German discount supermarket chain Lidl, which is somewhat under fire for spying on workers, has an interesting offer: since today it's selling the HTC Qtek 8500 for 111 Euro only.
While the Qtek 8500, which was released nearly two years ago, is a stylish and HTC's only clamshell smartphone so far, it has some major drawbacks: It's 2.5G only featuring quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE, only sporting a 1.3 megapixel camera and having 64 MB RAM and ROM only. However, the most important drawback, running Windows Mobile 5.0 Standard only, can be - well - solved yourself anyway.

Veveo Inc., today launched vtap, a new web video experience for mobile users all over the UK and Europe. Video lovers will be able to search through over 150 million web videos via vtap, a unique mobile web video search service that allows consumers to quickly and easily search, view and save relevant web videos from any source on the Internet on any imaginable topic, tailored to their individual preferences on their preferred device(s).
In addition, by using vtap's unique personalized collecting and sharing feature, vtap Feed, you can create a personal profile that allows you to detail your preferences and receive relevant videos from vtap whenever something new appears on the Internet.

VITO Technology today announced EyePhoto for Windows Mobile which allows you viewing photos on your Pocket PC. Slide your photos with finger and enjoy watching them. User-friendly interface oriented on gestures is one of the main features.
EyePhoto shows only folders that include jpeg pictures and organizes all your photos into photo albums. Having started the program you face all folders containing jpeg pictures on the main memory and on a storage card. Upon opening a folder you are presented with photo tiles displayed in one finger-scrollable window. Everything is done for your convenience.

Microsoft Corp expects that Windows Mobile shipments to China will more than double in the next year amid an expected boom in demand for Web access once the country launches (its propriety) 3G wireless services.
Benjamin Tan, business group Director for China at Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business, told Reuters that about 2 million Windows Mobile devices were shipped to China in the last year, which is - according to Tan - about 10 percent of Microsoft's global total.

If you live in Israel, I'm sure you know HANDY (which is - funny enough - the German word for "Mobile Phone") and I'm sure you are a daily reader of PocketPCFreak.com, which is maintained by my fellow MVP and friend Helio Diamant. If you don't live in Israel, I'm sure you will have the same problem's to read Helio's website since it's in Hebrew and you might have never heard of HANDY but if you think about the Israeli version of Expansys/MobilePlanet but with a store, you know what HANDY's business is. They are *the* mobile devices and gadgets retailer in Israel as well as HANDY is manufacturing and producing PDA, smartphone & Apple accessories under the HANDY Pro brand for some time now (which is even available internationally). Some years ago, HANDY and PocketPCFreak.com joined forces by organizing a yearly tech event in Tel Aviv called "HANDY Tech".

Dashwire, Inc. today announced it is opening the doors to its innovative service, which the company unveiled late last year the first time, providing supported Windows Mobile smartphone users around the world with powerful new ways to simplify day-to-day phone usage and to seamlessly share mobile experiences with friends and the social sites they use to stay connected with them.
Dashwire, which was available in a semi-closed Beta only so far, is focused on becoming the central hub that seamlessly bridges the mobile phone and web worlds, simplifying experiences and making it easy to access and share the world captured on your phone.

Not yet ready to be rolled-out, Sling Media today confirmed that it's indeed working on an updated SlingPlayer Mobile for Windows Mobile.
However, Sling Media today announced that - in addition to the currently supported Nokia S60 handsets - it's going to release the long awaited SlingPlayer Mobile for Symbian UIQ smartphones which will be launching this summer. Furthermore, Sling Media confirmed that the Nokia N95 8 GB gets some update love as well to better support the big and beautiful screen which Sling Media intend to fully leverage with an updated SlingPlayer Mobile for Symbian S60.

