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We've heard about HTC's updated ROM for the Touch Diamond and the Touch Pro last week and not to be left out, we're seeing signs that AT&T won't be too far behind with an update for the HTC Fuze. FuzeMobility.com is reporting that a leaked copy of a Test Fuze ROM has surfaced over at XDA Developers. In the discussion over at XDA one member reports the new ROM has added the FM Radio Player to the Fuze, has a slide to answer canvas, video share's performance has improved, and you can remap the PTT button. Speculation has the "official" release of this update coming from AT&T in a few weeks.

Keep in mind that this will erase everything on your Fuze before it installs the new ROM so it is important you have your data backed up.  This is a test ROM and may/may not have issues internally or with other applications.  It is carrier specific and may conflict if loaded on a Touch Pro.

Follow the break for a list of the technical changes/fixes the test ROM presents.

In one of the bigger "Whoopsies!" since Verizon reportedly passed on the iPhone, Motorola co-chief Greg Brown says the company's own strategic decisions are the main reason for its fall from grace.

You can read it all at the Financial Times, but here are the bullet points Brown sites in his mea culpa:

• "Didn't see the trends coming in smartphone and 3G with the kind of foresight and customer attention that it should have."
• Failed attempt at a single OS based on Linux and Java.
• Selling sub-$50 phones was unprofitable.

Oops, indeed. In other negative news, Moto's market share has fallen from 23 percent in Q4 of 2006 to 6.5 percent at the end of 2008. Also, it had an operating loss of $2.2 billion for 2008 and last month suspended its dividend.

It really is a shame, given that the Moto Q is one of our favorite Windows Mobile Standard phones. But this does start to explain why we never really saw anything grossly new and instead have seen revision upon revision of the Q line.

As for the future? Expect cost-cutting and job cuts in the neighborhood of 5,000, as well as a delay of spinning off the handset unit. And, ya know, hopefully some new phones.(And while we're piling on, what ever came of that OTA firmware upgrade system?)

Via Slashgear

Rene, our No. 1 frenemy over at The iPhone Blog, points us to an article in this month's Vogue magazine that — Hang on. My phone's ringing.

What's that, Rene? You don't actually read Vogue, it's an article that GeekSugar and Gizmodo picked up? Sure, sure, I'll mention that. Don't think anyone'll believe me, but anything for you, pal.

Sorry about that. Where were we? Oh, yes, the article. See, Melinda Gates, wife of one of the richest men in the world, sat down with Vogue and let slip that iPhones and iPods are banned in the Gates household, even though she occasionally thinks they're kinda cool.

“There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household,” Gates tells me. “But iPods and iPhones are two things we don’t get for our kids.” Harsh, perhaps, but understandable. After all, it’s hard to walk around tethered to merchandise made by your father’s most famous competitor. Still, Gates acknowledges the inevitable lure of forbidden fruit. “Every now and then I look at my friends and say, ‘Ooh, I wouldn’t mind having that iPhone.’”

So, no iFun in the Gates household. Which leads us to the following question:

How do they prop open their doors?

We're big fans of Microsoft's Live Search for Mobile around these here parts. We're not big fans of the "Live" branding. And it now appears that Microsoft may be getting ready to do something about that.

LiveSide.net [via the Seattle PI] notes that Barney Pell, a "search strategist and evangelist at Microsoft," apparently recently Tweeted (and since deleted) that Live Search will be rebranded, which we've been expecting for some time now. No official name has surfaced, though there still is "Kumo" floating around. Also no word yet how long it would take this to trickle down to the mobile side of things.

More news may surface this week at Microsoft's MVP Summit.

As we continue to await (and await, and await) the Sprint Treo Pro, the Boy Genius Report, er, reports that Alltel's set to launch its own Treo Pro (full review) on Thursday for $199 after contract and rebate, though BGR opines that "this might just be for divested customers only."

That said, it's cool to see Alltel continue to release Windows Mobile phones (it's got the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro) while its new parent company Verizon keeps playing catch-up, though we hope to see the Diamond any day now. But despite VZW's sluggishness, six of the seven smartphones listed on its Web site are (aging) Windows Mobile phones, so we shouldn't be too harsh.

Have you ever wondered what to do with those old cell phones?  AT&T may be gearing up a "Phone Trade-in" program in June. The Boy Genius Report is reporting that the trade-in won't be without stipulations.

• The phone being traded in can't be more than two years old and must be in good shape. This will rule out that old StarTac that you have in the junk drawer or the Treo 650 that mysteriously found it's way into the laundry machine.
• The new phone will not have any contract discounts applied to it. You'll be paying full sticker minus the trade-in allowance.
• Trade-in values will range from $50 to $200.

BGR is calling this "a rumor and nothing more for the time being" and we would have to agree with that assessment.  While the concept sounds interesting, if you're phone is only yielding a $50 trade-in value, why would you opt out of the larger contractual discounts? The only advantage would be if the trade-in program waived the two year contract.  Will AT&T reduce the size of the contractual discounts to make a trade-in program more attractive?

If structured right, a trade-in program would be a nice alternative to putting those old phones on Ebay.

Mal and Dieter discuss Ballmer's strategy discussion surrounding Windows Mobile, some new devices, and your emails. Listen in!

• Download it directly with this link
• Subscribe via iTunes
• Subscribe directly to the Podcast feed with your favorite Podcatcher here
• Listen to it here with the flash player above.

In a sense, it was a calm after the Mobile World Congress storm this week, but we got together and recorded a massive hour-and-a-half-long Smartphone Experts Roundtable Podcast to discuss all the news from Windows Mobile 6.5 to the Ovi app Store to Apple's "absent presence" at the show.

If you didn't realize, SPE has four podcasts for your listening pleasure: the CrackBerry.com Podcast, the Phone Different Podcast (with the occasional iPhone LIVE! show), the PalmCast on both TreoCentral and PreCentral.net, and finally the WMExperts Podcast. The bold and daring may even want to try the (still in Beta, since it's based on the somewhat unreliable Yahoo Pipes feature) Smartphone Experts Combined Podcast Feed, which puts all four podcasts into a single feed -- also available in iTunes, if that's how you roll.

Now for the roundup of the week's news!

My, my, look at that piece of pie. We can imagine that there's a little more gloating going on than is the norm at TheiPhoneBlog.com, with the mobile browsing numbers for February released by Net Applications, by way of cnet. And that's cool. Safari's a great browser on the iPhone. No denying that.

Really of note is Android, which at 6.15 percent of total market share is as high as Symbian, and nearly as high as Windows Mobile. And that's with only being released in October 2008.

Obviously, this will be taken as a measure of how many people are using each platform. And it should be. But, ponder this: On which platform would you be more like to browser the Internet? And in what order would you rank mobile browsers? Safari likely would be first, and Android's browser isn't too shabby, either. It should be interesting to see what this chart will look like, say, in six months, when Mozilla starts to get its mobile browser into Windows Mobile users' hands.

Not that we were likely to see it with a widespread U.S. release, but it looks like the Asus P565 — which at one point was calling itself the world's fastest — may have been killed off by Asus' recent teaming with Garmin.

German site GPSandCo (translated) reports that the P565 has been pulled from the French and German markets, likely because of the new partnership.

Sounds like Garmin-Asus is really going to be pushing its Nuvifone line. And why not? We were plenty impressed with the M20 at Mobile World Congress.

Via Unwired View