Battle of the Keyboards: XPERIA X1 vs. HTC Touch Pro

MobileBurn scored an early look at the Touch Pro -- which won't be available at retail for a month or three yet -- and came away impressed with the all-important keyboard, saying that it was "much more" usable than the QWERTY found on Sony Ericsson's rival superphone. Closed, it's said to be virtually indistinguishable from the Touch Diamond (which we'd say is a good thing) other than being a bit thicker to accomodate they keyboard and picking up a matte-finish rear cover.



Two top-notch devices: the HTC Touch Pro and the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. Both have specs that would make any geek weak at the knees, but when it comes to the keyboard, word on the street is that there's simply no contest - the Touch Pro comes out on top. Check out what MobileBurn has to say, and do take a look at the pics. Engadget has plenty of X1 pics for your perusal, too.

Motorola's touchscreen Blaze for Verizon in the wild

Remember that touchscreen Motorola Blaze we'd mentioned a while back that was on the hook to get Verizon's visual voicemail service? It may not be in Verizon stores yet, but it's all up in Boy Genius Report's labs with a dark red body, MING attitude, and almost limitless mediocrity on board. The touchscreen apparently requires ridiculous amounts of effort to actuate, and that problem is compounded by a lame on-screen keyboard that makes texting tricky at best. EV-DO Rev. A is cool and all -- and the visual voicemail support should be a pretty popular add-on feature -- but that giant Motorola logo up front with the red ring and three pounds of chrome leaves the Blaze with a face only a mother could love. Let's hope Verizon's positioning this one as its low-end touchscreen offering, because we're not seeing it cha-chinging many registers otherwise.

HTC Touch Diamond soft reset

Seems that many think that the Diamond doesn't have a soft reset button and that the only way to reset a hung device is to pop the battery out and put it back in.

However, this isn't the case. The Diamond does indeed have a reset button that you can press with your stylus, it's just in a slightly unusual place. Don't go poking your stylus in the two holes on the bottom of the device, neither of these are the reset button. The square hole is where you attach a lanyard or phone charm and the round one next to the USB connector is the MIC. Don't go forcing your stylus in the MIC hole - we've heard that some people have already damaged their phones because of this.

In actual fact that reset button is located just under the bit where the stylus slides in. If you remove the stylus you'll see a little red button and the word reset. You can in fact press this button if you poke it with the stylus at an angle but it's a little easier to get to if you pop the back cover open a bit.

Opera Mobile 9.5 In Public Beta Soon

We have some exciting news to share today. It's almost time to release Opera Mobile 9.5 for Windows Mobile to the world. We thank you for your patience and support as we make what we (and many others) believe is the best browser for mobile phones. A release testing phase is underway now and the target date for the first beta is July 15th. You will be able to download it from opera.com just like you would any other versions of Opera.

Blackberry OS 4.5 Not Officially Arriving Until September

The Blackberry Internet Services 2.5 upgrade (and subsequent downtime) is still go for a June 29 launch, but there's a catch. According to the Boy Genius Report, some of the "sexiest" 2.5 features won't be available until Blackberry OS 4.5 arrives—in September. From the looks of the BIS 2.5 presentation they got their boy-sized mitts on, at least one of those features is push AOL email and Hotmail/MSN accounts. Of course, if you have a newer Blackberry handset, or plan on buying one before September, it will come with 4.5 OS already installed.