That’s it. Game over. After spending some quality one-on-one time with the HTC HD2 (Leo) today, we’re convinced that the HTC HD2 is the “baddest Windows Phone” of the year. In fact, the HD2 might be strong enough to carry that title through much of next year. The powerful-yet-slim HD2 packs a 1Ghz Snapdragon chipset into a shell no thicker than your standard yellow No. 2 pencil, basically killing any hint of the lag we’re used to seeing with Windows Mobile.

What makes this new Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone so great? Well, aside from its power-packed chipset and sexy design aesthetic, the HD2 is the only Windows Phone (so far) to sport a capacitance-based touchscreen (like on the iPhone and Android smartphones) that throws out pixels at WVGA resolutions across a whopping 4.3-inches of real estate. Then, add in the fact that the HD2 features a 5-megapixel camera (with dual-LED flash), integrated GPS, WiFi, microSD slot, FM radio, digital compass and a 3.5mm headphone jack, and it’s easy to see how the HD2 dominates the competition.

HTC also baked in some of their Sense design philosophy into the HD2’s TouchFLO 3D UI, focusing on personalization/customization, intuitive finger-based interface and media consumption. That all translates into a user experience that we’d frankly never expected from a Windows Phone.

We’re expecting to see the HTC HD2 make its US debut in Q1 of 2010. As for the US price, we’re not sure. But, we’re still willing to offer a kidney in trade.

[Update]
Photos color corrected and updated. Apologies for making your eyes freak out.

Gameloft announced its support for Windows Marketplace for Mobile by offering a catalog of 11 games on the new online store. Here are the games the company has prepared for existing and future WinMo users:

• Racing: Asphalt 4: Elite Racing; Ferrari GT: Evolution;
• Sports: Real Football 2010; NFL 2010 (US and Canada only);
• Action and adventure: Spider-Man: Toxic City; Prince of Persia; Gangstar 2: Kings of L.A; The Oregon Trail (US and Canada only);
• Casual games: UNO; Texas Hold’Em Poker.

The games will be available for all multimedia-capable Windows phones, meaning VGA screens (and hopefully WVGA) are supported…

It’s been a long time coming, and they’ve had to trudge through a veritable gauntlet of bad press related to Global Verge and Buzzirk Mobile, but Zer01 Mobile is finally ready to show that they’re not just full of hot air. Zer01 CEO Ben Piilani was on hand at the Fall CTIA WITE 2009 conference to prove to the media that Zer01 service is indeed real and does work.

For those of you not aware, Zer01 hit the scene earlier this year with a revolutionary new wireless calling service that used some sort of patented VoIP technology to provide unlimited voice and data service for just $70 per month, sans contract. It’s an intriguing offer, to be sure.

Piilani explains the Zer01 service as a “VoIP carrier” of sorts that treats all network traffic as data. Zer01 says that their service piggybacks on partner GSM networks in the US, but stops short of mentioning just who those partner carriers are. Getting started with Zer01 service is as easy as popping in a Zer01 SIM card into a Windows Mobile smartphone. The handset will automatically download a Zer01 VoIP dialer that is required to place voice calls. Once that’s all setup, you can talk and surf without limits.

The Zer01 service was demonstrated on a T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) HTC Touch Pro2, and the service works on the 1700Mhz 3G frequency. Even our feeble minds can make the logical connection that T-Mobile may very well be Zer01’s partner GSM carrier. But, we could be wrong.

As for retail availability, Zer01 says they will have their retail channel setup through established retailers in about a month. For their sake, we hope this launch window holds.

We’re expecting our own Zer01 SIM in about a week, so keep an eye out for a more in-depth look at Zer01 Mobile’s service.

[Update]
Now with video!

Slacker, a great music app for BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) and iPhone, will be launching on Android and Windows Mobile tomorrow, allowing you to browse, favourite, and discover music on your smartphone. The launch will come with some new Twitter integration which will let you tweet whenever you favourite a new track, and share a link to the station you’re listening to so your followers can take a listen for themselves. While Slacker might lack the immediate convenience of over the air downloads, its sideloading setup allows for much higher-quality tracks. Just like the previous versions, the app will be free to download, but of course you’ll always have the option to buy the tracks to do what you will with. Licensing issues are still a thorn in Slacker’s side; if you live anywhere other than the U.S., you won’t be able to use the service. Otherwise, take a look at Slacker, and keep an eye on their mobile app page for some fresh goodies tomorrow.

UPDATE:  Slight miscommunication. It’s only the twitter feature launching today – Android and Windows Mobile will be arriving at a later, undisclosed date.

