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The Bluetooth SIG has been hard at work on the next generation of its short-range wireless technology for years, and yesterday the group unveiled the result: Bluetooth 3.0.

Bluetooth 3.0 + HS features a blend of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies to deliver transfer rates of up to 24Mbps – that’s about eight times the speed of today’s Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR.  Basically, when Bluetooth 3.0 needs to send or receive data fast, it enlists 802.11 tech (Wi-Fi) to make it happen.  When no data-heavy transfers are needed, the 802.11 part of the team goes to sleep to save power.  Using the high-speed transfer will require more power while in operation.

With that speed, Bluetooth will have the ability to transfer live video from one device to the other, or to make quick work of any media or data syncing with a PC.  This ability also opens up Bluetooth to more media-centric devices like camcorders, digital cameras and TVs. 

There wasn’t much talk about what improvements – if any – Bluetooth 3.0 will offer for more typical uses, like wireless headsets.  We hope there is at least some quality-boosting goodness when it comes to wireless audio devices like stereo headphones and cell phone headsets.

According to Engadget, while some Bluetooth 2.0 hardware could be upgraded to 3.0 if a Wi-Fi adapter is also onboard the device, upgradability isn’t going to be an option for mobile devices like Windows Mobile Smartphones or the Apple iPhone.  The earliest we can expect to see Bluetooth 3.0 products is the beginning of 2010 with inclusion in mobile devices likely to follow months later.

The Bluetooth 3.0 specification could be made official on April 21, according to a story at Phone Scoop. 

The Special Interest Group (SIG) responsible for Bluetooth has been working on the next generation peer-to-peer wireless technology for some time, and if the announcement date is correct, it’s possible we could begin seeing Bluetooth 3.0 hardware showing up in devices by the end of the year.

While we have nothing official to go on at this point, Bluetooth 3.0 is supposed to include new power saving protocols and a technology designed to decrease the number of dropped connections between devices.  Of course, the main attraction of Bluetooth 3 is its increased transfer speeds:

“Bluetooth 3.0 uses Generic Alternate MAC/PHY (AMP) [which] lets Bluetooth profiles operate at Wi-Fi speeds. The 802.11 Protocol Adaption Layer (PAL) will enable the Generic AMP feature to be used with an 802.11 radio. Bluetooth is used to create the pairing between two devices, but the data transfer itself is handed off to Wi-Fi. In order to take advantage of the higher transfer speeds, both devices need Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. If Wi-Fi isn’t present on one of the devices, the spec reverts to Bluetooth for data transfer.”

via EngadgetMobile

Last week we were told Dell had been shopping new smartphones around to the three major wireless carriers in the U.S., at least one device running Windows Mobile and at least one other running Android.  We were also told Dell had been brutally rebuffed by each of those carriers who were, shall we say, less than thrilled with what they saw.  The blogosphere consensus: no Dell smartphone for you — ever!

But, of course, this is a new week, with a new Dell smartphone rumor; now we are told to hold our collective horses, that the rumors regarding the death of the Dell smartphones at the hands of the carriers was wildly exaggerated, or simply untrue from the jump.

Digitimes is reporting that Dell will, in fact, be shipping its smartphones on time (whatever they are, and whenever “on time” may be) and that Dell CEO Michael Dell confirmed this himself while in Taiwan.  Digitimes thinks a Windows Mobile version of the Dellphone is likely to come first, with an Android version to follow.

Two questions: 1) Which version of the Dellphone story is true and 2) do you care? 

There was a time when we would have been thrilled to see Dell jump back into the handheld game, a game it played quite well until the decline of the standalone Pocket PC Windows Mobile PDAs.  But in tech, things change very quickly, and today the idea of Dell releasing just another Windows Mobile device seems less and less like a great thing and more like a ham-handed attempt at entering a market Dell has repeatedly declined to enter over years of rumors that a Dell-branded smartphone was just around the corner.

If a Dellphone is coming, we hope the computer company has the sense to truly innovate and not just follow the crowd.

There have been a few workarounds for the lack of native YouTube support in Windows Mobile for some time, but most require users to either purchase software or to configure free software in mind-bending ways.

But Google’s new YouTube Application for Windows Mobile makes viewing viral video a snap.  Just install the free software and you’re good to go.  The program takes up about 1.5MB of storage and can update itself when Google releases new versions.

As with all data-intensive applications, be sure that you have an unlimited data plan before you start watching YouTube videos; you can rack up a lot of data usage very quickly with any type of streaming media.

To get the Google YouTube app, visit http://m.youtube.com on your mobile device and select “Download the YouTube Application” option on the page.

PhoneNews.com has obtained Sprint’s 2009 device roadmap, a document which shows what smartphones Sprint plans to release this year.

