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Just finished up with the live Apple Keynote blogstravaganza, mostly over at Engadget, who caught the absolutely stupendous image over at the right. And I'm finding myself suddenly less worried about the iPhone decimating Windows Mobile than I was before. A lot less worried.

Here's the relevant quote from Engaget's coverage, straight from the mouth of his Steveness:

And so you can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone, and these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, check email, look up a location on Gmaps... don't worry about distribution, just put 'em on an internet server. They're easy to update, just update it on your server. They're secure, and they run securely sandboxed on the iPhone. And guess what, there's no SDK you need! You've got everything you need if you can write modern web apps..." Weeeeeaaaak

Weeeeeaaak indeed. Like I said just a few days ago, "a smartphone is a platform, and a platform needs 3rd party apps." Jobs' reply: "There's no SDK you need!" In other words: No Apps For You! Use webpage and online apps instead.

Orly? How about security - sure, a web developer can secure a webapp, but it's easier to just depend on a phone's built-in security on an app that's housed on the phone. Or how about when you don't actually have reliable and useful data signal? Too bad, so sad. Or what about the fact that I like to use my phone a little differently than you use yours - so I can install a custom ToDo app, or a neat little shortcut hack, or whatever. Sorry - with the iPhone you can use any interface you want as long as it's the default.

No support for a real developer community means that Apple is releasing an appliance, not a platform. Without a platform, the iPhone is not a smartphone, Q.E.D. Just so we're perfectly clear here: It's looking like Blackberry has better third party support than the iPhone will.

And that photo... at first glance it is (among other things) yet another joke on Steve Ballmer; but if Apple really intends to lock out all genuine "on the phone" 3rd party development... Well then we'll probably see Ballmer smile like that on his own.

Update: phone different's OMGNOAPPZ series weighs in with a slightly more optimistic (though still troubled) take.

The surprise of the day was stumbling upon the UBiQUiO (Seriously, that's how they want you to do the capitalized and non-capitalized letters) devices. They're full Pocket-PC smartphone (touchscreen and all) available in unlocked GSM versions from Mobile Planet and originally made by a unnamed Taiwanese manufacturer. But if all those sketchy details don't bother you, the price for the upcoming Ubiquio 503 might: $650 for the unlocked version, available in June.

The 503 has some great specs, though: WM6, a 520mhz Intel processor, 256 megs of ROM, 64mb of RAM, quad-band HSDPA/GSM radio, WiFi, and two cameras. Dang. They just had a dummy model of the 503 at the booth, but they did have a live 501 there for me to play with. More details on that one (currently available) after the jump, along with some other random CTIA newsbits.

Ubiquio 501

The Ubiquio 501 is a quad-band GSM PocketPC Windows Mobile 5 device. The thumbboard on it is actually pretty nice, it reminds me of the thumbboard on the MotoQ9 (which is perhaps not a coincidence - "keepin' it real fake" as Engadget would say). It sports a very nice 320x240 touchscreen and otherwise pretty standard specs for a GSM/EDGE PocketPC device: Triband GSM, Bluetooth 1.2, WiFi, and a 2 megapixel camera.

Overall I was pretty impressed with the form factor. Ubiquio decided to make it thin (.53 inches) and wide - which results in a somewhat slab-like device that is nevertheless very pocketable.

In any case, if none of the currently available offerings the the US float your boat, one of these guys might be a worthy import.

JB5 Browser

Jataayu had a small booth at CTIA where they showed me a little of the JB5 browser - the one I wasn't able to get working on my Dash. They were using it on a MotoQ9 and overall it was pretty neat. I was especially font of their zooming feature. I'll be giving it another go and a full review soon.

More Moto Q9

Jataayu weren't the only folks using a Q9, I saw a lot of booth-drones using them. It's like Moto is giving them out like candy. I want some candy, too. Heck - Motorola even embedded them in the floor of their booth (right). I'm thinking Motorola is pinning a lot of their hopes on the Q9 being a success - they really need a success right now.

Yahoo Go!

