Pocket PC Central News Center

The Pocket PC Central Hands-On T-Mobile Dash 3G Review has been posted in the Windows Mobile Review Center.

Microsoft will begin shipping Windows 7 on October 22.  But today through July 11 in the United States and Canada, you can pre-order the Windows 7 operating system for as little as $49.

Like Vista, Windows 7 will be available in several flavors.  Windows 7 Home Premium is the edition most Vista users will likely want to upgrade to, but Windows 7 Professional (which includes an XP virtual machine) may be a better upgrade for some business users. 

The Home Premium upgrade discounted price is $49, but increase to $119 after the pre-order sale ends. The Professional upgrade pre-order price is $99, but will cost $199 post-discount.

We’ve been using Windows 7 (the Beta and the Release Candidate) for a few months and are very impressed by how solid it is even in the testing phase.  If you’re a Vista user and don’t plan on buying a new PC in the next year or so, get in on this 50% off sale before it’s over!

LetsTalk.com is offering the new Sprint HTC Snap Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard Smartphone for $79 (including shipping) at checkout with a two-year service agreement. 

That’s $170 less than the Sprint direct price, plus you don’t have to wait weeks or months to get the $100 mail-in rebate Sprint is currently offering.

Have you found the Sprint HTC Snap smartphone for less than $79?  Let us know.

We told you in April that Engadget had gotten wind of an HTC Snap variant heading to Verizon Wireless.  As is so often the case, the tech news site was pretty spot on, and today Verizon made it official.  Meet the HTC Ozone XV6175.

With a somewhat different look than its Sprint Snap and T-Mobile Dash 3G siblings, the HTC Ozone skips the trackball system navigation system in favor of a more traditional 5-way directional pad.  The QWERTY keyboard is also a bit different, but in most other ways, the Ozone is a Snap through and through.

Features include Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard (non-touchscreen), a 528MHz CPU, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, aGPS, 2MP camera, and microSDHC slot.  Although the Ozone is a CDMA phone, it also has a SIM card slot for use outside the U.S. on GSM/GPRS networks.

The HTC Ozone will be available from the Verizon Wireless online store beginning June 29, with in-store availability to follow in mid-July.  The price, with a two-year service agreement and $70 mail-in rebate will be $49.  Not bad.

Verizon Wireless Press Release

EA Mobile has released Star Trek for Windows Mobile , a shoot ‘em up space combat game based on the new Trek movie.

Game description:

YOU are the captain of the USS Enterprise in this action-packed shoot-em up based on the blockbuster movie. Soar through galaxies as you race to complete your campaigns. Pick up new weapons and fight valiantly alongside and against famous ships and races from the Star Trek Universe. Collect power-ups to increase the abilities of your ship including speed, energy and firepower. Explore the depth of the score system and get higher ratings on the high-score ladder. Get beamed up!

Download from Handango

The Pocket PC Central: iPhone Edition Hands-On iPhone 3GS Review has been posted in the Review Center.

We’ve known it was coming for some time, but now we know when; the T-Mobile Dash 3G (a.k.a.HTC Maple 100, Snap, S522), the successor to the long-lived Dash, will be released in July.

Sprint has begun selling its version of the Dash 3G, the Sprint HTC Snap.

As the name suggests, the new Dash is 3G-ready with UMTS and HSDPA built in – this is something the original Dashed lacked.  However, T-Mobile has the smallest 3G deployment of any of the four major U.S. wireless carriers, so if you want the Dash 3G for the 3G part, you’d better check T-Mobile’s coverage maps before you get too excited.

Link: T-Mobile Dash 3G User Manual

Today was a busy one for the good folks at Samsung; they announced a new family of phones, including the upcoming Omnia II, a Windows Mobile touchscreen phone that’ll be sold by Verizon Wireless (at least) later this year.

We have most of the details on the Omnia II: 3.7” AMOLED touchscreen, up to 16GB of onboard flash memory, microSDHC card slot (good for another 32GB once the cards are available), aGPS, 480p (DVD quality) video shooting on a 5MP camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, aGPS… it’s loaded.

