WPCentral News

The Windows Mobile news of the past week was surrounded by two Treo 800w bookends: on Saturday we got a nice little leak that one of our forum members had seen a Verizon Treo 800w, and yesterday we heard the downer news: the Treo 800w won't be released until “Late Summer.” The news sent everybody scrambling to change their guess on the release date for our Treo 800w giveaway, aka the Contest That May Never End. The good news is that Palm talked pretty big game about their “upcoming Treo,” which we're going to take as an admission that our leaks about the specs are right.

We'll also mention that Palm CEO Ed Colligan repeatedly described Palm's current WinMo line up as “aging” and “aged.” True that.

A quote from HTC's CEO sent us on a rant about the Windows Mobile Interface and why its association with Desktop Windows hurts it. Be sure to also check out Pocketnow's additional tips for Microsoft -- which we are totally on board with. The top and bottom menu bars take up a ton of space.

Of course, there was plenty of other news to chat about, the big stuff seemed to be that Google released a new search plugin and the HTC Shift is coming to Sprint (Did anyone else not see that coming?).

We told you how to use all the fancy shortcuts on your BlackJack and reviewed the Samsung WEP410 and the Blueant v12. Not to mention a quick little Podcast about the Samsung SCH-i760.

There's plenty more if you haven't gotten enough, just check out our March Archive.

...All this, and you still don't call us and leave us a voicemail to play on our Windows Mobile Podcast. You've got Windows Mobile questions, happen to be (ahem) WMExperts. So call us: 866-904-5882, extension 222. How would you change the Windows Mobile interface?

Leave us a voicemail and we'll send you a coupon good for 15% off a single purchase in the WMExperts Accessory Store! (So be sure to speak your email clearly after your message, we'll cut it out).

This coming Tuesday, WMExperts turns 1 year old (yarly!). We've been growing fast and we're a bit past due to pick up some new writers -- that's where you come in. Want to join our already awesome team and make it, um, awesome-r? Let us know:

Send an email to jobs@wmexperts.com with the subject line “Writing for WMExperts” and some info in the body:

• What sorts of writing you're interested in. We need reviewers for accessories and software and also regular bloggers.
• A sample blog post or brief (less than 500 words) review (try to show that you can match our snarky-nerd-fanboy tone and/or can be objective in a review)
• Tell us how often you would be able to submit posts or articles
• Tell us what sort of device you're using as your “Daily Driver” and what other devices you might have sitting in a drawer that you could easily cover (this includes Treos and iPhones, you dirty moonlighter).

Please just send text email - no attachments or resumes or whatnot. Yes, we're looking to pay you for your efforts and no, our great team of folks who have been posting reviews and blog posts aren't going anywhere.

Well, our CTIA 2008: Bill Gates Keynote LiveBlog didn't go exactly as planned -- a pox upon batteries and their weakness! There wasn't, sadly, any hugely significant bits of official Windows Mobile news - but there was an unofficial piece of Windows Mobile news. The device at right appeared on the gigantic screen for a couple minutes during the keynote.

If the device at right isn't the spittin' image of the Treo 800w, then we don't know much about spittin' or images. Unfortunately, we don't have any details beyond what we can glean from the image:

• It will be offered in white (yeah, we know, duh)
• It will feature Windows Mobile 6 (6.1? Hard to say, have we seen any 6.1 devices with touchscreens yet?)
• WiFi confirmed (2nd line down)

Are there any hints for people looking for a release date - If you believe the fuzzy “January 23, 2007” (or maybe 22) at the top has any relevance, it might. Somehow we doubt even Palm would have missed a release date by a full year. In any case, WMExperts is giving away the 800w to one of the lucky people who guess the release date - go check that out!

Hey, everybody else is doing it, why can't we? Below - our most-read articles and posts of 2007. A couple more months and it's likely we would have seen more from the Smartphone Round Robin - but no matter.

