We have all been scratching our heads ever since Motorola name-dropped Windows Mobile 6.5 in a recent earnings call, and at last the ever-reserved Steve Ballmer has come forward to set the record straight: Windows Mobile 6.5 is on the way. The the update is due to hit next year, while Windows Mobile 7 development — an OS that was never supposed to be the be-all and end-all — seemingly continues to wallow. As for improvements, there’s little to go on right now, though it does sound like the interface might get some work. In all it seems like increasingly little, increasingly late, but we’re willing to be surprised, Microsoft.

Talk about closing the gate after, long after, the cows come home, but yes, ’tis true, the Treo 700wx has finally gotten a Windows Mobile 6 update. The update delivers support for Microsoft Vista, HTML mail, Office 2007, Inbox search, grins, and lollipops for all. Of course, coming from Windows Mobile 5, this will be a serious day of celebrating for Palm users over at Verizon — and it’s actually surprising that this happened — as the usual response “please upgrade your device” has been passed over. The read link will get you to where you need to be friends, enjoy it, you deserve it if you’re still using this set.

VoIP lovers, rejoice in unison. The latest version of your sure-to-be-favorite application has just added in support for Windows Mobile 6.1. No need to adjust your set — the newly released Skype v2.2.0.45 does indeed play nice with the latest flavor of WinMo, so there’s really no reason why you’re still here reading this rather than starting a download. But we love you for it, so feel free to stick around if you wish.

Tough time to try to hype a new skin for Windows Mobile, we’d say, what with juggernauts HTC and Sony Ericsson both trying to knock balls out of the park with TouchFLO 3D and the XPERIA’s shell, respectively; that’s not stopping ASUS from giving it a go, though. The Taiwanese manufacturer has chosen Computex as the stage to officially take the wraps off its “Glide” UI concept, the first shot of which we saw in the leaked shots of the P560 a few weeks back. Features of the shell include ASUS Today, a home screen replacement; Anytime Launcher, a straight-up app launcher; EziPhoto for photo management and EziMusic for a glorified media player. Nothing too groundbreaking here, but hey, can’t blame ‘em for trying to keep up with the Joneses.

There are certain phones that seem to have the uncanny ability to unite a fabulous cross section of carriers across North America, and these two are clearly headed in that direction. Telus way up there in Canada has launched the Motorola Q9c and announced the eventual availability of the BlackBerry Curve 8330, giving it a power pack of smartphones embraced by a good number of CDMA cousins to the south. (more…)

The rumors that Windows Mobile 6.1 is going to make its long-awaited official debut next week are flying fast and furious, but if you can’t stand the wait, it looks like Boy Genius has managed to score yet another Moto Q9 running the update and he’s posted up some deets and a bunch of screenshots. There’s nothing too earth-shattering in this latest rev, but there are some minor tweaks from what we’ve seen before: AT&T’s Video Share is now supported, as is TV out, the camera UI and home screen have been refined, there’s a new Albums feature in the media player, and photos and videos can now be uploaded to your Windows Live account. Right, nothing major, but that’s fine — the smaller the changes, the sooner the ship date, right?

It seemed pretty impressive when a user managed to get Windows Mobile 6 Standard up and running on a busted old HTC StarTrek — but WM Professional 6.1 on that badboy? You had us at hello. A member of the xda-dvelopers forum named Erofich has managed to hack together an install of the touchscreen-only mobile OS for the decidedly non-touchscreen flip phone. The configuration includes a number of workarounds for using the keypad as opposed to a finger or stylus, and it looks like there aren’t a ton of issues right now. We’re pretty sure that this isn’t the speediest or most robust implementation of the software, but it’s an admirable feat nonetheless. We doff our caps to you, sir.

While HTC didnt arrive with the same kind of horsepower as Sony Ericsson or Samsung, they did manage to squeak one new handset out at the show, the Windows Mobile 6 -powered HTC 3470. It case you missed it, the handset features GPS — while not crystal clear, the press material suggests HTC includes TomTom 6 — quad-band GPRS / EDGE, 256 MB ROM, 128 MB RAM, Bluetooth, and a 1 GB microSD card. Sorry speed freaks, no WiFi or 3G connectivity here, but all the above is piled into a pretty tight container, in fact, it is one of HTC’s smallest sets. Look for this to hit sometime this month on Orange in the UK, France, Spain and the Netherlands for a cool €449 or roughly $650.

HP’s Oak makes an appearance in the relentless binge of new handset madness that is the Vodafone roadmap. The HP Oak delivers many of the baubles we’ve come to expect from Windows Mobile devices, things like 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, quad-band GSM, qwerty keyboard, a touchscreen, and even GPS have found there way in. Other connectivity options include the almost standard WiFi and Bluetooth, with chatter time listed as 3.5 hours and 360 hours standby. We’re feeling a lot of similarities between this fella and the HTC TyTN II, but the HP gets the puffy rainbow sticker — with prancing Pegasus, of course — for opting to add that ultra-handy dialpad on the front. Oak’s due date is set for September 2008 at roughly $500.

After O2 dropped its Southeast Asian outpost at the side of the road, we weren’t terribly sure whether it’d be able to flourish — let alone survive — without the mothership’s lifeline. Turns out they’re at least giving it the old college try, though, with new models appropriately dubbed “Zinc II” and “Atom V” (notice that the “Xda” branding of old has left the building). We know this courtesy of Expansys’ Hong Kong outpost, which has done us all a favor by posting preorder pages for both devices; we only have renderings at this point, but they look pretty legit and realistic. Both devices feature quadband GSM and triband HSDPA (nice!), 256MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM, integrated FM radio, WiFi, and GPS. The Atom V is the slightly higher end of the two — despite a slightly lower price — thanks to a 3 megapixel cam around back (versus 2 for the Zinc II) and an Intel core clocked 20MHz higher than the Zinc II’s Samsung silicon, though the Zinc II should win some hearts and minds with its semi-automatic sliding QWERTY pad. If Expansys is to be believed, the Atom V will run HK$4,775 (about $612) while the Zinc II will set you back HK$5,305 (about $680) when they’re available

Doesnt seem quite right to outfit a buttoned-up, all-business phone like the ASUS M530w in such playful colors, but maybe that’s exactly why we like it so much. Eschewing the original blacks and grays for oranges and whites, the new version appears to retain everything about the phone that made it so lovable to begin with: HSDPA connectivity, 2 megapixel cam, microSD expansion, full QWERTY, and Windows Mobile 6 (wait, did we just call WinMo 6 “lovable”?). We imagine it’ll be every bit as hard to find in the US as it was the first time around, but at least the visuals are a little more entertaining to look at from afar, are they not?

So what’s more creative, a disposable cellphone or a dual-mode GSM / CDMA WinMo smartphone? Tough call, but it’s a very real question seeing how Hop-on apparently makes both. This here is the HOP2001, a phone with a spec sheet that sounds just a little too good to be true: triband HSDPA 3.6, CDMA (though EV-DO doesn’t appear to be supported), a 3 megapixel autofocus cam, 256MB of ROM and 128MB of RAM, integrated GPS, microSD expansion, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi, and Windows Mobile 6 (never mind the fact that the shoddy rendering shows Windows Mobile 5, we suppose). Hop-on proudly proclaims the HOP2001 to be “AT&T / Verizon ready,” though we’ll hold off on proclaiming this one of the most feature-packed WinMo handsets on the market until we see some actual units in use.