Shazam has announced today that their very cool ‘music discovery’ app/service is now available in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. If you’ve never used Shazam before, it’s a handy app to have hangin’ about. Basically it ‘listens’ to music (you have to hold your device up to the music), and returns to you the song name, details, and links to buy the song. Most of the time, as long as the audio quality is half decent, Shazam will return extremely accurate results… at least that has been my experience.

Shazam is available for free right now in the Marketplace, but what is interesting here is the addition of a paid version. The free app is unfortunately very limited, allowing users to only discover 5 songs per month. Bummer. The full-featured paid version allows for unlimited song discovery, access to tag charts, recommendations, biographies, reviews and a lot more.

With the addition of their app to the Windows Marketplace, Shazam is now available in the iPhone App Store, BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) App World, the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Market, and Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s Ovi store.

Well done Shazam. Press release after the jump. For more info hit up Shazam.com.

Read the full article »

Sprint (NYSE: S) announced that it will offer a new QWERTY-keyboard equipped Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone starting from October 11th. It’s called Samsung Intrepid and it looks like a successor to the Ace model.

Specs wise, aside from boasting the latest version of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s mobile OS, the Intrepid comes with EV-DO Rev. A connectivity, 2.5-inch QVGA screen, 3.2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, and a microSD memory card slot. The device can sing along Sprint Navigation and also comes with Adobe Flash Lite support, IM client, as well as social networking software that works with Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.

As for the pricing, Sprint will ask $149.99 for Intrepid after a $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year contract.

Windows Mobile 6.5 is officially official today. We know it’s hard to stop drooling over all the cool new Windows Phones that have been launched or announced over the past couple days, but Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) wants you to know that their free My Phone over-the-air backup and storage service is now ready to give Windows Mobile fans a little peace of mind, not to mention an easy way to offload and manage all your text messages and cameraphone photos. If you already have an AT&T (NYSE: T) PURE, you probably know what we’re talking about. If not, keep reading for the low-down on My Phone.

The My Phone service is Microsoft’s new backup service offered to Windows Phones powered by the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. Available as a free download from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile (or Marketplace, for short), My Phone helps you backup info (like contacts and calendar), share photos, migrate to new phone, access and manage content online (text messages, photos, etc.) and, to a lesser extent, store media over-the-air to the “cloud.” If you should ever switch to a new Windows Phone or, heaven forbid, lose your shiny new handset, all you have to do is restore all your data through My Phone’s secure servers.

My Phone also allows Windows Phones to make ringtones and easily offload photos from your handset to the web. You can actually upload almost whatever you want to your My Phone account and manage them from the web. From there, you can share your photos to your Windows Live account or any other social network (Flickr, Photobucket, etc.) you want to blast your cameraphone pics to.

There’s also a premium side to My Phone that helps it compete with some of the iPhone’s optional MobileMe service. For $4.99, Microsoft will ring your phone (even if it’s on vibrate), locate phone on a a map, lock your phone or wipe your phone remotely. Every purchase is good for 7 days.

But, you only get 200MB of free space. That means you won’t want to use My Phone as a storage service outright. Think of My Phone as a backup service and an easy way to get photos from your phone to the web. Microsoft says that My Phone less than 5% of users are hitting the 200MB limit, so it’s not really an issue for most people. Still, they’re considering offering a premium service with more storage capacity.

My Phone doesn’t offer the push email, contacts and calendar sync that MobileMe provides, but it comes close. Considering the service is mostly free, My Phone makes Windows Mobile 6.5 all the more attractive. We’ll make sure to give it a spin and post up our impressions. Stay tuned!

Big-screen lovers, capacitive touchscreen fans and smartphone users “in the know” will be happy to hear that the HTC HD2 (aka Leo) is almost here. HTC has today announced that their HTC HD2 will be launching later this month in select European markets. Boasting a class-leading 4.3-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen (a first for Windows Mobile smartphones!), blazing fast 1Ghz Snapdragon chipset (a first for HTC) and a 5-megapixel autofocusing camera, the HD2 packs some serious processing and multimedia power under its slim 11mm thick shell. And, as HTC’s first Windows Phone to sport the smartphone maker’s custom Sense UI, the HTC HD2 isn’t just a pretty face, it’s also easy to get along with.

The HTC Sense UI rose to fame as the Android-powered Hero’s slick homescreen interface. And, this is the first time we’re seeing aspects of the multi-pane Sense UI making its way to Windows Mobile, and it looks promising. The new Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional interface has been re-worked to play nice with finger inputs, but it took HTC’s Sense UI to polish it to a touch-optimized shine.

The HD2’s Windows Mobile-based Sense UI also brings along a couple additional features from its Android roots. For one, HTC’s Peep Twitter app makes the jump from Android to Windows Mobile. Another new feature is integrated support for photo uploads to Facebook and Twitter. Facebook also syncs up with the address book.