The roadmap contains detailed information regarding the release of three Windows Mobile devices (four if you count the already-released Sprint Treo Pro), and some of that news is a bit confusing. 

One slide in the roadmap (shown above) states that the HTC Touch Pro2, which the document refers to as the HTC Rhodium, will not debut until Q4; however we’ve heard rumor that the Pro2 will debut in the late second or early 3rd quarter, and in fact, another slide in the roadmap places the Rhodium for a Q3 release.  The document also states that the Touch Pro2 will run Windows Mobile 7.x, although version 7 of the Windows Mobile OS isn’t due until well into 2010.  This likely refers to Windows Mobile 6.5 rather than 7.

There is no mention in the document of a Sprint version of the HTC Touch Diamond2.

Other noteworthy information from the Roadmap: Sprint plans to release two other Windows Mobile smartphones this year, the Samsung Ace II (a replacement to the current Samsung Ace) and the HTC Cedar (a low-end WinMo smartphone).  We’ll be posting more information on these devices later in the day. 

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According to The Register, President Obama’s 2010 budget includes a new yearly spectrum license fee of $200 million dollars; that’s four times the current fee of $50 million dollars, and the stated plan is to increase fees incrementally to $550 million dollars a year by 2020.  Wireless carriers must pay this fee each year in order to use the spectrum for wireless devices – read: cell phones.

We feel wireless carriers overcharge for their many of their services, so why shouldn’t we be happy the Feds are stickin’ it right back to ‘em?  Because businesses don’t pay taxes out of pocket, they simply increase the amount they charge customers for goods and services to recover the amount they’re forced to pay.  Which means we can look forward to increasingly higher wireless bills once (and if) this change goes into effect, whether we bring home $18,000 a year or $250,000.

Bottom line: if a company you do business with (for power, food, gasoline, phone service, travel, etc.) has its taxes raised, you’ll be the one paying for it.

via Engadget Mobile

Curious about the nuts and bolts of Windows Mobile 6.5?  Of course you are!

Pocket PC Central has prepared a detailed overview of Windows Mobile 6.5 with screenshots, feature breakdowns and more.  We’ll continue to update this Windows Mobile 6.5 Product Brief over the coming months as more information becomes available, so you can check back any time for updates on release dates, supported hardware, software upgrades, compatible services and more.

Take a look at the Windows Mobile 6.5 Product Brief and, if you still have specific questions, email us and we’ll find out what we can.

We’ve been hearing about the Pantech Duo 2 for what seems like years (it’s actually been about nine months), but now it looks like the wait will soon be over.

Contrary to our previous reporting, however, the new Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard Pantech smartphone probably won’t be called the Duo 2 when it hits store shelves, even though it’s obviously the follow-up to the current Pantech Duo. 

A newly released rebate form AT&T Wireless lists the C820 as the Matrix Pro.  This actually makes a lot of sense, being that a similar-looking device from Pantech, the Matrix, is already available from AT&T. The Matrix is a multimedia-enabled dumbfone, so it would appear the Matrix Pro will be the smarter sibling.

No word yet on a release date, but we assume based on that rebate form,  the Matrix Pro C820 is coming sooner rather than later.

UPDATE 2/18/09: The Matrix Pro is now listed on Amazon.com.  We don’t know if this is a listing error or if Amazon has jumped the gun, but the C820 has still not appeared on the AT&T Wireless web store.  We also received the photo shown above from a reader this morning.

HTC has opened the Mobile World Congress 2009 with two new Windows Mobile touchscreen smartphones they’ve managed to keep mostly under wraps: the Touch Diamond2 and the Touch Pro2. 

The HTC Touch Pro2 features a larger display than last year’s Touch Pro, a 3.6-inch 800×400 WVGA touchscreen to be exact, which should make mobile web browsing a bit more interesting; it also features a tilted-screen design similar to that of the AT&T Tilt (TyTN II).  Other features include a Qualcomm MSM7200A 528 MHz CPU, 512MB of flash ROM, 256MB of RAM, Windows Mobile 6.1 (with supposed eventual support for Windows Mobile 6.5), a microSDHC card slot, a 3.2MP camera and a 1500mAh Li-Ion battery. 

Expect to see the TouchPro2 in the U.S. sometime this summer.

The FCC approved the 2009 version of the HTC Touch Cruise for sale in the U.S. a few days ago, and it looks like the new Cruise will be headed to the smartphone-Mecca of AT&T Wireless. 

The Cruise approved for sale in the States supports AT&T’s 3G mobile broadband network.  AT&T has not confirmed that it will be offering the 2009 Touch Cruise, and it may turn out to be sold unlocked. 

But, whatever the distribution model, this touch-and-GPS centric Windows Mobile smartphone should be available soon.

via Cell Phone Signal

It’s a week late(ish), but the first Windows Mobile version of Fennec – the codename for the upcoming Firefox Mobile web browser – is now available for download.  The download is designed to run on the HTC Touch Pro ONLY. 