I did my part for the Windows Mobile community and gave Yahoo guff for not having their excellent Yahoo Go software available on enough WM devices. Right now it only works on tall-screen Smartphones. Seriously, I want to use this, especially now that they're going to be offering unlimited storage for their email. At least their oneSEARCH service works on everything.

Day One-Half, technically, where we go to a press-only event that preceded CTIA proper. What happened at this pre-show show? Lots of fun ogling some of the latest and greatest coming out soon. Read on for impressions of the HTC Vox, the Samsung i760, and the Motorola Q9.

HTC Vox

First things first: the HTC Vox is as hot as you've imagined. It's tiny, it's actually smaller overall than a lot of high end feature phones (Like the Sony Ericsson W810, just barely), with a great bright screen that has very high density.

Sadly, the keyboard was just a little disappointing, but that's mainly because I wasn't used to it. It's off-center from the screen (which is obvious if you click on the thumbnails above), which is a disconcerting. I could get used to it, though. Sincerely, I could get very used to it. I want this phone. More good news - although there aren't any official carrier announcements in the US (yet!), it is being released in a CDMA/EVDO version on Telus in Canada. This means there's at least a chance this little wonder could be available on every major carrier in the US.

Motorola Q9

The Motorola Q9 is an improvement in every way over the original Motorola Q. Especially, especially in the thumbboard department. I've written before about being disappointed in the MotoQ's thumbboard, and although the Q9 still doesn't have a delete/backspace key on the main QWERTY board itself (for shame), the feel and tactile quality of the new thumbboard is so great I can easily say it's second only to the Treo 750 in the world of Windows Mobile thumbboards. Better than any slider I've used, too -- it's great.

Samsung i760

There's not much to say here: If you like the HTC Vox but don't think you can give up the touchscreen, then you want the Samsung i760. I'm still a fan of their neat little 5-way next to phonepad, and the thumbboard itself is comfortable and easy to use.

Assorted Bits

We spoke to Yahoo about their plans for Yahoo Go. It currently only supports the "tall format" smartphone versions of WM5 (320h x 240w, like the Cingluar 3125). New formats that support other screen resolutions are "coming soon." Also notable is that it doesn't appear that the application does push email any more (it did in the first beta), mainly due to the fact that it no longer integrates with Pocket Outlook but keeps! your! Yahoo! email! within! the Yahoo! Go! application! On the bright side, you can set it to update every so often and it will update everything from Flickr to news to weather to email. So that's nice.

At HTC's booth we learned the above Telus / HTC Vox in CDMA format tidbit and got to take a gander at the HTC Advantage - which I like but don't find especially compelling overall. Big screens are nice, but big devices are not.

We also took a peek at the HTC Artemis, which has a combination trackball and a jogdial-type scroller around it. All-in-all, a great device for folks who don't care about having a thumbboard. If you know any of those people, I'd like to meet them and ask them what exactly is going on in that head of theirs. US availability: unknown.

Today was supposed to be the day for Windows Mobile 6, but after the embargo on was was broken late last week, a lot of the details are already widely known. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't a bunch of new info that you'll want to know about today. The most exciting bits: photos of WM6 running on a bunch of old and new devices - photos after the break.

It appears that T-Mobile is going to be the first US Carrier out of the gate with WM6 shipping on the Dash. The really surprising news is that it looks like a few current WM5 devices will be getting upgrades - T-Mobile has already announced they'll be giving a free upgrade for the Dash and Palm is expected to announce an upgrade for the Treo 750 as well. Given the standard operating procedure of most carriers and manufactures, not having to buy a new gadget to get the new OS is a welcome change.

The other exciting bit this morning is that both Toshiba and Lenovo are in the Windows Mobile game now (Toshiba got out of the game a few years ago, welcome back!). The MotoQ is coming to GSM too. Also after the break: the official press release, Microsoft's WM6 "Fact Sheet", and a ton of device shots.