Nokia Siemens Networks, the indisputable #1 in EDGE with 125 public EDGE references,  today launched their downlink Dual Carrier EDGE software solution, ushering the first steps of EDGE Evolution into Nokia Siemens Networks' GSM/EDGE radio portfolio. This solution offers double data speeds of up to 592 Kbps to existing EDGE-capable GSM networks, thus enabling a mobile broadband experience, such as maintaining relationships in virtual societies, posting video clips to blogs in real time or streaming the latest news in mobile TV.

TapRoot Systems Inc. yesterday announced its WalkingHotSpot solution for wireless carriers.
Not yet released for consumers, TapRoot's patent-pending software transforms a WiFi enabled smartphone (like Windows Mobile or UIQ smartphones) into a hotspot providing access to 3G data networks. The solution is the first in a series of products allowing wireless subscribers to enhance their smartphones for internet connectivity. The WalkingHotSpot solution provides a platform to deliver new solutions to wireless subscribers around WiFi. The scalable solution allows users to securely retrieve E-Mails and browse the internet with no additional software or configuration required on the WiFi client devices.

Motorola, Inc. today announced that the Company's Board of Directors has commenced a process to create two independent, publicly-traded companies.
Today's decision follows the Company's January 31, 2008 announced evaluation of the structural and strategic realignment of its businesses and represents affirmative steps to position its Mobile Devices and Broadband & Mobility Solutions businesses for success, while creating value for all Motorola shareholders.

Seven in every eight commercial 3G/WCDMA operators have launched HSPA, according to the 3G/WCDMA-HSDPA Fact Sheet published earlier this month by GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association). 211 WCDMA operators have launched commercial services in 91 countries, of which 185 operators have also launched HSDPA - High Speed Downlink Packet Access. HSDPA mobile broadband services are now commercially available in 80 countries. There are 103 commercial HSDPA operators in Europe, 36 in APAC, 24 in the Middle East and Africa region, and 22 in the Americas.

I've mentioned Vodafone Germany's WebSessions before, when I used it as my WWAN option during last month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. With WebSessions, Vodafone Germany introduced a quite handy service which lets you use the Internet on a pay as you go option, with prepaid and postpaid contracts. While it offers unlimited data transfer within Germany (for either 30 minutes, 1 hour or 24 hours), Vodafone WebSessions International, which works in around 35 Vodafone partner networks around the world, is limited to 50 MB per WebSessions (while only the 24 hours WebSessions for 14.95 Euro is available in international roaming).

As expected, GIGA-BYTE Communications is expanding its business to Europe and has officially announced the launch of its GSmart t600 Windows Mobile Professional smartphone in France from mid-March 2008, along with its announcement of the partnership with the French MVNO - Neuf Cegetel.
When GIGA-BYTE Communications unveiled the GSmart t600, the World's first DVB-T roaming Digital TV PDA phone on last year's Mobile World Congress, it has marked its strong position in this niche market, and with its success in the markets that it has entered, GSmart is now ready to catch the attention of the French market.

Sharpcast today introduced SugarSync, the first-ever solution that seamlessly synchronizes both Mac OS and Windows computers, mobile phones and the Web.
Built on the company's patent-pending Universal Synchronization Platform, SugarSync's powerful software-service combination gives people the easiest way to keep digital media and files automatically in sync across multiple computers, backed up online and remotely accessible from their mobile phones or through any web browser.

Sources close to HTC unveiled today, that HTC's upcoming so called "Google phone", which uses Google's Android platform, will be called "Dream". The just over 5 inches long and 3 inches wide smartphone will have a large touchscreen and full QWERTY keypad underneath the screen that either slides or swivels out.
HTC is expected to become the first handset maker in the world to put out a smartphone developed around Android , but it faces stiff competition from Samsung which has stepped up its effort to put out a Google phone, a separate source said.

