ASUS P560 sports Windows Mobile 6.1, many acronyms

Buried underneath the hoopla surrounding the announcement of ASUS' Lamborghini-branded ZX1 at CeBIT, the more mellow P560 was also announced, featuring pretty much every spec the average WinMo buyer could want these days in a package that speaks far, far less about the car you're driving (or wish you were driving, anyway). HSDPA, WiFi, 3.2 megapixel autofocus cam, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, GPS, microSDHC slot, 256MB of ROM, 128MB of RAM, and Microsoft's freshest build of Windows Mobile Professional -- 6.1, that is -- all have managed to find their way into the P560's unassuming shell. Not bad, though the €500 (about $772) price tag could scare a few folks away when it launches next month.

3M mini-projectors set to land in / with Samsung phones later this year

3M has been touting its mini-projectors for some time now (along with many others), but it looks like they're now finally a bit closer to landing in an actual product, with Samsung reportedly set to begin offering them later this year. What's not clear, unfortunately, is whether the projectors will actually be built into the cellphones (and if so, which ones), or simply offered as an attachment of some sort, but either way you can apparently expect to pay between $200 and $400 for the chance to spread a bit of visual pollution.

Top 10 smartphones of the week

You can see the top ten smartphones of the week...

HTC's Touch Diamond will hit European store shelves in June, while a North American version will follow later this year.

HTC today unveiled its new flagship phone, the HTC Touch Diamond, featuring the Taiwanese manufacturer's new captivating 3D touch interface called TouchFLO 3D. HTC has recently improved its original TouchFLO interface (Compare HTC's Touch phones), and with the introduction of the new 3D touch interface, the company aims to provide animated access to people, messaging, e-mail, photos, music, weather and more. In addition, HTC is introducing a new touch-sensitive control for interacting with the Touch Diamond.

With the introduction of the HTC Touch Diamond, the manufacturer hopes to deliver a new mobile Internet experience that utilizes broadband-like speeds with European 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and HSUPA wireless connectivity (a version supporting North American HSDPA will be released later this year). HTC provides a new customized mobile Web browser that should enable easier viewing and navigation of websites. As part of this experience users can zoom and pan websites with one-hand and automatically view optimized content that has been specially created to fit the display. Turning the device sideways automatically rotates the web page view from a portrait to landscape view.

In addition to web browsing, the Touch Diamond includes a customized new, HTC-developed, YouTube application for watching user generated video content as well as utilizing Google Maps for mobile. The HTC Touch Diamond's 2.8-inch display provides VGA resolution, and a built-in 3.2-megapixel camera includes auto focus. The smartphone also offer auto sensor screen pivoting.

Measuring 102 by 51 by 11.33 mm and weighing 110 grams, the HTC Touch Diamond is powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. The smartphone also sports 4GB of internal storage, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g and AGPS. HTC claims a talk time of up to 4 hours on GSM networks and up to 4 days of standby time with push e-mail activated.

The HTC Touch Diamond will be available to customers across all major European carriers in June. It will be available later this quarter in Asia and the Middle East. The North American and Latin American versions of the HTC Touch Diamond will be available in the second half of 2008

Windows Mobile 7 May See Release Later This Year

According to a roadmap from device manufacturer MWg, the company plans to have a Windows Mobile 7 device on the market some time in the fourth quarter of this year. That's earlier than this version of this operating system had previously been expected.


The revelation came during a press event to announce the launch of the MWg brand in Europe, which was previously marketed as O2 Asia. At this, the company displayed a roadmap listing a number of smartphones and handheld devices. On this was a smartphone scheduled for release in Q4 running Windows Mobile 7.
Previously, Windows Mobile 7 wasn't expected to be seen until some time in the first half of 2009, having been pushed back when Windows Mobile 6.1 was created.

This was the second delay that the new operating system, reputedly code-named "Photon," had suffered, also having originally been planned as the next version after Windows Mobile 5.

The device, listed as the Flame II, was described as having a 3.5 inch or larger screen and being multimedia oriented, as well as including GPS.

Details On Windows Mobile 7 Scant





Very little is known for certain about Windows Mobile 7. However, leaked reports state that it will focus heavily on touchscreen and device gestures, such as swiping a finger to scroll or skip, and shaking the device to wake it up.

It will also radically overhaul the existing interface, following the patterns started in Windows Mobile 6 Standard, with increased use of scrolling, tiles, and visual aesthetics.

It has also been previously reported that Windows Mobile 7 is intended to merge the touchscreen and non-touchscreen versions of the operating system, creating a single common platform, though whether this is still planned is unclear.