Official stuff

Here's the offical press release. If you've been following the story, there's not much new here. If you have not, here's a few important bits:

• View emails in HTML, email also requires fewer clicks to do stuff like delete and forward emails.
• Built-in Windows Live Search
• Edit Office docs on all platforms
• WM6 Pro is the touchscreen smartphone version, WM6 Standard is the non-touchscreen smartphone version, and WM6 Classic is the non-smartphone, touchscreen version (quit snickering, you, some people still want this).
• Direct Push with Exchange Server built-in (for those of you with terminally old version of WM5)
• Devices available in Q2.
• All sorts of companies are on board, including: "AT&T, Chunghwa Telecom, Dopod International Corp., HP, LG Electronics, Motorola Inc., Palm Inc., Samsung, Sprint, Telefónica, Toshiba, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone."
• "One-Click easy" Internet sharing (read: Dial-up Networking) over bluetooth and USB. Please, carriers, don't break this.
• Built-in VOIP "backend" to make developing VOIP applications easier.

You may also want to take a peek at the WM6 Fact Sheet, which teaches us, well, it teaches us the same things but in a shorter, better-looking format.

From the horse's, er, mouth, comes this gallery of Window Mobile 6 screenshots

Finally, Microsoft has a new Windows Mobile 6 page up, for those who want the official pretty. They also have a great webcast available as well (Internet Explorer required, naturally) hosted by Pieter Knook, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Devices division (since my name is Dieter, a guy who puts an "i" there in his name is OK in my book).

WM6 Devices that should make it to the US:

Toshiba's Back!

Great to see Toshiba (and Lenovo, see below) come back to the PocketPC game. Toshiba's really out-doing themselves here, the G900 and the G500 both look great. The G900, the one with the full keyboard there, is a HSDPA WM6 Professional phone with all sorts of neat little innovations, including:

• Fingerprint sensor feature for extra security and easy menu navigation
• 3-inch wide, colour W-VGA display for enhanced viewing quality
• Read and write access to a USB flash memory device
• 2 mega pixel camera
• Secondary camera for video telephony
• Support for VoIP

The G500 is no slouch either, despite having WM6 Standard. It has essentially the same specs as the G900m, just lacking the touchscreen. Strangely, Toshiba's site says this little bugger runs WM5. Say it ain't so, Toshiba.

Moto Q9: Awesome; Moto Q: Coming on GSM

The original MotoQ made a big splash followed by a bit of fizzle. I think the Q9 is significantly better looking and significantly cooler, if only because it's being offered as a quad-band GSM phone with HSDPA right out of the gate.

Quad-band GSM plus 3.6 megabit HSDPA
QVGA display
Just 11.8mm thick
2 megapixel camera
Stereo Bluetooth
microSD card slot

Read: Motorola Q q9 with HSDPA - MobileTracker

The original Q is also getting the GSM treatment. With the Q9 coming, all I can say is yawn. The last photo here is the Q GSM veriosn next to the Q9. I know which one I prefer.

HP: iPaq keeps chugging along

HP hasn't impressed me lately, with any luck this new Voice Messenger iPAQ 500 will change that. It's got VOIP built in and a full 6 hours of talk time on GSM/EDGE. No UMTS or HSDPA, tsk tsk, HP, you're continuing to disappoint me. I appreciate the built-in WiFi, though. It looks like HP is positioning this as a kind of super-office-phone, using VOIP when you're at work and the cell radio when you're not. More on the iPAQ 500 at Mobility Site

HTC: T-Mobile Dash to Run WM6, HTC Vox: Pretty Please, come to the USA

It's worth saying again: Big Ups to T-Mobile for announcing they'll be offering WM6 on future and current Dashes. Oh, yeah, the upgrade will be FREE, available in Q2.

Also new from HTC and running WM6 Standard, the HTC Vox. This looks like a great form-factor to me. Here's hoping I'll be able to get one in the states soon. Shots of the Vox below, including comparisons to the Dash (aka. the HTC Excalibur)

Samsung SCH-i760: Best Slider Yet?

Ever since I saw the (battery-less) i760 at CES, I've been in love. The little wonder is due to come out on Verizon. I really like the innovation of moving the 5-way down to make space for a full 12-key phone pad, I really like the slider on this guy, I really like the fact that it runs WM6 Standard. Samsung seems to be doing a really good job with form-factors lately (check out this dual-sliding awesomeness, though no word yet on what the linked f520 will have for an OS). Übergizmo has a video from CES of the i760.

