While technically a phone, the Motorola ES400 is more accurately categorized as an Enterprise Digital Assistant (EDA).  Armed with Windows Mobile 6.5.3 Professional and Windows Embedded Handheld, it offers an all-in-one solution for the voice and data needs of business users in the field.

Designed for managers and workers in industries such as sales, healthcare and transportation, the device is outfitted with everything field-bound personnel will require to get their jobs done.  Communication is always available with support for both CDMA and GSM networks, along with push-to-talk.  It's got its own barcode scanner (1D and 2D), a biometric fingerprint reader and the Customizable Motorola Enterprise User Interface for outfitting the handset to your specific needs.

Clad in a candybar form factor, details of the Motorola ES400 include a 3-inch resistive VGA touchscreen with 750 NITS of brightness (about twice the brightness of regular displays) , a 3.2 megapixel camera module with autofocus, aGPS, 3G with HSPA, WiFi, microSD card expansion and a 1,540 mAh battery.  An optional larger battery (that makes the device noticeably thicker) is also available.  Core hardware consists of a 600MHz CPU, 256MB of RAM and 1GB of ROM.

Since it will be spending the bulk of its time outdoors, the device gets outfitted with full rugged capabilities, boasting the ability to survive shocks, water and extreme temperatures.  Other key business features include one-touch access to enterprise apps, an enterprise-class camera interface and three-year life cycle support.

The Motorola ES400 will be released in the US under Sprint later this year, obviously taking full advantage of the carrier's Nextel PTT network.  No pricing has been given.

[Motorola]

These aren't likely official announcements, but Gigabyte has a pair of new GSmart handsets making the rounds in Ukraine news outlets.  The two smartphones, which run Android OS and Windows Mobile respectively, are the Gigabyte GSmart G1305 Codfish and the Gigabyte GSmart S1205 Cougar.

The Codfish comes with Android 1.6 at the helm and measures 116 x 56.8 x 12.4 mm.  Handset details include a 3.2-inch touchscreen display with HVGA resolution, a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor, 256MB of RAM, quad band GSM/tri-band HSDPA, WiFi and aGPS.  As with all phones running the open source OS, it will come with Google's suite of apps pre-installed.  On paper, this sounds like it can stand up to most Android devices currently out.

The lower-end Cougar, on the other, will get Windows Mobile 6.5, paired with a 416MHz processor and 128MB of RAM.  Not much details are known, although features include dual SIM card support, a 3.2-inch touchscreen display, quad-band GSM connectivity, WiFi and aGPS.

From the pictures, both the Gigabyte GSmart G1305 Codfish and the Gigabyte GSmart S1205 Cougar don't look half bad, especially considering that the company will likely price these near the bottom of the smartphone ranges.  No confirmed release dates nor pricing details, though.

[via Unwired View]

Still want a Windows Mobile handset for your next smartphone?  Have it your way.  If you're looking for the best the platform has to offer, there's really only one unanimous choice: the HTC HD2.

Physically, it's a heck of a looker and is arguably HTC's most beautiful release.    While build and construction feels solid, it's a tad big (67 x 121 x 11 mm).  You can fit it into a pocket, but probably not when you're wearing your skinny jeans.  It's tough to complain, though, when you glance upon the gorgeous 4.3 inch capacitive touchscreen with 800 x 480 resolution.

Despite the generous screen size, the device didn't turn out as huge as I expected.  Credit to the company's design wizards here.  Not only is the screen bright and detail-rich, the extra size actually makes using Windows Mobile easy (especially the parts HTC didn't cover up).

As a phone, it manages excellent calls - clear sound, no interruptions and natural voices.  Speakerphone performed similarly, although there was noticeable tinniness at the upper ranges.  Battery life didn't disappoint either.  Despite the huge display, it lasts for a good two days of regular use before requiring a recharge.

Now, HTC has become the most popular Windows Mobile handset maker for one reason - they craft amazing UIs for the platform.  The same holds true for the HD2, especially the social network-friendly homescreen, although they did leave out some parts (such as Activesync and the email viewer).   Props should be given for the onscreen keyboard (easily one of the best I've ever used) and the multi-touch implementation (across many apps).

On the features end, the phone doesn't let expectations down either.   It's got the Windows Mobile staples, from heavy messaging capabilities to useful PIM tools to a bevy of preinstalled apps.  Software runs fast on the HD2, by the way.  Sure, Android will probably be faster on this kind of hardware - but this isn't bad at all.

With both 3G and Wi-Fi available, getting online is a pleasant experience here.  It comes with Opera Mobile as the default browser and looks amazing on the bumped-up display size.  You might want to switch between Opera and IE, though, as the latter supports some amount of Flash.