This is a pre-alpha, meaning that it’s a light year away from ready for primetime, but if you have an HTC Touch Pro (AT&T Fuze) and intestinal fortitude, you can download the .CAB installer and get to browsin’…

… or maybe not.

We’ve installed Fennec v0.11 and while the program does run on our HTC Touch Pro (after the better part of a minute) we couldn’t actually browse any web pages.  All we got was a checker board background and a Welcome to Fennec page title, and we’re not the only ones.  Let us know if you have better luck.

But, for good or ill, this first pre-alpha for Windows Mobile shows that Mozilla is hard at work on a mobile version of the web browser 21% of us use and love.

NOTE: We recommend that you backup your device before installing this pre-alpha.

The Windows Mobile OS may not be getting a name change in the near future, but according to a recent article at Digitimes, Microsoft is planning to change the way it talks about and markets Windows Mobile-powered smartphones.

“Going forward, Windows Mobile-based handsets will be promoted simply as Windows phones without specifying an OS version number,” the author writes, citing Taiwanese market sources.

If true, tongue-tying device names like Toshiba TG01 Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Smartphone would be shortened to Toshiba TG01 Windows Phone. 

There’s certainly an argument to be made for Microsoft taking a close look at its naming scheme, even beyond the “Windows Phone” change, but the purported change is a nice start.

Microsoft may make the new naming official at next week’s MWC, where the company is also widely expected to take the wraps off of Windows Mobile 6.5. 

With the exception of the Palm Pre (Best in Show winner), CES didn’t offer up much handheld excitement this year.  Be that as it may, we thought we’d give you a quick rundown of what Windows Mobile (and general smartphone) news there was from CES 2009, along with some thoughts on some related technology.

We were given our first real look at the new T-Mobile Shadow (sometimes called the Shadow 2).  It’s about what we expected and while we look forward to any new non-touchscreen WinMo handhelds, there’s nothing to write home about.  The Motorola SURF A3100 was also on hand for users to test-drive, and CNET writer Kent German seemed impressed.

Pharos announced a new Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro touchscreen smartphone, the Pharos Traveler 137.  The specs look great, but as is always the case with Pharos smartphones, you’ll have to pay more than double the price of comparable handhelds since the Traveler is sold unlocked without a carrier subsidy.  You’ll be able to buy a Traveler 137 for GSM carriers for $600 later this quarter.

Samsung’s MBP-200 Pico Projector was also on display, a 5.6-ounce pocket projector that can project a smartphone’s tiny screen onto a suitable surface as large as 50-inches.  Available later this year, the MBP-200 may be released only in Asia. Bummer.

The remainder of the news of note concerns Bluetooth headsets, with a few new voice-centric offerings that caught our eye.  First, the iVoice Diamond-X Dual Mic Bluetooth headset, which not only looks cool but can provide a voice alert of who’s calling based on your phone’s contact entries.  Second, the BlueAnt Q1, which again looks great (à la Jawbone) and features full-on voice control technology.  An update to the BlueAnt V1, the Q1 has digital audio processing and noise cancellation, two phone support and will be available in the second quarter.  Last, and actually least in our estimation, is the Griffin SmartTalk which offers voice interface.

Creative’s Zii has been on our radar screen since December, and we largely ignored it since we figured it was some sort of upcoming mobile media player from Creative.  But today our antennae went up; turns out, Creative’s Zii is a new System On Chip (SoC), a type of processor combining the major elements of a computer system onto a single chip. 

This new Zii ZMS-05 [PDF link] processor is an ARM-based chip with so-called “Stemcell Computing” technology – that is, multiple processor elements, or PEs, which work together to perform tasks in varied configurations on the fly.  Unlike traditional CPUs with pre-defined blocks performing dedicated tasks (video processing, audio processing, etc.), the Zii’s multiple PEs can be configured and reconfigured in real time to allocate as much processing power as is needed for a given task, or to be partially shut down to save power when processing demands are few.  

The utility of this type of processing technology in mobile devices is clear: when demanding tasks are required from a smartphone, like video playback or 3D rendering, more PEs can be dynamically assigned to perform these tasks.  When using basic, less-demanding functions, large portions of the chip can be shut off to save power. 

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We’ve known about the Atila since August.  It’s a lot like the Motorola Alexander in design but without a slide-to-hide QWERTY keyboard. 

But as Motorola gears up for CES 2009, the Atila has come out of code-name status and has an official name.  The smartphone will be marketed, at least in Asia, as the Motorola SURF A3100. 

The details are pretty much what we expected: HSDPA, 3MP digital camera, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and a microSDHC memory card slot.

The SURF A3100 will debut in Asia later this quarter. There’s not yet any word on a U.S. release.