Since the i760 has me so jazzed, I have to include a few extra photos here.

Palm Treo 750 Running WM6

Here's what appears to be a 750 running WM6. It does appear to be that horrible 240x240 resolution (though it's worth noting that WM6 supports 320x320, the Treo's resolution on the PalmOS versions). Palm will be announcing upgrade to the 750 later. JOY.

Live Search is out of Beta

They renamed it "Live Search", thank the lord, so that it doesn't share the same name with the built-in Search app on WM. This is one 3GSM announcement you can apply to your current phone - it works just fine with WM5 (it's built-in to WM6. You can go get it here.

Live Search for Mobile, which we first revealed in December, is now out of beta and available for public consumption in two localized versions - United States and United Kingdom.

Read: Pocket PC Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

WM6 SDK for developers available soon

Although WM6 looks to be fully backward-compatible with WM5 apps, that doesn't mean that there aren't new WM6 toys for developers to play with. Linked is a white paper describing the new tools available to developers.

The Windows Mobile® 6 developer platform release focuses on a few core goals: simplify line of business (LOB) application development and deployment, make the task of building a single application that runs successfully across the many different devices in the Windows Mobile family easier, and provide an enhanced user experience. This paper explains the new Windows Mobile 6 features and their purpose from a developer's perspective. This paper also explains the many new tools provided by the Windows Mobile 6 Software Development Kit (SDK), and provides some guidance on getting started developing Windows Mobile 6 applications.

Read: What's New for Developers in Windows Mobile 6

Devices that may or may not (sniffle) make it to the US

Asus

Asus has a few devices coming, we'll start with the Aries, a UMTS Tri-band (850, 1900, and 2100) QWERTY phone with a scroll whell, 2 megapixel cam (and smaller one on the front).

Here's the Pegasus line: P735 (no keyboard on front) and P526 (keypad on front). Not much in the way of details on these yet, but the P526 is pretty darn good looking. The P526 also should have GPS built-in and has won a design award too, rightly so.

i-mate

i-mate has announced a slew of great-looking phones, I really hope that they make their way to these shores, but I'm not optimistic. Pictured here is the i-mate SPL, now available in colors.

Also new from i-mate is the JAQ4, a QWERTY phone with Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, which is disappointing, but it does feature WiFi, so that helps.

The JAQ3 will also run WM6. Here is it next to it's newly announced big brother. Specs on both here

Lenovo

Good news: Lenovo is also jumping on board the Windows Mobile Bandwagon! Bad News: we know next to nothing about these two phones. More details as they come - one of which I hope will be the explanation for that intriguing "Google G" we see in that first shot.

Phew! That'll do for now. There are other announcement by other manufactures like Gigabyte and BenQ, but I don't think there's much of a chance of seeing those in the US market.

Sure, I was a little dubious at first that Microsoft would be announcing Windows Mobile 6 earlier than expected. Perhaps part of it was a "French publication" breaking the embargo early that led them to just go ahead and tell everybody to start talking about it. In any case, the internet is all abuzz over it today instead of the February 12th official launch date.

Read on for a massive round-up of reviews, screen shots, and all the WM6 Links you can shake a stick at.

Update: Here's Engadget's photo gallery of WM6 Pro

The Big Pieces

First off, you should know that rather than referring to "Smartphone Edition" or "Pocket-PC Edition", Microsoft cleaned up the naming scheme a bit. Now we have:

• WM6 Standard for non-touchscreen smartphones.
• WM6 Professional for touchscreen smartphones.
• WM6 Classic for non-smartphone Pocket PC Devices (stop snickering, they still exist)

So what are the big changes between WM5 and WM6? Well, not to rain on anybody's parade, but I wouldn't call any of these changes huge. On the other hand, I would call each and every one of them welcome