Media playback, by the way, is excellent, whether you're watching a video from a microSD card, using the built-in YouTube app or listening to music.  It's a very capable entertainment phone.  The 5.0 megapixel is decent, but nothing special.  Other features include aGPS, stereo Bluetooth and, of course, support for the Windows Mobile Marketplace.

Overall, there's not a single Windows Mobile phone that can claim they're better than the HTC HD2.  Not by a mile.    We know not everyone loves the Androids and iPhones of the world, so there's a huge market out there for this handset.  The Euro version is priced between $700 to $800 unlocked (costs may vary depending on where you purchase), which is admittedly expensive.   If you want the champion of Windows Mobile phones, though, there's nowhere else to turn to.

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HTC HD2 Broken LCD Unlocked US $79.00 --> Ends In 1h 2m <--

MINT HTC HD2 T8585 Black Unlocked GSM Smartphone US $191.01 --> Ends In 3h 48m <--

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Unlocked HTC HD 2 T Mobile Smartphone US $190.00 --> Ends In 13h 7m <--

HTC HD2 T8585 Pre Loaded With the latest ANDROID OS Unlocked Smartphone US $399.99 --> Ends In 16h 21m <--

HTC HD 2 Black T Mobile Smartphone unlocked US $125.00 --> Ends In 22h 49m <--

The Windows Mobile Marketplace is debuting along with phones that come preinstalled with Windows Mobile 6.5. Those using the older 6.1 OS, however, will have to wait until December to get the official versions for their handsets. Officially, that is.

Guys over at the XDA-Developers forums, who are well-known for turning out numerous Windows Mobile hacks, have ripped the Marketplace installer directly from OS 6.5. Even better, they've posted it online as a downloadable cab file (link below), which you can simply pick up, load and run on your phone. Once it's installed, just log on to your Windows Live ID and begin using as if you're on the new operating system.

Two versions are currently available, with the second one getting additional tweaks that allow it to install in an SD card (a feature that Microsoft disables by default). Early tests from users appear positive, with the hacked installers working for the majority of those who tried it (yep, it didn't install for a few folks' phones).

Expect the app suite in the Windows Mobile Marketplace to grow huge within the next few months. Despite being derided endlessly on tech blogs, the platform does have a huge install base, with plenty of business users hungry for professional software. There are also plenty of available apps (including many free ones) now.

Marketplace CAB For 6.1

Marketplace CAB For 6.1 (with SD Card installation)

Before their deal with Garmin was finalized earlier this year, Asus made a short-lived attempt at their own cell phone line. The last one from that futile effort was a touchscreen Windows Mobile handset that's currently available in unlocked form, called the Asus P835.

Physically, the phone's design looks a bit dated, lacking much of the sleek details that more popular smartphones are usually fitted with. Despite that, the phone feels particularly solid, with a good weight and sturdy build. It sports a large 3.5-inch display, with an 800 x 480 pixel resolution. Physical controls are decent, capped off by a trackball, which comes very handy when navigating the UI. Touch interface, unfortunately, is prone to lagging.

Asus threw in a good range of features for this phone, which makes it sort of attractive, despite the decidedly unappetizing custom home screen they outfitted the Windows Mobile base. It offers a full range of connectivity options, for instance, including tri-band HSDPA, quad-band GSM, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

It comes preinstalled with a number of useful apps, including a Wi-Fi Sharing facility that allows you to open up your phone's 3G connection to as many as 10 users at a time. The phone itself is running on 288MB of RAM, which should help prop up the operation speed a little bit. Other features include a 5-megapixel camera (average quality), a GPS tuner, a media player with a wide range of codec support and microSD expansion (with a 4GB card bundled in the box).

Voice and video calls worked well on the phone, including pretty nifty performance from the speakerphone. Typing on the onscreen keyboard is about standard for what you expect from a WinMo phone - usable, but not perfect.

Overall, Asus P835 is a decent touchscreen effort. With a very attractive price point (between $450 to $550, depending where you find it), it also seems like a bargain for the hardware capability. There's no way it's going to go up against majority the of touch-based smartphones on the market, though.

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BATTERY FIT Asus P320P850P835Galaxy Mini7SBP 17 US $14.09 --> Ends In 18d 15h 11m <--

NEW LCD Touch Screen Digitizer Part For ASUS P835 US $11.00 --> Ends In 25d 39m <--

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The Toshiba TG01 is probably as cool as a Windows Mobile handset can get. It's got the fastest processor to ever find its way into a cell phone, a massive 4.1-inch screen and a skinny 10mm thick frame. Of course, hardware is nothing without the proper software to back it up. So how does the TG01 fare?