Availability is expected around September, but device delays are legendary.  We’ll keep you posted.

A CDMA version of the HTC Snap is coming to Sprint officially on June 21st, but those who want to get their hands on one sooner can grab one at Best Buy today.

The Sprint HTC Snap (S511) is a Messenger-class Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard Smartphone (no touchscreen) with EV-DO Rev A., 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, a microSDHC memory card slot, and aGPS. 

This model replaces the Motorola Q 9c.

Sprint was originally planning to release the Snap on June 7, but pushed back the release in order to focus attention on the Palm Pre.

The Pocket PC Central Hands-On Scan2PDF Mobile Review has been posted in the Windows Mobile Software Review Center.

The new iPhone 3G S is faster than the iPhone 3G, twice as fast or more when opening applications and viewing large documents.  This is because the 3G S has a faster processor and more system memory.  There’s also a new 3MP camera which can shoot photos or video, and you can edit the video on the iPhone.  Voice Control allows you to make calls, control iTunes and more by pressing and holding the Home button and speaking commands. 

The new iPhone will be available in 16GB and 32GB capacities for $199 and $299 respectively.  The 8GB iPhone 3G will continue to be sold for $99.  Rather than July, as many had expected, the iPhone 3G S will launch on or around June 19th in the United States.

Today we expected Apple to announce a new iPhone (or two), news of the Palm Pre’s initial sales and other all-around Monday-ness – we didn’t expect a fresh new version of Opera Mobile for Windows Mobile, but that’s exactly what we got.

Opera Mobile 9.7 beta adds Opera Turbo, a server-size compression technology (à la Skyfire) that shrinks requested data before sending it to your handset; this saves time, particularly if you’re on a slower connection (EDGE) and is designed to make the mobile Web a bit more speedy.  It also decreases the amount of bandwidth required to browse the web up to 80%.  That’s good if you have a limited amount of bandwidth per month on your data plan.

In our quick test of 9.7, we certainly felt the speed increase; pages loaded quickly, panning and zooming was smoother and less jerky, and the entire experience feels more desktop-esque.

View a more complete list of Opera Mobile 9.7’s features or download the new version.

High-speed 802.11n Wi-Fi may soon be available on Windows Mobile Smartphones and other mobile devices thanks to Qualcomm’s new WCN1312 wireless chip.

“The new WCN1312 chip uses low-power 65nm CMOS technology and advanced power-management techniques to minimize sleep, standby and active power consumption. It is optimized for performance with Qualcomm’s complete Mobile Station Modem(TM) (MSM(TM)) solutions and supports a variety of mobile operating systems, including Qualcomm’s Brew Mobile Platform(R), Android and Windows Mobile. The WCN1312 chip is the industry’s first mobile handset device to support both 1×1 and 1×2 dual-receive configurations to increase range and data throughput performance when needed. The WCN1312 solution also implements advanced coexistence architecture and algorithms to optimize performance when paired with Qualcomm’s Bluetooth(R) solutions.” [Source: PRNewsWire]

The WCN1312 will hopefully begin showing up in Windows Mobile, Android and other handsets in Q4 2009.

Sony Ericsson has released a new ROM update for the XPERIA X1 Windows Mobile touchscreen smartphone. 

The update address touch response issues, updates the Media Panel and contains various fixes and patches for the X1.

To get the update, download and install the Update Service software, then run the utility to check for applicable updates for your smartphone.

Thanks to Kara for the heads-up.

We’ve been watching Skyfire for what seems like ages.  And, today, we’re happy to report that the Windows Mobile version of the browser is no longer in beta; v1.0 is ready to roll (and download).

For those who don’t know, Skyfire is a mobile web browser that works with its own servers to do the heavy lifting – Ajax, Flash, Silverlight, etc. – off-device, then the server sends the finished product to your smartphone. This model has several advantages, chief among them the ability to interact with Web 2.0 sites like Hulu, Twitter and Facebook.

Skyfire works with smartphones running Windows Mobile 5 & 6, and both non-touchscreen and touchscreen interfaces.  It’s also free, so head over to http://get.skyfire.com and give it a try.