• Built-in Windows Update(!) - Will the carriers stand for this? I know that Palm spends months testing the most minor of bugfixes so the carriers won't have a bird.
• Built-in memory card encryption and the ability to do remote-wipes.
• HTML-formatted email (I don't want this, but others do).
• A neater feature is "SmartFilter," which automatically filters your emails as you type just like most contacts applications filter your contacts. SmartFilter also works on your music collection.
• Better Live Mail (nee Hotmail) integration, including contact integration.
• 320x320 Screen Resolution support - Palm, I expect a new WM Treo yesterday with this screen resolution.
• Windows Live goes out of Beta and will be built-in
• Direct Push now standard (has been for awhile on WM5, but I know some of you are still stuck without it)
• 3rd party software should still work fine - just in case you were wondering.
• Microsoft Office Mobile updated - now full edits documents on all editions of WM6!
• Pocket Internet Explorer to be faster, they're saying 30% faster - let's hope! Also new, "Mobile AJAX standards"
• Better Vista integration
• Enhanced Calendar, including a "ribbon."
• Improved Security
• Built-in VOIP(!) - no, not really, but they added support for it "under the hood", according to cnet.
• A ton of smaller tweaks, changes, fixes, improvements, etc.

First-look Roundup:

Geek.com rolls in with some live-shots of the Standard version loaded up on a T-Mobile Dash. - Geek.com Geek News - First Impressions: Windows Mobile 6

I've had the pleasure of testing out a beta version of Windows Mobile 6 for a few weeks and I couldn't be happier with it.

PC Magazine: 4/5 - Windows Mobile 6: Full Review - Review by PC Magazine, plus a big gallery

With Windows Mobile 6, Microsoft set a skilled handyman to work on the creakier joists of their mobile OS, but they stopped well short of a gut renovation. The new OS is really more of an honorable version 5.5 than a true 6 – an accumulation of new, useful features that doesn't disturb the OS's underpinnings or solve some of its deeper problems.

CNet has the usual standard write-up, if you just want the news fix. - Microsoft to unveil Windows Mobile 6 | CNET News.com

One of the changes that is under the hood in Windows Mobile 6, but not expected to be visible to consumers, is support for Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, calling. Microsoft isn't including software to let individuals make such calls, but has added the internal plumbing to allow carriers and device makers to add VoIP support if they wish. "It's an investment we are making for something that today isn't as predominant," O'Rourke said. "I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 12 months we saw some partner announcements" around VoIP.

Modern Nomads gives us the largest review - What will Windows Mobile 6 bring for the highly mobile people? - Modern Nomads

We do not do product announcements, but we do feel compelled to share our experiences with the new version of Windows Mobile: it is a major change in the OS and it can affect the landscape of the mobile device market as we all know it. The question remains if this change is in fact an improvement for you in your daily life. To help you make up your mind, we have written down the experiences we have with this OS. This is a rather lengthy review, so we have added a table of contents to it, to help you find your way easily.

ZDNET has a nice rundown as well, including a large gallery - » Microsoft reveals Window Mobile 6 and we have all the details | The Mobile Gadgeteer | ZDNet.com

I can confirm from personal experience with a beta of Windows Mobile 6 that many of the changes made by Microsoft have been targeted at improving the user experience.

Speaking of galleries, here's a nice one provided by Microsoft to pocketpcthoughts; and another from engadget.

A new rumor, that a group of companies wants to create a walled-garden-style search engine for mobile devices, is just the latest in a long string of abuses heaped upon the consumer by mobile carriers. Read on for a good old fashioned rant about the state of mobile data services in the US.

Let's take a look at the latest travesty to come across my newsreader: "Mobile giants plot secret rival to Google."

Europe's biggest telecoms groups are aiming to create a mobile phone search engine that could challenge Yahoo! and Google, the US giants.Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and one American network, Cingular, are among the companies that will come together for secret, high-level talks at the mobile industry's biggest annual trade show in Barcelona next week.

Here we go again. At next week's 3GSM conference a cabal of telcoms are planning on figuring out a way to make you pay for mobile searches by erecting walled-garden-style searches for your phone. It's not enough, apparently, for them to try to nickel and dime us for Ringtones, SMS, music services, etc. Frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of this sort of garbage.