Windows Mobile has long been derided for its slow performance. As we wait for Microsoft to finally put a fix on their mobile platform's woes, the TG01's 1GHz Snapdragon CPU capably makes it seem much faster than usual. Surprisingly, though, it's still not fast enough to make me forget it's running WinMo in the guts - there's still some delay when you launch apps and such.

Despite all of WinMo's shortcoming, it is heavy on features and that's something you can count on. Apart from the built-in versions of Office applications (Word, Excel, Outlook), there's literally a plethora of available apps in the market (if you have the resolve to find them, of course) that can take advantage of the handset's blazing-fast 1GHz of processing power.

The TG01 runs a custom UI over the Windows build, which shows a lot of promise. Most disappointing, perhaps, is the fact that it uses Windows' stock of bland, low-color icons, which look so dated it feels ridiculous. Maybe, we'll see this improve a little with the upcoming 6.5 update - the TG01 needs it.

As a phone, the TG01 manages pristine voice calls, along with average messaging conveniences. It offers pretty much every messaging feature you can imagine, but it is all offset by a decidedly unforgivable keyboard with a space bar measuring the same size as regular buttons in landscape mode (really).

Physically, it's a beautiful piece of hardware. The large resistive touchscreen is gorgeous, making even the miniature WinMo icons easily discernible and much more convenient to work with. Make sure to always carry the stylus, though, as those tiny menu items will require it.

On the features end, the TG01 comes equipped with all the usual suspects. Playing games and watching videos are both exceptional on the huge, colorful screen. For best viewing experience, though, we suggest sticking to WMV format for your clips - they handle marvelously. Music playback is similarly good, as well as streaming media.

Web surfing is aided greatly by the handset's support for both Wi-Fi and 7.2Mbps HSDPA. Page rendering is very fast with complete Flash support. This is arguably one of the best web-browsing phones around, especially with that large display panel. Browser execution, however, is another story altogether - let's just say they made some unconventional and ineffective design decisions. Other features include a rather average 3.2 megapixel camera (average quality and with VGA video to boot), Bluetooth, aGPS and memory card expansion (up to 32GB).

As exciting as a 1GHz cell phone is, the Toshiba TG01 isn't the best smartphone execution you'll witness. While it's a clear winner in some ways (fast page loads, Flash support, gorgeous display), it's also a bummer in others (weird keyboard choices, strange browser mechanics). With that kind of hardware, though, it just might get a whole lot better when the Windows Mobile update comes around.

Toshiba

Frequently find yourself mired in remote areas with no cell phone coverage? The answer to your woes might come soon enough, when TerreStar Networks launches their satellite-capable smartphone shortly after their first satellite flies into orbit on July 1st. Running Windows Mobile and touting a full set of QWERTY keys, it just might turn out to be your new favorite handset - if you're lucky enough to get it on retail, that is.

AT&T Mobility will be reselling both the phone and the satellite service in the US, most likely to local and federal government officials who will require "true" nationwide coverage as only a phone that sends voice calls to space can manage. According to AT&T, the phone will switch automatically between satellite and 3G coverage as users roam between areas.

The yet-unnamed handset (I think the working name was Elektrobit) will use two separate communication chips, one for cellular and the other for satellite connectivity. Price is being pegged at around $700, which should more than pay for itself when you find yourself lost in some empty town in the middle of nowhere. It should also go down to around $400 or $500 gradually as sales volume increases.

Satellite calls currently cost around $1 per minute but will probably be lower, according to TerreStar.   A Canadian reseller for both the phone and the service is presently under negotiation.

Via IntoMobile

Acer made its debut in the smartphone market this year, showing up with a less-than-inspiring effort in the DX900.  This time, they step things up a bit with the Acer X960, which measures up closer with feature sets in similar Windows Mobile devices in its range.

I'm personally not enamored with the looks, though it does look better suited to business types than most typical touchscreen releases. Build is very sturdy, a considerable departure from their first smartphone effort.  More importantly, the device itself feels comfortable in the hand at just the right size.

The 2.8-inch touch display may be a tad smaller than the standard 3.2 inches, but the generous 480 x 640 resolution makes you forget that easily.  Touch response is also fairly good, although the screen suffers immensely under sunlight, to the point that it's really difficult to use outdoors.

New Interface: Acer debuts their brand new UI in the X960, called the Acer Shell, which took everyone by surprise due to its great usability and very fast operation.  You get two options in home screens - a standard one that lists icons across several pages and a so-called Virtual 3D Office.  The first, as you probably expect, lists down the available menu paths, similar to many of today's phones, while the second gives the device a truly unique angle to build on.