As for hardware, the HD2 is the first HTC smartphone to take advantage of the powerful Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) 1Ghz Snapdragon chipset. Paired with generous RAM stores, the HD2 should make quick work of anything you can throw at it. Hopefully, that also spells the death of the dreaded UI lag that WinMo users have been gritting through all these years. The 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen is as big as they come in the mobile space, and the 5-megapixel camera takes impressive photos. The feature-set rounds out with a heaping portion of smartphone trimmings – 3G, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, microSD slot, FM radio and a digital compass.

An optional car mount kit turns your HTC HD2 into a fully functional turn-by-turn GPS navigation system. We can see a dash of Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s design aesthetic in the HD2’s car mount, but that’s just fine by us.

Suffice it to say that the HTC HD2 is going to turn heads on the street. Unfortunately, those streets will only be in Europe for the time being. Launch is expected later this month in the EU, with O2 in the UK possibly launching on October 12 and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Spain aiming for a November launch window. Additional markets should go live shortly after. Price? €649, but it’s not like it even matters. We’ll trade a kidney for an HD2. What about it, HTC?

AT&T (NYSE: T) launched the HTC PURE late Sunday evening as the first Windows Phone (get used to seeing that more) to sport the new Windows Mobile 6.5 OS, and it’s taken us this long to get a proper hands-on video together. Our bad. To make it up to all of you, here’s a quick(ish) look at the AT&T-branded HTC Touch Diamond2, interestingly branded the AT&T PURE. As a bonus, you also get to check out some of the cool new features in Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional.

A few things about the AT&T PURE. It sports a glossy black finish and metallic accents that highlights the 5-megapixel camera. The front-facing camera is gone. It’s compatible with AT&T’s 3G network. And, it’s got curves. We like the curves.

Under the hood, we find the same GPS, WiFi, microSD slot, gobs of RAM and 3.2-inch WVGA touchscreen that made the Touch Diamond2 a formidable Windows Phone. As for the PURE’s resistive touchscreen, it almost feels more responsive than the Touch Diamond2. Maybe it’s just in our heads. Maybe Windows Mobile 6.5 makes it feel more responsive. Whatever it is, the PURE is pure finger-flicking fun.

Stay tuned for more AT&T PURE and Windows Mobile 6.5 coverage. In the meantime, enjoy the hands-on video.

AT&T HTC PURE from IntoMobile on Vimeo.

Adobe has been working to bring full Flash support to smartphones since last year, and it looks like things are finally coming to a head. Adobe has announced that its Adobe Flash 10.1 platform will soon be ready to stream video and interactive online content to a smartphone near you! Unless, that is, the smartphone sitting next to you happens to be an iPhone. In that case, move along, Adobe has yet to announce any Flash support on the iPhone. If you’re using a Windows Mobile, BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM), Symbian, webOS or Android smartphone, then you’ll be happy to hear that Adobe will soon release their Adobe Flash 10.1 browser-based runtime. Windows Mobile and webOS users have it best – they’ll probably get a public beta of Flash 10.1 before year’s end!

The Flash 10.1 runtime is the first real fruit borne of Adobe’s Open Screen Project, an initiative to optimized Flash technology for the small screen. To make Flash 10.1 smartphone-friendly, Adobe boffins have been hard at working streamlining the software. Adobe also taps into a smartphone’s GPU (graphics processing unit) to help lighten the processing load on a the CPU, which allows it to run faster and draw less power. How much does all that optimization help? Adobe says software rendering on Flash 10.1 is 87% faster, with mobile phone memory consumption reduced by 55%. That’s impressive.

To prove that Flash 10.1 is intended for smartphones, Adobe baked in support for multi-touch inputs, gesture controls, accelerometer inputs. There’s also support for the HTTP streaming protocol that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has been championing as their video-streaming technology of choice.

And, speaking of Apple, the iPhone is still conspicuously missing from the Flash party. Apple says that Flash is still too resource intensive for their iPhone. Apple has clearly gone to great lengths to keep the iPhone OS and iPhone apps as lag free as possible, and Flash technology might screw that all up. But, there may be more to the story than meets the eye – Apple may be trying to block Flash-based apps from bypassing the AppStore. Flash apps don’t need to be installed on the iPhone, so Apple doesn’t control (gasp!) that aspect of the iPhone experience. We’re sure Steve Jobs has a problem with that.

Adobe will follow the late-2009 launch of the Flash 10.1 public beta with another public beta release for Android and Symbian platforms in early 2010. We should start to see handsets packing Flash 10.1 in the first half of 2010.

[Via: Adobe]