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Here's one of those good news-bad news situations.

The good news: The price for the MWg Zinc II just dropped a couple of hundred dollars.

The bad news: It's still $499.

Hey, saving $200 is still saving $200. But despite the Zinc II's decent specs (albeit not nearly as impressive in the wake of the recent HTC onslaught) and lack of any carrier support, we're still not expecting anyone to be lining up for this on.

But if you in fact do have one, drop us a line and let us know what you think of it.

We are all awaiting the arrival of the Touch HD, Touch Viva, and Touch 3G from HTC to drop. Now that the FSS has just passed the Touch3G, aka Jade100, one would be forgiven for hoping it might see official release on these shores. The 3G bands on the device are not compatible with the US spectrum, however, so this is more in line with HTC/FCC interactions of yore: they're just making sure the European version of the Touch 3G is 'street legal.'

So will we see an official US release? The original announcement didn't really have any clues to suggest we might and really, given that HTC said the Touch HD would come here eventually, it would seem a little odd to also make another version of the 3G. Then again, we could (and have) say the very existence of the Touch 3G in a post-Touch-Diamond world is a little odd, so you never know.

Today's the day, the T-Mobile G1 is coming. Our brand new baby sister site, Android Central, is covering the big news in rapid blog-post-style. If you're fearing that Android is going to take down Windows Mobile, well, we're a little sympathetic. We suppose it's worth noting that Windows Mobile hardware can run Android, actually, it's already been done on the Tilt.

We recommend you check out this quality article at PC Mag by Sascha Segan, which argues fairly convincingly that it's not Windows Mobile that need be afraid, it's feature phones. Android probably won't be feature-competitive with WM (at least for awhile, anyway), but a free and extensible OS is just what the crappy UI on your standard free phone needs. So there's some breathing room there, Microsoft, though we hope you're using it to push Windows Mobile 7 out the door more quickly before it becomes hyper-ventilation room.

Anyhow, welcome is due to our new kid sister blog, Android Central. Go on and give her a noogie.

It's not an especially big surprise, but it's good to hear: Alltel will be carrying the Touch Pro on their network, if the image leaked to Engadget is to be believed. No clear word on how long Sprint will have an exclusive on the Touch Pro. Heck, they need to release it first -- hurry up Oct 19!

Given how long it took for Verizon to finally pick up the 6800 device (our guess is the delay was due to how long it took UTStarcom to come up with the sweet XV6800 branding), we're guessing Alltel will beat them to the punch on this one. Heck, the fastest way to get a Touch Pro running on Verizon might just be to switch to Alltel, wait for the acquisition to go through, and then hope you're not one of the 15% of Alltel customers Verizon plans to jettison.

Although this software has been around for a bit, we've somehow managed never to get around to talking about it and were happy to get a reminder from Jason Landridge's recent Top Ten: WMWifiRouter. It's a dead-simple way to turn your Windows Mobile phone into a WiFi router. One touch of the button and your 3G connection gets shared over your phone's WiFi to be shared with surrounding devices. Actually, it can do a bit more than that, sharing connections over Bluetooth and USB too.

Setup is dead simple, support on their site is pretty darn comprehensive, and more features appear to be on the way. Just be aware, though, your carrier probably would consider WMWifiRouter to be tethering, so if you're not on one of those plans they'll probably come after you if you use it a lot. Go on and download the trial or send 'em your 19.99 Euro.