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Never one to be left out of the smartphone rumor mill, Dell now is rumored to be possibly working on a smartphone.

Maybe.

In an interview with Om Malik, founder Michael Dell drops the following bombshell:

"We are certainly looking at the whole smartphone category, but I wouldn’t expect anything anytime soon."

There you have it, folks.

OK, he did talk about five opportunities that Dell is looking into - consumer business, mobile computers, emerging nations, enterprise and medium/small businesses. And he did note that he's not ready to go public on any plans to work with Android or Symbian.

So that's more than enough to get things going. Let the speculation begin!

Read the GigaOM interview (via Engadget Mobile)

This week's Software Wrangle is one short on new apps, but to make it up to you, I've included some extra FREE apps. Make sure you take some time this week to saddle up and rope in these apps for a closer look! This week we are featuring new software for WM Standard, Mileage Manager. Updated software includes Elecont Launcher and SmartReg for Windows Smartphone. Free software is TempoPerfect and Note2Day.

WM Professional new software is iContact and eDrinksMixn Deluxe. Updated software includes IRCy and FairwayWatch. Freeware is Pocket Uno and PockeTwit.

Read on for this week's Wrangle!

WM Standard: New

Starting off this week is a new WM Standard app, MileageManager v1.0 by Total Wireless Solutions.

MileageManager keeps record of your Business and Personal trips and tracks your reimbursement amount calculated automatically based on the reimbursement rate.

Following data can be stored in MileageManager - Date - Trip Purpose - Odometer Start - Odometer Finish - Distance - Reimbursement Rate - Amount - Type -> Business -> Personal

Features: - Keep record of your Trips on your smartphone easily & efficiently. - Automatic calculation of 'Distance' and 'Amount Owed' based on Odometer readings and reimbursement rate. - Remembers last 'Odometer Finish' reading as your default 'Odometer Start' reading for your next trip. - Generate custom reports in HTML format for printing OR as a CSV file for easy integration with Microsoft® Excel. - Export Records in Excel or CSV file formats. - Record & Manage both your Business and Personal trips. - Advanced Sorting and Filtering options to help You track and manage Your mileage records efficiently. - Supports multiple currencies.

Get MileageManager v1.0 for $9.50 here.

WM Standard: Updated

Elecont Launcher for Smartphone v1.0.74 by Elecont, was just featured last week as a new app and already has an update, so it's our first updated software for WM Standard this week.

Allows you to start programs, documents and sites directly from Home screen. You can start your favourite shortcuts with one click. Optimized for finger usage. Double click prevents erroneous launch programs.

Features: - Windows-like quick launch on Home and Today screen. - Starts for any applications, URLs, documents and control panel in one click. - Double click prevents erroneous launch programs. - Animated icons on Home and Today screen. - Compatible with Windows Mobile themes. - Free full-functional 3-day trial version. - Free updates.

Get Elecont Launcher for Smartphone v1.0.74 for $9.95 here.

SmartReg for Windows Smartphone v3.5 by Speed Software is next up.

Just a word of caution -- making changes in the registry of your device is NOT for the faint of heart, so it's a good idea to know what you're doing before you lift the hood and start tinkering with the engine. However, if you want an app that will help you track the changes you make, this is one to consider.

Forgotten that registry change you made last week that you really wish you'd never made? Not a problem if you made the change with SmartReg. Simply look in the change history list, view the change and then undo it!

SmartReg is the professional Windows Mobile registry editor. It contains all the features you would expect of a standard registry editor PLUS complete historical change log, comprehensive undo/redo and regular expression searching.

Get SmartReg for Windows Smartphone v3.5 for only $15.95 here.

WM Standard: Freeware

The first free app for WM Standard this week is TempoPerfect at www.smartphone-freeware.com.

TempoPerfect is a Metronome that runs on your PC, Pocket PC or Smartphone and can be controlled on a PC using your mouse or hotkeys. Unlike mechanical metronomes that wind down, TempoPerfect provides a clear and precise beat that can be acurately adjusted for the correct bpm. TempoPerfect is an essential tool for any musician.

TempoPerfect features a visual beat indicator bar that bounces from left to right in time with the beat. This provides musicians with a very helpful visual cue. For those of us who cannot remember the correct bpm for a particular speed (eg. Allegro), TempoPerfect also includes a tempo guide in the main window.

You can get TempoPerfect for Free right here.

The next free app for WM Standard is Note2Day v1.0.1 at www.smartphone-freeware.com.

