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SQUEEEE! We have a confirmed report that our hunch was right, the HTC Touch Diamond (see our video review here) and the HTC Touch Pro are coming to the US in CDMA flavors; What's more, they won't be stuck in purgatory Sprint-land either. The evidence comes courtesy of a Verizon Roadmap leaked to PhoneArena (by way of TreoCentral). As usual, they'll be showing up on Verizon under the UTStarcom moniker, which means there's a greater than 50/50 chance they'll drop the cool names for something like XV720957298 or whatever.

Oh, the roadmap also reveals that big V will get the Treo 800w.

ETAs, prices, ...pretty much every other detail you want are still unknown.

Update: It's doesn't hurt that the Touch Pro in CDMA flavor was just approved by the FCC, either.

Thanks to Jennifer for the tip!

We've reported that Microsoft is taking mobile music more seriously, and that even Steve Ballmer thinks mobile Web browsing needs some improvement.

Enter J Allard, who has been promoted to "Chief Experience Officer" and "Chief Technology Officer" (and who has one of the coolest bio mugs out there).

You may know Allard from his previous work with Microsoft on the Xbox, the Zune, Windows NT and, everybody's favorite, TCP/IP (among another 30 or so products).

Windows Mobile is now under his auspices, which should lead to some promising developments for our beloved, but oft maligned, operating system.

From his updated executive bio:

J Allard is responsible for the technical architecture and user experiences related to products and services of the Entertainment and Devices (E&D) division. Allard works closely with technical leaders across the company to align E&D product teams with Microsoft's overall services strategy and product architecture, and drives the technical and design agenda to deliver Connected Entertainment experiences for consumers.

So the big rumor floating around the 'nets these days is that Sprint is set to increase the cost of PDA plans for all smartphones. More specifically, they will require you to sign up for one of their "Simply Everything" plans.

What does that mean? Currently, Sprint users can opt to pay a very reasonable $15 for basic "Power Vision" + Voice plan, which gives them just unlimited data over 3g ($20 and $25 plans include extras).

The "Simply Everything" plan starts at $69 but includes 450 minutes voice, data, text, e-mail, Web-surfing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS Navigation, Direct Connect and Group Connect (it goes up to $99 for unlimited voice). That's actually a very cool package and very competitive.

The rumor, however, is that anyone buying a new smartphone starting July 13th (that date sound familiar?) will be forced to activate the phone with the minimum $69 plan--even existing customers in contract. And SERO plans may be included as well (Read: What is SERO?).

Yikes.

Unfortunately, there is precedent for this: the much hyped Samsung Instinct requires exactly such a plan, even under SERO.

For "new" customers to Sprint (we've heard they have a couple), these plans are actually quite attractive, but for current subscribers who have a better details...it's flat out scary (e.g. my cost after taxes would nearly triple).

What to do? Well, we'll just have to wait and see we suppose. It's still not clear if doing and ESN swap online will be affected, though it may just be, in which case signing that contract now and buying a new PDA full price won't even save you.

Stay tuned.

Via Sprintusers

Like cell phone companies? Consider moving to Dallas, TX, then. AT&T is moving their headquarters there for “easier access to customers and operations around the world.” For those worried about jobs in San Antionio, it does look like the big beast is leaving quite a few of their employees behind... and it's not like AT&T is getting any smaller anyway. The whole move should take about a year.

That's business-speak for “The drive from the Dallas Airport to San Antonio sucks.”

It's also business-speak for “Nokia, Nortel, and RIM also have all kinds of crazy big offices there, so we'll be able to pretend we're going out to business lunches with other hotshots more often while instead we're trying to catch the practice sessions of the fabulous Dallas Cheerleaders.” And so on.

...It might also be business-speak for “Dallas is much closer to Texas' Eastern Court District, home of the world famous rocket docket, which will allow us to pursue all kinds of crazy fun patent litigation more easily.” Heck, RIM and Motorola are doing it, why shouldn't AT&T get in on the action?

Those of you who have come up from the PalmOS to Windows Mobile have probably heard of Kinoma's Player, which combines a comprehensive mobile media guide with a player that supports a wide range of codecs -- think of it as SprintTV plus Podcacher plus YouTube plus flickr streamer plus music player ...minus stupid extra fees. Even if you haven't used Kinoma, you should know that Kinoma powers what little video power your Centro has these days.

Well take a look at the newly redesigned Kinoma homepage. They're talking about a mystery product called (for now) “Kinoma ???” Alright, we'll bite: we think it's a Windows Mobile version of Kinoma. Why would we say that? Could it be the gigantic Motorola Q9c at the top of the page?

We like Kinoma. We hope what they bring will make us love them, because Kinoma was one of those great pieces of software on the PalmOS that gives us teeny tiny second thoughts about Windows Mobile. ...from time to time.

thanks to Doc31 for the tip!

Chris Craft has finished his “30 Days of .Net” marathon of development, wherein he developed a .Net app every day for 30 days. We told you about this epic task just under a month ago and since then Craft has come up with some pretty great stuff, including everything from a simple flashlight app to an app that repeats alerts in case you missed them to a Death Calculator to (get this) a framework for sending commands to a WM smartphone via SMS.

You can check out the roundups of each week, too:

• Week 1 apps
• Week 2 apps
• Week 3 apps
• Week 4 apps

Congrats to Craft for finishing this epic task and congrats to .Net too, for being an easy-to-develop-for development platform!

The Google Mobile Blog has alerted us to a new umbrella page for its mobile services.

Hit up www.google.com/mobile/winmo from your desktop for one-stop shopping for all of Google's mobile device products available on Windows Mobile, including Google Maps, Gmail, Picasa and their bread and butter, Internet search.

Nothing earth-shattering here, but it's all available under one roof, with some how-to videos thrown in as well. No mention of Google Gears, though.