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As it did the year before, the Smartphone Round Robin needed to go into overtime again this time around -- but we're finished now!  If you haven't been following along, here's what you missed:  Each of the editors of our five Smartphone Experts sites swapped phones for a week or so, reviewing and leanring what it's like to wear another smarphone user's shoes.  The result is the entire series of articles you see linked on this handy page, the Smartphone Round Robin of 2008.

What will you learn there?  You'll learn that there was no single smartphone that 'won' the Round Robin -- but that's by design.  There's no perfect smartphone out there, but there just might be the perfect smartphone to fit your needs.  If you're looking to get a new smartphone soon, think about what you need it do to and then hit up these articles -- you'll find that depending on what each of us care about, we'll give you a useful perspective on whether a given smartphone matches up. 

Actually, we explain it all pretty well on this page. Oh, yeah, one more thing, we are giving away fabulous prizes:

• From Android Central, the T-Mobile G1, the BlueAnt Z9 Bluetooth Headset, and SPE Screen Protectors
• From CrackBerry.com, the BlackBerry Bold, Spare Battery, and Case-Mate Second Skin
• From The iPhone Blog, the iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset
• From TreoCentral, the Treo Pro, Case-Mate Clear Armor, and Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth Headset (original)
• From WMExperts, the HTC Fuze and the Celio Redfly Mobile Companion

Find out who the winners are, after the break!

Update: It appears Sprint has now pulled the Treo Pro from their website completely, so our "jump the gun" remark was pretty accurate.  Who wants to bet your orders don't ship until at least Monday? Oh, Sprint.

Even though we are expecting some stores to have the Sprint Treo Pro for sales this Sunday (25th), it looks like Sprint.com has jumped the gun and begun advertising Palm's latest WM Treo this morning.  So you can hop over there now and order up.

No real suprises: $549 for the phone, -$200 for a contract and minus another $100 for a MIR, which brings it down to $249.  One caveat on that MIR: read the fine print to make sure your current plan qualifies.

We are still awaiting more confirmation on this, but it appears the Treo Pro has 96mb RAM and 512mb ROM, meaning Palm has doubled the available storage memory for programs, bringing it to about 336mb. More than enough for photos, data and program storage.  On the other hand, RAM may have taken a hit, meaning you may only have ~42mb of RAM after a soft reset. (See page 363 of the user manual --> .pdf).  We're working to confirm this last part, so take with a small grain of salt.  And yes, it's okay to pray that it's not true.

Other than that, it's running the same old Qualcomm MSM-7501a processor at 528mhz, which IS a nice bump from the 400mhz GSM version, plus a 1500mah battery for a nice 5hrs talk-time.

Thanks GrayKode!

HTC has announced the next iteration of the Touch Cruise, a keyboardless black slab. And if it looks familiar, it should. We've already seen it is the Iolite and most recently as the XDA Guide. Here are the dirty details:

• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional.
• Size: 102 x 53.5 x 14.5mm. Weight: 103 grams.
• Qualcomm MSM7225 528 MHz processor.
• WCDMA/HSPA: 900/2100MHz. HSDPA 7.2 Mbps (the U.S. version also will sport the 850 and 1900 bands).
• Display: 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen.
• Camera: 3.2 MP, with fixed focus.
• 512 MB flash ROM, 256 MB RAM.
• microSD.
• Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR.
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g.
• GPS/A-GPS.
• 1100 mAh battery.

The (new) Touch Cruise — that's it - we're gonna call it the Touch Cruise 2 — also sports the same "Footprints" feature as the XDA Guide. The official party line on that:

The new HTC Touch Cruise is the first mobile phone to offer HTC
Footprints, an application experience that enables people to
permanently chronicle their special moments by capturing a digital
postcard on their phone. Once captured, Footprints provides the
ability to take notes and an audio clip of that favourite restaurant
or special place while identifying its specific geographical location.
In addition to identifying each postcard with its specific GPS
co-ordinates, Footprints also auto-names each postcard with its
general location or area.