The 3D Office, in a nutshell, is intended to recreate the way you work, showing  a graphical workplace that you can customize according to how you best perform your job.  You can throw in a bunch of apps on the desk (such as email, call logs, calendar, music player etc) or keep it to a bare minimum, all displayed in graphical form (not icons, but actual graphics).  It's unique, to say the least, and will likely be the homescreen of choice for majority of people who decide to get this handset.

Features: As a phone, the X960 offers decent performance, though folks on the other end of the call complained about some sharpness.  It can be a problem with just our particular unit, though, so make sure you test voice calls on the device before buying it to see for yourself.  There's also the usual suite of standard features, such as email, SMS, IM and HTML browsing, all of which performed capably up to par - nothing special about them, just usable and properly done.

It comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera module that is lightning fast, shooting images with no noticeable delay.  Being a phone camera, though, it's fair not to expect much but the modicum of usability, which it manages to provide.  Video capture is hardly tolearable, however, despite the VGA resolution it offers.  Most everything we shot came out blurry with badly-recorded voices.

Media playback is pretty good, playing most of what it claimed to be able to.  The only one we ran into a snag with is Xvid, which it totally couldn't handle no matter how many times we tried.

Conclusion: Overall, the Acer X960 managed to surprise us.  While we've originally relegated this handset to being a bust, we're glad to be proven wrong.  Both business users and tech-oriented Windows Mobile fans will find plenty to rave about in the phone - no doubt about it.

YouTube can now be accessed at up to 90% faster loading, searching and serving speed via their new downloadable app available from YouTube's mobile page.  Designed for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 devices, the free viewer should replace the slow browser-based serving currently available for YouTube videos, solving the lack of Flash support inherent in many handsets.

Upon installation, it adds a YouTube icon to your device's menu for faster launching.  The official app not only plays videos but lets you search through YouTube's library as well as browse through the Top Rated, Most Viewed and other standard categories.

Video quality is automatically optimized depending on the speed of your 3G or Wi-Fi connection, so you can enjoy the best quality playable depending on your coverage.  YouTube claims very good buffering on the app which should allow good playback even over slower connections.

If you're thinking of getting the app, keep in mind that playing videos on your phone will throw your bandwidth usage through the roof, so better make sure you have the data plan to handle it or stick to Wi-Fi connections.  There's no word on how much better this performs compared to existing YouTube-serving apps currently on a few WinMo and S60 handsets, such as HTC's latest line.

No complete list of handsets supported by the app is available as of now, although YouTube is expected to roll out a complete one soon.  In the meantime, the company has released this list of Nokia/S60 devices that should work with the app:

5320 XpressMusic, 5630 XpressMusic, 5700 XpressMusic, 5730 XpressMusic, 6110 Navigator, 6120 classic, 6121 classic, 6124 classic, 6290, 6650, 6710 Navigator, 6720 classic, E51, E55, E63, E66, E71, E75, E90, N76, N79, N81, N81 8GB, N82, N85, N86 8MP, N95, N95 8GB

Photo Credit: Softpedia

Despite rumors in the past, I never really gave much credence to RIM's Blackberry running on top of a Windows Mobile OS.  Apparently, it's all for real, although an actual rollout isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

This past week, popular tech blog BGR came forward with the admission that they've been playing around with a Blackberry Application Suite for Windows Mobile for the good part of a month.  In fact, it's fully-functional and appears to truly bring Blackberry's feature suite to their WinMo counterparts.

According to the review, the BlackBerry Application Suite installs via a CAB file much like any Windows Mobile app.  Once set up, it adds a Blackberry icon to the Settings folder, which launches a virtual version of RIM's OS, including a bootup module.  Impressively enough, the app does work, offering complete Blackberry functionality on your HTC, Samsung or any  other Windows Mobile handset.

Blackberry apps you can access from the suite include Messages, Messenger, Browser, Address Book, Maps, Tasks and more - an impressive set of services that should be familiar to most consumers long used to their RIM-designed mobile phones.   In fact, BGR said the port was so good, it could prove a viable way for RIM to get WinMo customers used to working on a Blackberry interface, eventually convincing them to switch.  Most functions to the device it is installed on worked too, including 3G, Bluetooth and GPS, with only Wi-Fi seeming to find any real issue.

Here's the caveat: the review copy BGR had was essentially a port of Blackberry's 2005 OS.  Yep, it's an outdated RIM app suite, which means that the company is either planning to release old features into the WinMo wilderness or they've been working on this for the longest time (since 2006, most likely).

Regardless, it's a solid proof-of-concept that worked better than anyone ever expected.  Applied to a newer build of RIM's OS along with a fix of a few bugs once it ships for real, this could prove a solid addition to any Windows Mobile handset.

Photo Credit: BGR