BlackBerry Bold unboxing and hands-on

We've been waiting to get our smudgy digits on RIM's BlackBerry Bold seemingly since before the Earth's crust finished cooling, and finally, Canada's Rogers Wireless lent us a hand. In a few words, the screen is striking, size is actually pretty comfy to hang on to, the keys are fairly easy to use, and we're kinda digging it. As a quick refresher, the Bold has tri-band HSDPA, quad-band EDGE, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, 1GB of onboard memory, and a 2-megapixel cam that can take advantage of the GPS for a bit of geotagging tomfoolery. The integrated media player seems to get the job done with a pile of supported formats -- including DivX, some support for XviD, H.264, MP3, WMA, and a bunch more -- the OS 4.6 looks slick, and have we mentioned the frickin' screen? We'll be back right quick with a deeper dive into the Bold's capabilities, but for now, enjoy the pics.

Palm Treo Pro Sized Up Against Competition

Most of us can size up the functionality of a phone from its spec sheet, but a phone's practicality, usability and enjoyability falls to a whole other series of factors. Form factor is a biggie. In this clip, you'll see the Treo Pro literally sized up against the smartphone competition (including the Palm Centro, Motorola Q9H, the BlackBerry Bold, the iPhone 3G, the HTC Touch Diamond and more. If you're at work and can't play the audio track, just turn it off and you'll still get most of the effect.

HTC announces S740: because two keypads are better than one

ooking for the Touch Pro in a slightly less conspicuous package? HTC (who else?) thinks it has the answer in the S740, a pretty thorough revamp of the S710 of old. The basic concept is the same -- wrap Windows Mobile Standard into a candybar package with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard

read more | digg story

First Android Release Will Have iPhone-Style Crippled Bluetooth, No Google Talk

Over on the official Android Developers Blog, Googler Dan Morrill has news of what won't be making it into Android 1.0—a full featured-Bluetooth stack and data messaging via Google Talk API. Android 1.0 will work with Bluetooth headsets, but won't do other things like send files or link up to a PoGo printer, just like the iPhone. Google Talk will be missing completely. Thankfully, the reasoning behind both decisions seems to make sense: Google Talk's security is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to function as the core IM service for a huge mobile platform as intended, and a full Bluetooth API simply isn't done yet, but both should show up in future iterations. Apparently any frameworks in the 1.0 SDK would be impossible to greatly change down the road, so it sounds like Google's taking the smart route and not rushing out inferior code.

Windows Mobile 6.1 Comes to the AT&T Tilt

HTC and AT&T have just released a free Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade for the AT&T Tilt. This brings the latest version of Microsoft's operating system to this widely-used smartphone.

Among the enhancements are:

* Threaded SMS
* Microsoft Voice Command
* OneNote Mobile
* PTT Button now reassignable

HTC TiltThis ROM upgrade is available now on HTC's website. It is a free download.

More About the AT&T Tilt

For the benefit of those who are now interested in learning more about the Tilt because of this upgrade, this smartphone is practically loaded down with features.

Among these are 3G cellular-wireless networking and Wi-Fi, a GPS receiver, a built-in landscape-oriented keyboard, and a 3 MPx camera.

What's a ROM Update?

The ROM is where the operating system and built-in applications are stored. Changes made to the files in ROM are permanent and will survive the device undergoing a hard reset.

Updating the ROM will erase everything that's on the smartphone, so it's important to back up any files before installing the new version of the operating system. This doesn't apply to files that are on a removable memory card.