What do we learn from the list below? That people like the smackdowns (can't blame ya) and we all spent the bulk of 2007 champing at the bit to install Windows Mobile 6, then Windows Mobile 6.1 Of course, we're still waiting for 6.1 -- and many of us are still waiting for Windows Mobile 6 (Cough BLACKJACK cough!). We also learn that the HTC Touch was the sleeper hit of the year - it's certainly done much better than we expected. Don't get us wrong, though, we love the little bugger.

Anyhow, this is the spot where we say thanks a ton to all of you readers. We got started abound February of last year and have been growing in traffic ever since. Here's to hoping 2008 connects us with even more of y'all.

After the break, the top 10 by traffic of 2007 plus a few of our own favorite articles that you may have missed!

Top 10 by Traffic

1. HTC Touch vs. iPhone, Part 2: Video Smackdown. #1 with a bullet - it's a 25 minute, point by point comparison between the HTC Touch and the iPhone.
   
   
2. Giant ATT-Cingular 3G WM5 Smackdown: Treo 750 vs. 8525 vs. Blackjack. A little out to date, but still useful, this article is a comprehensive comparison between what were the top three on AT&T at the time. Yes, we're going to do a followup with the new devices.
   
   
3. BlackJack WM6 Update: Q3 at best. Remember when getting Windows Mobile 6 on the BlackJack in October of 2007 seemed like a curse? We do.
   
   
4. Windows Mobile 6.1 Coming with New Interface? Sure, Boy Genius may have gotten his hands on an actual Windows Mobile 6.1 device in December, but we told you it was coming and what it would look like in October. Boo. Yah.
   
   
5. HTC Touch vs iPhone, Part 1. Twice in the Top Ten? Yep - y'all love your comparisons.
   
   
6. Hack Available for PPC-6700/XV6700: AKU3.3. We still the a lot of 6700s in the wild even though it's been replaced on pretty much every network by the 6800. The 6700 may never see Windows Mobile 6, but at least it can be upgraded to the best that Windows Mobile 5 has to offer.
   
   
7. How-To: Full YouTube on Windows Mobile. We sort of wish our iPhone YouTube Spoof had made the grade, but that's alright. It's more fitting that an article actually explaining how to do it get in.
   
   
8. WM6 on a Samsung Blackjack. Yeah, we know, two “Windows Mobile 6 on BlackJack” articles. This second is the hacked ROM, and yes, seriously we still don't recommend you try to use it - it's slow and buggy.
   
   
9. How To: Customize Your Tilt. One of the reasons the Tilt didn't fare well in the Smartphone Round Robin is that its out-of-box experience is just plain horrendous. So we threw together a “for the n00bs” how-to for customizing your Tilt.
   
   
10. Review: Jabra BT8010. The BT8010s were one of the first “hybrid” bluetooth headsets on the market and they're pretty neat. We prefer the Voyager 855s now, but it's hard to argue strongly against the BT8010s, they're nice.

Our Faves

1. How To: Buy a Windows Mobile Phone. So Windows Mobile is available on a dizzying array of devices on pretty much every network you can imagine. We break down what you need to do if you're thinking WM.
   
   
2. How To: Install, Uninstall, and Transfer Files on Windows Mobile. We could have taken any article from our growing “How To” section, but we decided to stick with the basics.
   
   
3. Video First Looks. We've done a ton of Video First Looks at a ton of smartphones. Check it: HTC Touch Dual, BlackJack II, Samsung SCH-i760, Sprint Touch, T-Mobile Shadow, Motorola Q9h, Pantech Duo, and ATT Tilt
   
   
4. iPhone vs Windows Mobile, Email Smackdown. Point-by-point analysis of why Windows Mobile beats the pants off the iPhone for email productivity.
   
   
5. Smartphone Round Robin: Triumphant Return to Windows Mobile!. It's our Love-Poem to Windows Mobile. Our Ode. Our Paean. If anybody ever asks you “Why Windows Mobile?”, send 'em here.