Did something special happen in your life today? A memorable family event? A vacation that you wish to remember? There are many reasons to keep a diary and Note2Day makes it easy to carry a diary in your pocket.

Note2Day turns your smartphone into your personal diary (journal). Add notes with timestamp. Browse and select notes. All notes are stored in single text file so it's easy to import/export and edit your diary.

You can get Note2Day for Free right here.

WM Professional: New

The first new WM Professional application for this week is iContact v0.76 from Doug Melton.

Doug developed this open-source app on his own time for the WM community. If you download and use his app, it's FREE, but donations are welcome and you can download iContact and donate here. Thanks, Doug!

iContact is designed to be an all-inclusive finger-friendly contact manager for Windows Mobile PocketPC phones. It's no secret that it's taken design cues from "other devices". I started out with larna's open-source iContact v0.6, and ran with it!

Please note: iContact 0.76 will not work with WM2003 or non-phone devices. Don't try to install it. For those, iContact 0.6 should work.

Check out the xda-developers thread!

You can get iContact v0.76 for Free (donations are welcomed) here.

Next up is eDrinksMixn Deluxe v4.0 by Lakshmi Solutions LLC. Just remember -- Don't Drink and Drive!

Use eDrinksMix

Just when it seems Sprint might be getting off the mat, along comes AT&T throwing another punch.

AT&T has asked the Federal Communications Commission to halt the merger of Sprint's WiMAX division with Clearwire, another blow to the creation of the companies' planned $15 billion 4G network. In April, Sprint announced that the launch of its XOHM service was delayed, and that they're still looking to get it going later this year.

But Brighthand reports that AT&T is crying foul and contends the deal isn't under enough scrutiny, with the emphasis on a number of spectrum licenses held by Sprint and Clearwire.

Responds Sprint:

A spokesman for Sprint said that the companies have documented for the FCC on a county by county basis how much spectrum they would hold after the merger, and that nearly 50 public entities had filed similar comments in support of the proposed merger.

We'll keep an eye on this one.

The folks over at Opera Mobile have updated the beta release of version 9.5 of their mobile browser.

Addressed is a bug that turned off notification sounds. And while Opera acknowledges that there are other bugs it's working on, they're not fixed in this release.

We have updated the beta1 with a fix for the (very annoying) bug that turned off the notification sounds. The notification bugfix was relatively trivial and had a low risk. We are aware of the other bugs and issues, but these aren't addressed in this update.

Also noted on Opera's blog is our how-to on moving the cache file off your device and on to your storage card. (Commence horn tootage!)

Keyboard problems persist: Aside from the "Out of Memory" errors, one of the other biggest gripes with the 9.5 beta has been with soft keyboards. Opera is aware of this and says the problem lies not with its software - or Windows Mobile for that matter - but with customized keyboards.

Opera supports the SIP architecture and the IME architecture, so Opera works fine with the default Microsoft keyboards. Unfortunately, many new devices have shiny keyboards that look nice, but do not comply to Microsoft's SIP [software-based input panel] and/or IME [input method editor] standard. Those keyboards work well on an edit control, but not with other applications that want to use user-input from a keyboard.

Basically, there are standards with which Opera Mobile works just fine, but some of these newfangled software keyboards just aren't playing nicely. Opera says it will work to make its browser more compatible with nonstandard keyboards, but that there are limits, which makes sense. Standards are set for a reason. Let's hope the keyboard programmers fix things on their end.

Get the Opera Mobile 9.5 beta 1 here, and let us know in the comments if your notification problems are fixed.

And if you haven't seen it yet, check out Dieter's hands-on video walk-through of Opera Mobile 9.5.

Well, it looks like the HTC Touch Pro/Raphael has popped up at the FCC! You can take a gander at the FCC documents here, though a quick perusal doesn't appear to show anything out of the ordinary: the standard sort of “here's where we'll put the label” and “here's proof it won't melt your brain” sort of thing. The really juicy details aren't available because HTC's confidentiality request to the FCC asked that they keep the rest under wraps until November 30th, 2008. Ain't that a nice little date to mark on your calendar?

Still, though, nice to see the RAPH100 show its face, makes it a little more likely we'll be able to use it to impress our friends and bludgeon our enemies. That bludgeoning might be cathartic, too, as there doesn't appear to be 3G testing results in these documents. TmoNews speculates this means it's bound to (3G-less) T-Mobile, but we're still hopeful that those tests just haven't arrived. Of course, “hopefulness” is just on the other side of the coin from “denial,” so your guess is as good as ours.

read: TmoNews [via]