Hasta La Gadget!

Yeah, we know you. You devoured all 50+ pages of licensing agreements and developer regulations that Microsoft posted on its Marketplace for Mobile developer page yesterday, and now you’re just itching for more. How about 45 minutes and 45 seconds of hot roundtable, Windows Mobile 6.5 developer action from TechEd 2009? Jorge Peraza and John Bruno from MS talk up widgets, which will be simple little gadgets that run within the UI, yet will still be treated like full apps from a developer perspective, meaning they’ll be signed, secured, and only be able to be submitted by certified developers (those who have paid their $99 fee). Also discussed is the reasoning behind 6.5’s less than groundbreaking UI, which comes down to deadlines. Eight or nine months were all the team had to write the OS; not nearly enough time for a complete presentation overhaul — or for any Silverlight integration for that matter. Coming in version 7.0? Wouldn’t surprise us. Full vid after the break.

Continue reading More Windows Mobile 6.5 app information from Microsoft’s TechEd 2009

Filed under: Cellphones

More Windows Mobile 6.5 app information from Microsoft’s TechEd 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 May 2009 07:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A bizarre Tweet coming from a new, apparently Microsoft-run account has thrown out the possibility of a new Microsoft Zune coming this June. The Zune may also have cell-phone-like capabilities, even though Microsoft has denied numerous times that they’re working on a phone.

The two Tweets, from @officethemovie – an account set up to herald the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview, announced yesterday – read “June 2009 will be an important month for Zune lovers.” and “New product launch, that’s all I’m allowed to say. Hold off from buying an iPhone/Pre. :)”

There’s been no official comment from Microsoft yet. But at one point, a Microsoft blog said that May 11th (that’s yesterday) would be the date of some sort of Windows Mobile 6.5 launch, before retracting that announcement.

This Tweet might refer to two highly-awaited new devices, the HTC Touch Pro2 and Touch Diamond2, which were announced in February and might be coming out in June. Or it might refer to a new Zune. Or Microsoft may have been lying to us all along about a phone.

So is this a Zune? Is this Windows Mobile 6.5? Is this something else? We’re still digging.

(Thanks to Slashgear)

Original post. Acer got off to an enthusiastic start in the smart phone market back in February, but it looks like their plans for freebie Windows Mobile phones are being held up by the usual carrier-related traumas in the US.

Acer’s been having a lot of press events for their laptop and notebook lines here in New York, but they haven’t said much about their smart phones. So we asked. According to Acer’s laptop PR folks, Acer now isn’t planning any US smart phones until 2010.

That’s disappointing, as they’ve already started to roll out products overseas and the head of their smart phone division, Aymar de Lencquesaing, has years of experience in the USA. When I spoke to him in February, he said there was some hope that they’d get phones out before Christmas of this year.

Acer’s first-half devices are pretty run-of-the-mill Windows Mobile stuff, but they have more interesting products in their pipeline. The company’s $500 H2 model, for instance, uses Qualcomm’s state-of-the-art 1-GHz Snapdragon chipset and has a 3.8-inch, 800-by-480 touch screen, and they’ve also said they’re experimenting with Google Android phones.

We know you’ve been dying to get your hands all over the HTC Snap… oh, wait. You haven’t? Well, neither have we — but no matter, ‘cos Smartphone Daily has a review, and they’ve filled us in on the luscious deets. For the uninitiated, this is a 2.4-inch, Windows Mobile 6.1, touchscreen deficient candybar, and something of a BlackBerry doppelganger (if only in the looks department), featuring WiFi and a camera. Wild, huh? Overall, the reviewer found it to be “decent” — if you’re looking for a “business device,” that is. The Inner Circle feature was singled out for some praise: little more than an Inbox filter for your, erm, “inner circle,” you have to wonder why a manufacturer hadn’t thought of it before. On the downside, he did find the inclusion of a TAB key (where the A key belongs) to be particularly annoying. This bad boy will go on sale this summer in Europe, at which time the S522 (as it’s known ’round here) should hit the shops Stateside. One more pic after the break.

[Via Slash Gear]

Continue reading HTC Snap reviewed: QWERTY keyboard, Winmo 6.1, no great shakes

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Snap reviewed: QWERTY keyboard, Winmo 6.1, no great shakes originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 May 2009 14:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While avoiding the juicier questions surrounding the mystery of Project Pink and its potential ties to Verizon for maximizing Pink’s launch, a Microsoft spokesperson has issued new comments that reiterate the stance Redmond has held from time immemorial: there’s no Zunephone, and furthermore, there won’t be any Microsoft-branded phones.

Of course, the devil could lie in the precise wording, and the exact quote was as follows: “Microsoft is not going into the phone hardware business. Microsoft is not building a Zune-specific phone.” Just because there’s not a “Zune-specific phone” doesn’t mean you can’t steal some Zune tech for the phone business, and we have every reason to believe that Microsoft would want to be building Zune-esque features into Windows Mobile — you can start to see tiny slivers of that in 6.5 with the home screen design, for example — so we’re still pretty confident that Pink (or another project) will ultimately marry portions of the technology and branding. In other words: Zunephone, no; Zune on Windows Mobile, though? Yeah, sure, why not?

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Portable Audio

Microsoft reiterates what we knew: no first-party handset, no Zunephone originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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