The upshot, basically, is that these companies are unhappy that we're using sites like Google and Yahoo on our phones for free (forgetting about data costs for the moment). The very idea of getting free access to content that's unfettered and open is apparently anathema to these companies.

I wish I could say that my indignation in the above paragraphs is as powerful as it seems. Sadly, like most US consumers, I'm just plain beaten-down by our mobile carriers. It's not difficult to come up with a list of outrages that they visit upon us -- outrages which most consumers accept as par for the course:

• Increasing the price of text messages. This despite the fact that the infrastructure to send them is not only already built, but is mature. As ars technica put it, "Only in the world of mobile phones can you expect to find companies trying to charge 20 cents for less than 1Kb of data."
• Cingular and Helio create for-pay services just to use MySpace. More on this in a bit, but for now let's just point out that this is a manufactured need, if MySpace would just clean up their flash-ad-addicted act, using MySpace from a regular old browser would be fine.
• Creating network-specific music services that, in effect, ask you to pay for your music twice.
• Having byzantine, kafkaesque, and ever-changing cost structures.
• Let's not even discuss the 'subsidize your phone with a 2-year contract' business plan, I don't want to punch my monitor.
• Literally breaking devices by turning off functionality like OBEX Bluetooth built-into phones (I'm looking at you, Verizon).
• One Word: Ringtones.

Let's stick with ringtones for a second. Most feature-phone users don't blink twice at paying $2 or so for a cute little ringtone. Why do people pay for these? Simplicity, mostly. The carriers have created a service that's relatively easy to use and doesn't require much technical skill. So what's the problem with that? The "technical skill" part. Creating ringtones from your own music library and loading them onto your phone should be a simple, painless process. Yet I challenge you to find 1 person in 10 who has done this, or even knows how to do it with their phone. Purchasing ringtones is a manufactured market.

Why do we pay for ringtones? Is it the licensing fee? It shouldn't be. In this author's opinion a short ringtone falls pretty safely into the Fair Use category of copyright law. No, we pay because the technology to easily load ringtones onto your phone is obfuscated either by deliberately breaking your phone's ability to load them or (more charitably) by spending time on creating the service instead of spending time enabling the consumer.

At this year's CES, I attended a panel of executives from various carriers and device manufacturers - the topic was finding ways to increase and expanded data services offered by carriers. During this panel there was a general consensus that ringtone services were far and away the biggest success in this field. The carriers are very happy with the ringtone business model, so happy they want to apply it to other areas--like using a search engine on your mobile device.

Here's where things get sticky for the carriers, however. Because we already have perfectly good search engines available to us on our phones - search engines we don't need to pay to use. Mobile carriers are desperate to find ways to manufacture a market out of this situation, to wit:

A UK executive at one of the companies involved said: "There is a big play in mobile search that we need to be part of, and we are exploring those options at a very high level."

The term here is "walled garden", and if you haven't guessed by now I'm against them. So are most consumers - at least when it comes to the internet as we typically think of it. Many internet users are fighting tooth and nail to keep the internet open - to maintain net neutrality; yet many of these same users often don't think twice about paying two bucks for a ringtone, or 15 cents for a text message, or a subscription service for maps and directions from telenav, and so on. Somehow, these carriers have managed to pull the wool over our eyes.

We need to disrupt this business model, break out of these manufactured markets. Sadly, I don't know how just yet. Perhaps when WiMax covers more areas we'll be able to just switch over to some sort of Skype-like system that can work anywhere there's an internet connection. I wish I had the answer. Instead, all I have is an anecdote:

I'm reminded of the situation many users (myself included!) were in 5 or 10 years ago. We were paying a premium to use AOL. AOL was, for many folks, the internet. I still remember when the scales fell from my eyes and I realized I didn't need AOL, I could just get myself a connection to the internet directly, so to speak. After that, I looked down on those 'AOL Newbies" who blindly paid extra every month for practically non-existent services, not recognizing that there were plenty of free alternatives elsewhere.

When it comes to mobile data services, we are all AOL Newbies. I only hope that technology advances enough in the near future for me to have the scales dropped from my eyes once again.