As recently mentioned, for some reasons I have to use a PC card modem to wirelessly go online with my Notebook and since my old PC card was UMTS only, I've decided to upgrade to a new HSDPA-enabled PC card. Since I'm a long time and happy user of Option cards, I decided to go with another Option card and I've chosen the GlobeTrotter GT MAX HSUPA card which features quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE as well as triband UMTS and HSDPA up to 7.2 Mbps but also HSUPA up to 2 Mbps. So beside supporting virtually all GSM and UMTS frequencies worldwide, which makes it truly a digital globetrotter, the GT MAX HSUPA also supports the latest and fastest HSDPA and HSUPA evolutions.

HTC Corporation and Reliance Communications, India's largest integrated telecom service provider, today announced a strategic alliance to promote next generation CDMA devices in India. The announcement marks HTC's foray into the fast growing CDMA market in India, and reiterates the strategic focus of Reliance Communications to offer a wider range of world-class PDA devices on the CDMA platform for its high-end data usage customers.
In line with this, HTC and Reliance Communications also announced two new Windows Mobile phones - the HTC P3000 Windows Mobile Professional smartphone and the HTC S720 Windows Mobile Standard smartphone.

A few weeks ago, Google launched a mobile plug-in for Symbian devices that put a Google search shortcut onto the phone's home screen. This shortcut reduces the time it takes for you to get answers from Google by eliminating the initial search steps like finding and starting the web browser and navigating to Google.com before entering your query. The same plug-in has been available for BlackBerry devices since last December and today Google made it available for Windows Mobile devices too. Basically it's quite similar to Microsoft's original Windows Live search plug-in as available for Windows Mobile.

According to Taiwanese DigiTimes, Dell is expected to return into the Windows Mobile market again, after the company axed its Axim-line of Windows Mobile Classic Pocket PCs last year.
Taiwanese market sources indicates that Dell may team up with Foxconn Electronics to develop Windows Mobile-based handheld devices, including GPS PDAs and smartphones
Dell has been reorganizing its team for handheld devices since it hired Ron Garriques, a former executive vice president at Motorola in charge of its cell phone division, in early 2007.

CNetX's Face Contacts is an interesting looking contact management utility for Windows Mobile Classic and Professional devices which combines the effectiveness of browsing contacts using an intuitive visual interface with the kind of features you would expect from a text-based Contacts application. Face Contact integrates directly into the Today screen of a Windows Mobile device, so contacts are always at hand.
When inactive, the Face Contact plug-in automatically shrinks its height (by hiding the caption), so it occupies as little screen estate as a couple of Today items.

Microsoft and Vodafone are stepping up their development partnership to further improve Windows Mobile. In future, Microsoft will be working in close collaboration with the Vodafone Test & Innovation Centre in Düsseldorf from the development phase onwards.
The centre is 7,000 square meters in size and it has all the components of an ultra-modern wireless network, from base station through billing systems to multimedia platforms. The Düsseldorf test environment delivers the same capacity that a wireless network in Switzerland would require. The high-tech laboratory on the banks of the Rhine, where the Vodafone Group implements the majority of its international development projects, is the place where new hardware and software solutions for use in wireless networks are tested under realistic conditions - right up to series production readiness if necessary.

Engadget Mobile got the information that Sling Media is currently working on new SlingPlayer Mobile versions for Windows Mobile Standard and Professional devices as well as working on an optimized Nokia N95 8GB client and going to expand their current Symbian S60 clients to include UIQ support as well. While the updated featureset wasn't announced today, Sling Media unveiled that the update will includes a better support for newer handsets.
Most likely, Sling Media will ensure that its SlingPlayer Mobile is Windows Mobile 6.1 compatible right after device availability as well as supporting new screen resolutions like Samsung's unique i780 320 x 320 pixel display.

Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced that Microsoft has licensed Adobe Flash Lite software, Adobe's award-winning Flash Player runtime specifically designed for mobile devices, to enable web browsing of Flash Player compatible content within the Internet Explorer Mobile browser in future versions of Microsoft Windows Mobile phones. Microsoft has also licensed Adobe Reader LE software for viewing Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) documents including E-Mail attachments and web content. Both Adobe products will be made available to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) worldwide, who license Windows Mobile software.