Flipping back through their photos, HTC Touch Cruise users will be
able to retrace their steps to that exact location in just a few
touches. Unlike other devices with geo-tagging functionality, HTC
Footprints works effectively outdoors and indoors, offering a more
accurate record of location for future reference and navigation.

In fewer words: Photo tagging.

Unlike the last/first/original Touch Cruise, it appears there will be an official U.S. release, with an estimated price of $500 to $600. Of couse, that price would drop should any carrier decide to pick it up. But anyone think AT&T's in the market for another keyboardless touchscreen phone just yet?

We saw a Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM leak for the Verizon XV6900 — that's the Touch — a couple of months ago, and now it looks like a new (and more official) ROM has been made available. PCDPhones (used to be part of UTStarcom) has the new release. [via]

Here's what you're getting:

• Upgraded OS to Windows Mobile 6.1
• Added EVDO Rev A capability
• Updated the MMS client to be compatible with WM 6.1
• Added Microsoft Remote Desktop Application
• Added capability to use VzNavigator application.
• Added capability to read micro SD card of up to 16GB memory.

Go snag it here. And let us know how the GPS holds up after the update. (And we've said it before, and we'll keep on sayin' it: Back up your data first!)

Well 2 years into its release and customs ROMs are finally getting the work through for the aging 700wx. Better late than never, eh?

Thanks to Waffles (ppcgeeks), LLC23 (wmexperts) and Ebag333 (wmexperts), we now have a dedicated thread located here to discuss the project and most importantly, the inherit risks of re-flashing your device with a non-standard ROM.

Custom ROMs are nice as they allow users to not only replace unwanted stock carrier apps with their preferred ones, but it also enables the ability for pre-tweaking of the registry.

Plus there is that holy-grail for WM users: flashing with newer versions of Windows Mobile. This means the potential to put WM 6.x on the 700w/wx is only a matter of time, perseverance and assistance form ambitious WM users--so maybe you should pop in and lend a hand to make some history, hmmm?

So far the project is confirmed working on Sprint devices but Verizon and Alltel still need some experimenting. Ebag333 has even created a 700wx ROM-kitchen for easy implementation making the future of this project very promising for those who are not too comfortable with the whole process.

Keep up the great work guys! This will keep us busy till the 800w release ;-)

What do you do when you're one of the biggest GSM chip makers out there and one of your sweethearts -- HTC in this case -- starts looking elsewhere (say, nVidia)? Well you you throw on the old spice cologne, get a hair cut, and start acquiring AMD's graphics and multimedia technology assets to improve what you've got.

Qualcomm is hoping this move will provide better 2D and 3D graphics features, as well as better audio/video and display support. This drastic make over wasn't cheap.  Qualcomm is dishing out $65 million to AMD for these assets and offering employment  to AMD employees that were involved in the new technologies. We were starting to suspect that Qualcomm was letting itself go (so to speak), so hopefully laying out this cash  for the proverbial face lift and gym membership will get 'em back in shape.

[via phonescoop]

While everbody awaits what we expect will be the announcement of Windows Mobile 6.5 at Mobile World Congress in just under a month, we here at WMExperts know from long, hard experience that with Windows Mobile the announcement of a new version of the OS comes well before that OS is actually available on devices.  Even if Microsoft does announce that they've shipped it off to manufacturers, it takes awhile to bake it in to a device, customize it, and get it finalized for a launch. 

So this DigiTimes report [via] claiming that we'll see 6.5 devices in the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2009 comes as little surprise, especially since the report also claims that Microsoft won't ship the OS to manufacturers until "Mid-2009."  From "Mid '09" to a 3rd quarter launch of a 6.5 device is actually quite fast, so perhaps that will mean that the cool new 6.5 interface we saw surface back in November will be enough to convince phone makers that they don't need to take the time to re-invent another skin to slap on top of it.