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The launch date for Sprint's HTC Touch pro has bounced around more than election poll numbers. (See here, here and here.) Case in point: Our own HobbesIsReal managed to snag one last week and posted his 24-hour impressions.

But we're happy to say that the Touch Pro now is officially officially here. It's up on Sprint's Web site and everything. That's the good news.

The bad news is that it's gonna cost you. The $579.99 list price is knocked down to $399.99 after "instant savings." And you can take another $100 off that with a mail-in rebate. But for that to kick in, you have to sign up for an "everything" plan (starting at $99 a month), a "Data Premier" add-on or "PRO Pack" add-on. That's SOP for Sprint these days, but be forewarned anyway. And by many accounts, you get your money's worth, GPS lag notwithstanding.

Look for our full-on review here in the next week or so as HobbesIsReal puts the Touch Pro through its paces.

Remember the Pharos, those GPS-centric things? It's OK. It's been a long while since we first got wind of one running Windows Mobile.

Fast-forward nine months, and a pair of devices — that's the 127 on the left, and the 117 on the right with its VGA screen — reportedly have been birthed on Dell's Web site, reports Engadget Mobile.

The links to the devices are down at the moment, so we have to go with Engadget's specs. We're reportedly looking at aGPS, WinMo 6.1 Pro and 2-MP cameras on the back, and VGAs on the front. They're also reporting tri-band 7.2Mbps speeds for data, which would just be blistering fast. We'll have to keep an eye on these.

Thanks to Patrick for the Tip!

Seems it was just yesterday (oh wait, it was) we were telling you about the Samsung GT-6620 rumor. Well, the thing has launched [via] in Italy (exclusively) and it sure does look like the BlackJack II-for-Europe we were expecting. It's 199 Euro in Red, Green, and Blue. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard with a full QWERTY keyboard, Tri-Band HSDPA (i.e. No US bands), a 2 megapixel camera, and -- get this -- 20 MB of internal storage.

You've undoubtedly by now heard the Windows 7 news coming from the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. What has us excited is the news surrounding Live Mesh.

Today, Microsoft announced that Mesh (which is a building block of the upcoming versions of Windows) will be going into open beta this week. Mobile (and Mac) clients also will finally see the light of day.

If you haven't experienced Live Mesh thus far — we've been using it for a while on our Windows desktops and caught a glimpse of an early mobile client — think on-the-fly file syncing across multiple platforms. Drop a file into a Mesh-enabled folder on one computer, and it's available in the same folder on another computer, nearly instantaneously.

From the Live Mesh blog:

With this beta release we are making another significant step toward this goal. In particular… with this Beta we are providing limited availability of our new Mac and Windows Mobile 6 clients – providing users with a wider range of devices that can participate in their mesh. Later this week as the beta rolls out, access to the Mac client will be provided from the device ring experience at www.mesh.com. Instructions for accessing the Windows Mobile client will be made available at this blog later in the week.

Not quite sure yet exactly what we'll be seeing. Obviously, you wouldn't want 1,000 2-meg files syncing automatically over the air to your phone. But the blog does tell us we should see "The option to sync Live Mesh folders P2P only, excluding your Live Desktop, can now be enabled from the local device."

Stay tuned.

Luke just shot us an email about a very strange text he just received from Verizon regarding his Q9c:

FREE VZW MSG. Improve your Q! Simple, one-time fix prevents issue that may affect your Q9c. Go to http://www.motorola.com/q9cfix on your PC for details.

So we dutifully went over to the linked site and saw that they're asking a very strange question. When you head to Start -> System Tools -> Memory Manager, they ask if you have a certain amount of memory listed as free, namely 48.94mb. If you check “yes” and hit next, you get this scary message:

The fact that your Device Storage value reads 48.94 MB means that your Q9c is VULNERABLE. There are two ways to fix the issue, either upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1 or Master Reset your device

Weird? Weird. Apparently Q9c devices that haven't been updated to WM6.1 are prone to freezes on startup if they have exactly 48.94mb of storage memory free. Their recommendation: upgrade to 6.1. Our recommendation: do just that (here's a link), then sit and wonder why exactly a certain amount of free storage memory could potentially freeze your device.

Thanks for the heads-up, Luke!

Remember when SPB launched their new application SPB Online application and we wanted to see if Verizon or AT&T would pick it up? Well it looks like the Russians beat us to the punch. A company called Sky Link is one of Russians largest CDMA operators in that part of the world and will be one of the firsts to launch with SPB Online customized for their local preferences. The first device rolling out with the integration is the AnyData ASP-505 in November (and we thought the U.S. had funky names).

We Reviewed SPB Online not too long ago and came away impressed enough recommend it to carriers for pick-up, though whether it's a good buy for the average consumer is another story. I personally like the fact that Sky Link has realized the potential with SPB Online. I dislike the fact that here in the U.S. companies like AT&T will probably never pick up something like this because it would compete with their own crapware they install.

Amongst the flood of new Windows Mobile Pro devices being released, Windows Mobile Standard devices seemed to have been left in the dust. Or have they?

Windows Mobile Italy is reporting that Samsung is working on a new Windows Mobile Standard device with a product id of GT-C6620. The GT-C6620 (BlackJack III maybe?) will feature Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard, have a inbuilt QWERTY thumb keyboard and a similar form factor to the BlackJack line of phones. The new phone will feature UMTS, HSDPA and Bluetooth but no Wifi. Speculation has this phone being released in Italy by the end of 2008 and other destinations shortly thereafter.

Apparently we're also looking at yet another new interface on top of Widows Mobile, too. Given that the Euro-Only Samsung i620 is needing a refresh and given that the BJII is still down pretty well here in the States, we're not quite expecting a US release yet -- FCC documents not withstanding.

All's been relatively quiet on the Viigo front of late, with the RSS reader's "Project Tango" Windows Mobile beta, well, still in beta.

For the uninitiated, Viigo is a pretty robust RSS reader that stores and gives you access to your feed list from Viigo's servers. Switch devices and your feeds follow you. No need to manually re-enter them, which is a godsend. You can also manage your feed list from a standard Web page.

In addition to being a standard RSS reader, you also get election news, weather info, sports scores — as our cousins at Crackberry.com beat us to the punch just noted, NBA scores are now available — stocks and airline information, and local classified listings.

However, a number of users (including yours truly) recently ran into an issue that kept them from logging into their accounts from the phone, thus denying access to their feeds. That issue has been fixed in a new build. Go get it here.

If you haven't tried Viigo, give it a shot. The beta's free and works on touchscreen and non-touchscreen phones. And as long as you're adding RSS feeds be sure to check out our new combined RSS feed for the Smartphone Experts Network.