After Microsoft first demoed Silverlight for Windows Mobile back in May last year and Nokia recently unveiled plans to integrate it into its phones as well, Microsoft now unveiled that Windows Mobile should gets some Silverlight love later this spring as well.
According to Microsoft's Silverlight Mobile fact page, a first Developer CTP of Silverlight for Mobile will be available in 2nd Quarter of 2008 targeting Windows Mobile 6. Like on the Desktop, Silverlight for Mobile will take the form of a browser plug-in but featuring Silverlight 1.0 only (Microsoft just released Silverlight 2.0 for desktop computers).

Announced by HTC as the S730 back in October last year, O2 UK today unveiled the launch of the O2 Xda Atmos, its version of HTC's Windows Mobile 6 Standard Smartphone which adds UMTS/HSDPA and a 400 MHz processor for those consumers and business professionals who want high speed connectivity. The O2 Xda Atmos is a compact smartphone phone which features an auto-sliding QWERTY keyboard making it an ideal choice for the mobile professional who needs easy access to E-Mail, messaging and the internet while out of the office. Equipped with Windows Mobile 6 Standard, the Xda Atmos supports quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE and singleband UMTS/HSDPA at 2100 MHz as well as Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and WiFi b/g and features 256 MB of ROM and 64 MB of RAM:

In this videoview I will have a more detailed look to the features of Palm's Treo 500 Windows Mobile Standard smartphone.
Like Vodafone's Palm Treo 500v, the Palm Treo 500 is featuring a thumb-keyboard on the front as well as a 2 megapixel camera and loudspeaker on the back. Furthermore it features the Windows Mobile typical QVGA screen and on the left side two volume keys as well as a shortcut which launches the Internet Explorer Mobile. Under the battery, you find the place for the SIM card as well as for the memory card which means memory cards cannot removed/exchanged while the devices is turned on.

Late January, Palm released its vanilla Palm Treo 500 Windows Mobile 6 Standard smartphone which was before exclusively available from Vodafone only. Featuring Windows Mobile 6 Standard, triband GSM/GPRS (but not EDGE) at 900/1800/1900 MHz and singleband UMTS at 2100 MHz (but not HSDPA), Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (but not WiFi) and a 2 megapixel camera, the Treo 500 is an entry-level thumb-keyboard smartphone for messaging addicts. At a size of 16.5 x 61.5 x 110 mm, the Treo 500 weighs 120 grams. Depending on the country, Palm's vanilla Treo 500 is either available in white or gray.

You might have noticed that 2008 is a leap year and while you (and even Microsoft's Outlook Mobile) noticed it, it seems Samsung's BlackJack, BlackJack II and ACE Windows Mobile smartphones have overseen it. As a matter of fact, Samsung's Calendar Home screen plugin, for the above mentioned devices, shows the wrong date as of March 1, 2008; the day after February 29 and since Samsung's Calendar ignores the 29th, date displays one day prior to the correct date until the end of this year. At the end it means that, if you are using/used the the Calendar plugin, you will get the wrong date displayed for the rest of the year (on the left the wrong calendar, on the right the correct):

While I'm still a big fan of using Windows Mobile smartphones as a Notebook UMTS-modem, for some good reasons I've recently decided to use my Option UMTS PCMCIA card again as my access modem for UMTS and for sure, such a PC Card needs drivers and a utility to make it working. First I've downloaded and installed the latest software from my UMTS operator which E-Plus calls "E-Plus Online Connect". However, in the past I wasn't a big fan of E-Plus' PC Card software because it used way too much system resources and therefore I did a quick Google search for the original Option software. Unfortunately, as an ODM customer you cannot directly download it from Option because it requires the IMEI number of the PC Card but anyway - Google has the link to, as Option calls it "GlobeTrotter Connect" software anyway.

