the hardware rumors!
• iPhone 3.0 to be released at WWDC? Check out the latest updates!

• Xperia X2 pictures leaked
• Windows Mobile 6.5 emulators released
• Windows Mobile 6.5 on upcoming phones

So we've had the Xperia X2 leaked shots floating around, and about all we knew was that we were looking at a horizontal slider with an 8.1-megapixel camera. Now we're getting some leaked specs to go along with it, and they're doozies.

• 8.1MP camrea with autofocus, VGA video at 30 frames per second.
• A 3.5-inch WVGA OLED touchscreen.
• aGPS
• 3.5MM headphone jack.
• Accelerometer.
• "Faster processor" (the X1 has a Qualcomm MSM7200A running at 528MHz)
• 512MB RAM
• Custom Windows Mobile 6.5 (SE engineers customized Win6.5 which runs very. very speedy. in par with iPhone and better in some cases)
• Upgrading to Windows Mobile 7 is supported by Xperia panels

If all that turns out to be true, it could very well leave the HTC Touch Pro 2 behind. Of course, if the X2 takes as long to come to market as the X1 did, it might not matter.

Mobile-Review via wmpoweruser

It should come to you as no surprise Windows Mobile 6.5 will work on non-touchscreen phones. We put that concern to rest more than a month ago.

And now, thanks to the recently released Windows Mobile 6.5 Developers Toolkit (don't you dare think about calling it an SDK), we get a look at what WM6.5 Standard will look like. And the answer is: A whole lot like Windows Mobile 6.1.

Our favorite campusK0der, Nikita Polyakov, took it out for a spin and gives us some thoughts:

• Internet Explorer 6 (for mobile) is there and is a good addition. Feels a bit like Skyfire.
• The new theme is a lot like the old theme.
• Widget support is there and works pretty well.
• The Marketplace stub app is there.
• A few UI refreshes.
• Windows Mobile 6/6.1 apps load just fine.

All in all, nothing we didn't really expect. Windows Mobile 6.1 was the biggie for non-touchscreen phones. WM6.5 is for the finger-friendly. And now let us all turn our attention toward Windows Mobile 7.

Yeah, we can't read it either. But Engadget says the colorful T-Mobile roadmap it obtained points to a July 1 launch of the HTC Dash 3G (aka the Snap) and July 22 for the Touch Pro 2. That's right on with what we've previously heard, though the date for the Dash 3G may still be a bit hopeful, with internal training on the phone still taking place then. But Engadget also says look for the Dash 3G at Best Buy and the like around May 26.

Speaking of the Touch Pro 2, it looks like T-Mobile employees will be undergoing training on the HTC device (along with the Dash 3G -- aka the Snap) in the coming weeks.

Somebody slipped the above schedule under the Boy Genius Report's door, stating that things get going June 16 in the East Region and doesn't end until July 2 in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. That could well mean no July 1 launch for the Dash 3G, but the rumored July 22 launch for the Touch Pro 2 could still be possible.

In another sure sign that we're marching steadily toward the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft has released the Software Developer Tool Kit, also known as an SDK. From Microsoft's overview:

The Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit adds documentation, sample code, header and library files, emulator images and tools to Visual Studio that let you build applications for Windows Mobile 6.5. ... The Windows Mobile 6 SDK must also be installed in order to use any of the Windows Mobile 6.5 Gesture API or samples.

From what we understand, coding for Windows Mobile 6.5 isn't vastly different than coding for 6.1, so there shouldn't be anything too earth-shattering here. But it does include APIs for gestures -- think flicking and scrolling -- which is new in Windows Mobile 6.5.

The SDK is available in a half-dozen languages, and there are separate builds for touchscreen and non-touchscreen devices. You can download them here.

Update: The WMDev team learns us on Twitter that this is just the 6.5 developer tool kit and you still have to have the full 6.0 SDK.

For you U.S. Cellular peeps out there, some more Windows Mobile love is coming hot on the heels of the Palm Touch Pro. Up this time is the Samsung Code, which is a name we hadn't yet heard.

The Code is described as "a Windows Mobile 6.1 multi-media Smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth, 2.0 megapixel camera, ActiveSnc and removable memory slot."

In other words, it's a smartphone. Other than that? We'll just have to wait and see. Look for it June 18.

Via BGR

Hey, we're all about Windows Mobile here, and we're big fans of Palm. And we'd be remiss not to share with you the ultimate Palm Pre review written by our own Editor in Chief, Dieter Bohn, for our sister site, PreCentral.net.

If you read just one Pre review, make it this one. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You run from the room screaming for capactive screens on Windows Mobile. (again)

And so to our PreCentral brethren we say: Bravo, ladies and gentlemen. Bravo.

Lo, how we dream of they day when a manufacturer will name a phone and a carrier will just use it. But that day is not today.

And so we bring you, courtesy of the Boy Genius Report, the Verizon Ozone — aka the HTC Snap/Willow/Maple. No release date or pricing, and it's safe to say it won't beat Sprint's variant out the door. But it does have WiFi, is a world phone (CDMA and GSM radios), and sports IE6, visual voicemail and VZ Navigator (which points to the dreaded locked-down GPS.)

Windows Mobile is alive and well at the Computex Show on Taipei. In fact, it's Windows Mobile 6.5 that's making a strong appearance.

After the break, a flurry of phones (brought to us by ePrice.com with an assist from Pocket PC Thoughts) from the likes of GSmart, Mio, Acer, Garmin-Asus and Mobinnova. You might not find them available in the states anytime soon, but that's not stopping anybody here.