Hey ho - we have some exciting bits of news from the folks over at the WMExperts Store. First bit - we're told that Gift Certificates are now live and ready to go, just in time for Holiday shopping. They start at $25 and go on up, and the nice bit is you can either print it out yourself and wrap it up or you can just email the sucker directly to your giftee.

The Gift Certificates use PayPal's system... which means the store as a whole now does as well! So when you check out now you have the option to enter all your information or just log into PayPal where you likely have it all conveniently saved anyway. Noyce.

Lastly, the kind folks there at the store have created a coupon for all us little campers. We know a bunch of ya are hunkered down from the crazy amount of snow that's been flying around lately, so you won't be leaving your cozy little homes this weekend anyway. So this weekend only (i.e though midnight on Sunday), you can use the coupon code SNOWEDIN to get 10% off your order.

(...no, it won't work when you try to buy a gift certificate, you sneaky git. But it will work when your loved one redeems it.)

The posting schedule here at WMExperts may be a little topsy-turvy this week, fyi. I'll be attending the “Mobius” conference in Amsterdam. What's that? Well here's the blurb from their site:

A group devoted to following and reporting on topics and news related to mobile devices and consumer electronics.

...Which is code for:

People who know more about mobility and smartphones than I do deigning to grace me with their company.

Seriously, I'm excited: I am a former grad student in English so I love me a good academic conference. Replace “post-post-modern theory of the archive” with “Windows Mobile Smartphones” but keep the same basic format of “put interesting people from disparate places into the same room and let 'em talk about it” and, well, it pretty much is a setup designed to hit all of my buttons. (Full Disclosure: Microsoft is paying for a healthy portion of the trip).

Anyhow, friend-of-the-site-despite-the-fact-that-he's-a-dirty-iPhone-user Mike of Phone different has agreed to help chip in with news postings as has our incredible cadre of writers, HobbesIsReal, Malatesta, and Merlyn3D. So fret not - we'll still have the news (and some insights from Mobius) this week.

Our parent company, Smartphone Experts is in the news today - they/we ranked #37 in the Inc 500 list of fastest growing private companies in the US and #1 (Number ONE BABY) in the retail category.

In case you're wondering, we always have and always will keep a strict firewall between our writers and our online stores, but I'll break it just a tiny bit now and say that the folks that run the e-commerce here are simply awesome. I'm sorely tempted to start naming names here, but I'm pretty sure I'd be end up writing about everybody in the company.

So I'll just say kudos and congratulations to everybody on the store side. I can't take any credit for the list (though I'm 2 for 3 when it comes to working for privately-held companies that make the inc ;) ), but I'm incredibly lucky to be associated with such fine folk.

I'll also say that, from personal experience, buying accessories from our WMExperts Store is better than most online stores I've dealt with (Yep-- I pay for stuff too when I need to). Oh, and there's a new corporate site at http://www.smartphoneexperts.com , too, complete with a not-horrendous picture of yours truly.

That is right - two new announcements rolled into this here post:

1. Every week day from now through the end of August, we are giving away one $25 coupon good at the WMExperts Store. Contest rules and suchlike are here. To enter, just sign up for our newsletter.
2. We're going to be sending out a newsletter (see how #2 here follows from #1?) every two weeks or so, which will feature our top stories as well as special deals from our Accessory Store. To sign up, just punch your email in on the new box you see over there on the right.

Obviously we're not evil, so you can unsubscribe from the newsletter (and still be eligible) anytime by clicking the handy link you'll find at the bottom of it. Also in the "we're not-evil" vein, we never ever ever ever give emails out to 3rd parties. We can't believe you ever doubted us. We're hurt, really.

I'll tell you something else (though I'm sure you could figure this out on your own), we're choosing winners randomly from the pool of people who have signed up, naturally. If you think about it, though, that means your chances of winning are better the earlier you sign up, because there will be a smaller pool of people you're competing against in the early days.

...We're also working on a few other neat new features for the site which should be popping up in a few weeks, so stay tuned.