I know, for many of you this isn't new anymore since most of the::unwired readers are also great contributors to HowardForums but for the rest it might be new anyway. HowardForums, a great Canadian mobile phone resource, operated Howard Chui is facing some trouble from mobile TV provider MobiTV. Howard recently informed me that some forum members discovered that MobiTV stores links to their video feeds in an ASCII text file that anyone with Internet access, but without any hacking-skills, can view. With the right mobile device or PC software, it even gives users free access to MobiTV's video offers. Wouldn't be a problem if MobiTV wouldn't be a commercial service which requires a subscription (US$ 9.95 per month).

Around one month ago, Samsung announced its new low-budget but UMTS/HSDPA-enabled Windows Mobile 6 Standard smartphone, the Samsung SGH-i200 (see our photo view here). A pretty thin, standard phone-pad 2.5G and 3.5G smartphone which also features Bluetooth but neither WiFi nor GPS.
However, even if it's not the feature-richest Windows Mobile Standard smartphone on the market, the size, the 2 megapixel main camera and the front facing UMTS video cam might makes it an interesting consumer and corporate mobile phone for users, which wants high-speed Internet access through HSDPA, for instance as a modem for Notebooks, rather than a BlackBerry replacement.

Sync and OTA sync was one of the strengths of the combination between Windows Mobile and Exchange but for a long time, Windows Mobile isn't alone anymore, latest since Nokia and Sony Ericsson licensed Exchange ActiveSync some years ago too. And now Apple is the next. Apple yesterday previewed its iPhone 2.0 software, scheduled for release this June, and announced the immediate availability of a beta release of the software to selected developers and enterprise customers. The iPhone 2.0 beta release includes both the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as new enterprise features such as support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to provide secure, over-the-air push E-Mail, contacts and calendars as well as remote wipe, and the addition of Cisco IPsec VPN for encrypted access to private corporate networks.

During this weeks CeBIT in Hannover, ASUS announced the latest range of Windows Mobile Professional smartphones, the ASUS-Lamborghini ZX1 and ASUS P320 (which we have seen before already) which are made to captivate the user's attention not merely by their mesmerizing good looks but also their total experience when in use. Designer cuts, touch screen capability, high speed downloads and unique and user-friendly interfaces built upon Windows Mobile software are all present in this new lineup.

VITO Technology just released iWindowsMobile Communication Suit which claims to be an upgrade your Windows Mobile touchscreen device.iWindowsMobile Communication Suite contains 4 best-selling VITO Technology applications, including the task manager GoodWin, contact manager FunContact, SMS client SMS-Chat and onscreen keyboard ZoomBoard.
This way you get to manage your device just with fingers and say farewell to the stylus. Moreover, after stylish and thought-out interface of iWindowsMobile Communication Suite, the standard Windows Mobile interface will be too boring for you.

Earlier this week, Spb Software House has upgraded their Spb Mobile Shell to version 2.0, which is easier to handle now and has a fresher and enhanced design. Spb Mobile Shell 1.5 has been reviewed thoroughly before and therefore, I mainly tested the new features of version 2.0 so that the user can get an idea if the update is worthwhile, especially because an upgrade from 1.x to 2.0 isn't free or charge since it's a version upgrade, not an update.
Spb Mobile Shell is a program designed to simplify your daily job with your Windows Mobile devices, especially smartphones and works with Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6 Professional and Classic PDAs and smartphones.

