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We're still pretty sure Microsoft is planning its own app store, but we really don't have more more than that. But Pocketnow's noticed a "coming soon" site at client.marketplace.windowsmobile.com that, low and behold, appears to be formatted for a mobile browser. And it also looks like the Skymarket name may have given way to "Marketplace," which probably is a good thing.

In all likelihood this will just be a download site for a standalone application, but that's speculation on our part. Either way, it looks like things are moving ahead.

While we patiently await the release of the new HTC Touch Pro 2 (read Dieter's hands-on here), reviews are starting to surface. While the website is in German, the translation gives us a good deal of information on this new Windows Mobile phone. AreaMobile.de [via] notes that the Touch Pro 2 is noticeably heavier and larger than the original Touch Pro, but elegantly designed. Touchflo 3D and battery life are improved, and the screen was responsive. The phone lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack, and it appears there is some concern over the slide mechanism, described as stiffy and doughy.

The ability to angle the screen was well received and the larger spaced keyboard was easier to type on. All in all, the review was favorable of the Touch Pro 2. I'm curious about the comments on the slide mechanism. There's a possibility that this could be a pre-production model and the final production model will perform as smooth as its predecessor. Regardless, the review left very little doubt that the Touch Pro 2 will be a quality device and it makes the choice between the Touch Pro 2 and Diamond 2 all the more difficult.

Read the full, translated review here.

Fine. You caught us. The Windows Mobile Marketplace aped Android's oh-so-unique idea of putting its logo on a shopping bag. We're guilty. And while we're confessing, here are a few more things we did to our open-source cousins:

• We stole your ball.
• We broke your crayons.
• We took your lunch money.
• We tied your shoelaces together.
• We pulled your hair.

But don't let that cute little green robot fool you. After the break are a few things we believe might have been pilfered by Andy the Android, if that is his real name.

Work continues on the Windows Mobile version of the Firefox mobile browser (heretofore known as Fennec), but the Nokia version is farther along. And it's there that we take a quick peek at what we expect to eventually see in our version.

At the top of our list is Weave, which basically is a monster sync extension that will connect your phone's Firefox browser with your desktop version of Firefox.

If you use the XMarks (formerly Foxmarks) extension, you're already used to syncing bookmarks and passwords. Weave does even more, as you can see in the picture above. You also can sync cookies, tabs, history, forms and input.

Head on over to the Fennec blog and see more of Weave running on a Nokia N810.

So take this one with a huge grain of salt, though if squint hard enough, it almost makes sense.

Over at phonedog, they got a tip that "...Sprint would be beating T-Mo to the punch by launching US versions of the devices at CTIA in April with May availability dates."

To some that may sound very early, in fact it might even beat T-Mobile in Europe, who are reportedly getting some new HTC love in June.

But we do know that Sprint has given the "end of life" (EOL) tag to the Touch Diamond for July and looking at Sprint's past practices, a device's EOL date is usually around 2 months after the launch of its replacement (e.g. Treo Pro (orig: 2/09)/800w EOL (4/09); Diamond (9/08)/Touch EOL (~11/08); Touch Pro (11/08)/Mogul EOL (~1/09) etc.). Coupled with the fact that Sprint did get the original Touch, Diamond and Touch Pro pretty darn quick and you know, it could be possible.

So perhaps there's some truth to this? Guess we'll find out more from booth N120 as CTIA approaches!

There's a storm brewing on the horizon. One that may change the Windows Mobile community in more than one way. Acer is slated to introduce four new Windows Mobile phones to the U.S. market.  Acer's Tempo Series includes the M900, the F900, the X960, and the DX900. Information Week is reporting that when these new phones hit the shelves sometime in late April, cost will be the main marketing tool. While no U.S. wireless provider has spoken up to partner with Acer, the company hopes to offer these phones at a substantially lower cost or possibly free with a service contract.

PCMag.com had the opportunity to interview Acer's Smartphone Unit President Aymar de Lencquesaing last month at Mobile World Congress. The Acer executive said he'll be able to push Windows phone prices down to free with contract. "We'll make it a very simple, easy interface ... and these will retail at zero dollars," de Lencquesaing said. If this develops, it will be interesting to see what affect "free" smartphones will have on other manufacturers. Especially if the Acer's are quality devices.

The potential for free smartphones is just one aspect of this invasion. Launching an application store might be another aspect of Acer's leap into the Windows Mobile market. During a recent London press event, de Lencquesaing said Acer is examining the viability of an app store, which would be accessible from its new range of Windows Mobile phones. With Samsung and Nokia having similar App Store plans, this isn't that far of a reach.

De Lencquesaing has commented that he wants Acer to be in the top five of smartphones within five years.  If Acer can match low cost with quality phone, they may have a chance to reach that goal.

HTC Rumors, Sprint Treo Pro, and more.  Listen in!

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This week CrackBerry.com broke the first real photos of the BlackBerry "Niagara" 9630, WMExperts brought you hands on details of Internet Explorer Mobile 6, Android Central brought you a walkthough of buying apps in the Android App Market, and PreCentral.net wondered whether Palm would survive long enough to release the Pre. Plenty more happened this week in the smartphone world, naturally, so the thing to do is continue reading to find out what you may have missed this week around the Smartphone Experts network.

It's been a couple of weeks now since Microsoft's My Phone beta first went live. Some of you are loving it, some of you are loathing it, and some of you are still waiting to get your confirmation code. And Microsoft's not ignoring you.

One of the biggest gripes we've had is that if you're already syncing with an Exchange server, you're SOL as far as syncing your PIM data with My Phone. But Microsoft is taking a look at that, as well as more selective syncing.

Here are three FAQs the beta team says, in its blog,  it's paying attention to:

• Tighter integration with Windows Live services: Window Live suite of services provides a fantastic user experience around Contacts, Calendar, Photos and other user needs. We too are big fans and ardent users of these services and it is natural for you all to ask for tighter integration so that all of your personal data is consolidated in one single view. The initial goal for My Phone service was to test the concept and validate that we are solving a real problem for the users. Now that we have a resounding vote of confidence for the service our future plans are moving in this direction.
• Support synchronizing additional data: Your phone is a very personal device for lot of us. For some of us it is akin to having all of life in your hands and it is not fun thinking about losing all of this information. We have tried to support syncing the most frequently used data types keeping in mind the current and future trends but at the same time we have room for growth in this area for syncing additional information. There has also been active discussion around providing flexibility to select folders and files from the phone for syncing it with the service and also providing the option to sync Contacts, Calendar and Tasks even though they are managed by Exchange/ActiveSync.
• Suggestions on improving the experience on the My Phone Web Site: There have also been number of suggestions on further improving the overall usability of the web site along with the phone application. These are being evaluated on case by case basis and we will be taking those into account for future updates.

What say you, fair readers? How's My Phone treating you?

Baltimore and Portland, Ore., have been enjoying some of the first fruits of Clearwire's WiMax labor, and more cities are on tap for the next couple of years.

In an earnings report this week, Clearwire announced that it expects to be live in 80 markets in 2010. Here's what we'll be looking for:

• 2009: Atlanta, Las Vegas, Chicago, Charlotte (N.C), Dallas/Fort Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia, Seattle.
• 2010: New York City, Boston, Washington D.C., Houston, San Francisco.

The report says Clearwire also expects "nearly 100 mobile WiMAX devices – such as laptops, netbooks, handhelds, USBs and modems – by the end of the year." This is still mainly data cards at this point, but you have to start somewhere.

MocoNews via Engadget

In our last WMExperts Podcast, we fielded a question from Daniel:

What I don't understand is when you play a video, the sound comes out the back speaker, in the opposite direction of where you are watching. If you are in a noisy room, you have to turn the phone to the back to hear, then, or course, you can't see the video. Is there a hack to get the sound via the front speaker?

In typical WMExperts fashion, we explained how on many phones the earpiece speaker is pretty much designed to work with telephony and not the OS and that the OS often has limited access to that speaker, depending on hardware.  That's not completely the case though (as anybody who's received a text message or email while on a call can attest, the alert sound often comes through the earpiece mid-call).  Lucky for us, listener Slartibartfast has provided a solution via twitter: an app called Audio Router for both WM Pro and WM Standard by Daniel Álvarez.  Álvarez notes another great use for the app:

This is useful for VoIP applications which are quite unusable without headphones since the audio comes from the back speaker. It just runs for 10 minutes and it’s supposed to work at least with the latest HTC models.

Indeed!  This makes apps like Fring a heck of a lot more useful.  We also like that it runs for 10 minutes at a time -- meaning you won't get stuck having your audio permanently ported through your much-quieter front speaker because you forgot the hack was active.  We've confirmed that it works on an HTC Fuze and it should work on plenty of other HTC devices, but as we noted above the ability to do this will vary depending on your hardware, so your mileage may vary.