Absolutely nothing is known yet about another smartphone, HTC seems to work on but good old Bluetooth Special Interest Group unveiled that a new HTC smartphone is coming, which is code-named "HTC CONV100".
According to the available document, the geographical availability is Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America which speaks for a - at least - quadband 2.5G device.
Unfortunately, the Bluetooth SIG has shut-down its second approval site, therefore we even don't know which Bluetooth version is supported (but most likely Bluetooth 2.0+EDR):

Together with today's Yahoo! Go 3.0 announcement, Yahoo! unveiled Yahoo! onePlace - a revolutionary mobile content management solution. Yahoo! onePlace is designed to be an essential tool to enable consumers to better manage the wide selection of content available across the Internet.
Yahoo! onePlace will bring together a consumer's interests, passions and important information into a single location - creating a rich and highly personalized experience. Everything is instantly organized, dynamically kept current, and served to them the way they want.

Yahoo! today announced at CeBIT 2008 the upcoming availability of Yahoo! Go 3.0 for a number of European countries, as well as several new European-based widgets that will be accessible across Yahoo!'s mobile browser and client-based offerings.
Yahoo! Go 3.0 is expected to be available in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK at the end of Q2 2008. In the upcoming months, Yahoo! Go 3.0 is expected to be available on hundreds of devices worldwide, accessible by million of users.

While Microsoft's Flash competitor Silverlight is still not available for Windows Mobile (except Microsoft internal Betas), Nokia today announced plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on Symbian OS smartphones as well as for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Adding support for Silverlight will extend opportunities for developers to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way.
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications.

Spb Software House today announced the availability of the previously announced upgrade of its outstanding Spb Mobile Shell software to version 2.0. Spb Mobile Shell is an application that completely overhauls the innate Windows Mobile user interface, making it more direct, logical, and slick. The software first hit the market in 2007 and quickly gained recognition among end-users and mobile device manufacturers. Spb Mobile Shell turns the Windows Mobile device into a better phone: gives access to crucial information at a glance, enables one-hand navigation, minimizes the number of taps to launching programs, changing settings, making calls.

If today's 7.2 Mbps HSDPA isn't enough for you, Vodafone is the right address for anyone who wants to find out more about the simple and high-speed wireless transmission of large data volumes. Vodafone Germany will be demonstrating the next generation of HSDPA, which delivers speeds of up to 28.8 Mbps, at CeBIT 2008. A test system at CeBIT is capable of speeds of up to 28.8 Mpbs (downlink) and 2 Mbps (uplink). In future, this technology will offer genuine benefits to customers who rely on fast internet or intranet connections to the office.

Acer Inc. one of the world's third-largest branded PC vendors today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire E-TEN Information Systems Co., Ltd., a world's renowned designer and manufacturer of smart handheld devices and Windows Mobile smartphones, known under the Glofiish brand.
Under the terms of the agreement, Acer Inc. will offer a share exchange with ratio of 1: 1.07 for all the outstanding shares of E-TEN, which represents total equity value consideration of approximately NT$ 9 billion. The new issued shares will represent approximately 6% of total Acer outstanding shares.

Not too much is known yet but T-Mobile has unveiled today that the German mobile operator will show its latest Windows Mobile Professional smartphone during this week's CeBIT. T-Mobile Germany calls it the "MDA compact IV" and according to Deutsche Telekom's press release, it will features a an exclusive T-Mobile design, HSDPA, a 3 megapixel autofocus camera, 4 GB internal memory and a VGA (640x480) touchscreen.
While T-Mobile hasn't unveiled a photo of the device yet, it can be expected that this is another Windows Mobile smartphone and Deutsche Telekom released this rendering (which clearly shows a Windows Mobile Standard smartphone rather than a Professional smartphone which the compact IV has to be if it features a touchscreen):

A chart with announcement and release dates on Sony Ericsson's own web server indicates that the recently announced Sony Ericsson XPERIA  X1, Sony Ericsson's first Windows Mobile smartphone, is already delayed until February 10th 2009. This is exactly one year after it was first presented in Barcelona and would speak for a release on next year's Mobile World Congress.
On the other hand I have serious doubts that that this is the real release date but a typo or a placeholder only, because Sony Ericsson has unofficially spoken of a release in the late second half 2008 which seems to be more reasonable: