It won't be the first launch in North America -- those honors go to Telus at this point -- but Sprint won't be far behind. A pretty believable new slide deck suggests that big ol' Number Three will take delivery of its Touch Diamonds in September and start hawking them for the princely sum of $299.99 on contract after rebates, netting customers a 3.2 megapixel cam, 4GB of internal storage, and EV-DO Rev. A, among all the other spoils that only Windows Mobile 6.1 can offer. Is the back end of it red? Can't really tell from this angle, but if the goal is to offer up a high-end business tool, we've gotta believe black will be available either way.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

No longer does Windows Mobile alone a capable smartphone make. The platform's core is as relevant, powerful, and well-supported as ever, but that's not the problem -- the real issue is that it's just plain hard to look at. The days of WinMo looking even remotely modern in its stock form are long gone, and top-tier manufacturers clearly recognize that; everyone from ASUS to HTC has taken matters into their own hands to craft custom skins that kill off as many of the ancient visuals as possible while still holding onto everything that makes Windows Mobile great.

Enter the Samsung i900 Omnia, a phone that submits to design direction forced upon the industry largely by the iPhone -- full touchscreen, no keyboard, you know the drill by now -- and does pretty much everything in its power to overcome WinMo's limitations to make it competitive in the year 2008. Did Sammy succeed? Read on.

Thanks to the good folks at Wireless Imports for the hookup!

Not only is good ol' US Cellular just now getting around to releasing the over year-old HTC Touch as its successor starts to hit the market, but it'll be doing so in a most unusual of colors: green. Oh, and it's not wasabi green, either -- more like a calming shade of forest, hunter, or myrtle. We don't know exactly when this sucker's going to hit, but dummies (pictured) are starting to show up in stores, so we suppose it won't be long.

[Thanks, uscc agent]

Update: Okay, so apparently the launch units are actually black, but does this dummy not look totally green? Probably just as well, since we can't think of anyone who'd take a forest green Touch over a black one.

Mettlesome souls have been swimming in the Windows Mobile 6.1 seas on their Motorola Q9h for a few weeks now, but those waiting (and waiting) on a proper update can finally breathe a sigh of relief. The official ROM update that brings WinMo 6.1 to AT&T's Q9 is all ready for your attention, though we'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that backing up your device beforehand would be an absolutely stellar move. Why spend another minute living in the pre-6.1 era? Get that download a-blazin' and let us know how things turn out.

[Via The Boy Genius Report]

We were personally pulling for the "Full Tilt," but WMExperts is citing a tipster that claims AT&T's rendition of the HTC Touch Pro will end up seeing the light of day as the "Fuze." That name would certainly make sense, because, you know, "Fuze" is a word that evokes ultimate productivity without sacrificing the hip style that today's young mobile professional demands. Whoa, did we just channel a marketing guru, or what? The tip goes on to say that we can expect the QWERTY slider to hit "sooner rather than later," so you might want to hold off on that imminent Tilt purchase if you can help it.

[Thanks, Malatesta]

In case there was any lingering doubt that the Treo Pro (alias Treo 850) was real -- and there probably shouldn't be, considering it got snapped all the way back in May -- this round of non-blurry (dare we say artistic?) shots should pretty much seal the deal. The glossy shell, promise of a 320 x 320 display, and a general acknowledgment of circa-2008 industrial design definitely have us feeling just a little less pessimistic about Palm's prospects right now; if anything, it makes us wish they had some Android kit up their sleeves rather than slaving away on the thus-far vaporware Palm OS 2. As WinMo goodies go, though, this thing looks like it's ready to hang with the best of the best -- so bring it on, Palm. A legion of fans with well-worn 750s awaits you. In the meanwhile, check another shot after the break.

[Via WMExperts]

Vodafone expected the Touch Pro to touch down in the UK this month, and sure enough, said expectation has become a reality. HTC's mighty WinMo-powered smartphone is now available from official UK distributor devicewire, and if you just so happen to use pounds as your primary currency, you can claim one of your own for the eye-popping price of £514.99 (including VAT). We won't bother converting that into dollars -- trust us, you're better off pretending you don't know.

[Via coolsmartphone]

While legend has it that the Alexander possesses a beauty that only a mother could see, Motorola's Atila looks pretty sharp from here. The codenamed handset is said to be Alexander's non-QWERTY counterpart, boasting quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE, tri-band UMTS / HSDPA / HSUPA, a 2.8-inch QVGA (320 x 240) display, 802.11b/g WiFi, Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and a Qualcomm 7201A chipset. Mum's the word on a price or release date, but we'll be sure to keep you in the loop.

With all the Touch Diamond / Touch Pro news surfacing for these US CDMA carriers, quite a few AT&T subscribers are beginning to get restless. Calm down, folks -- it seems the AT&T Touch Pro is a reality waiting to happen after all. Based on some admittedly dodgy claims and even dodgier photographs, one particular soul has apparently paid $900 for a pre-release Touch Pro with North American 3G. Only time will tell if he got duped, but we're going to believe that AT&T wouldn't let this gem pass it by for too much longer until proven wrong.

[Via wmpoweruser]

That CDMA version of HTC's Touch Dual that some FCC lab got to fiddle around with a while back is now packaged up all nice and pretty for cash-flush consumers to enjoy. It's not Verizon, Sprint, or Alltel that's celebrating the release, though -- for this particular release, you've gotta look north just a little bit to Bell Mobility. The phone features Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, GPS, a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and a $399.95 CAD off-contact price that drops all the way down to $99.95 if you're willing to sign your life away for three years. Our knee-jerk reaction is, "we'll just hold out for the Diamond on Telus," but if you insist on a slider with this kind of form factor, it's the only way to fly.

[Via MobileSyrup]

Avert your eyes, average consumers, because Opticon's two new Windows Mobile smartphones are aimed squarely at the business fleet market and they've got spec sheets to match. The H16 is a Windows Mobile 5 -- yes, you read that right, Windows Mobile frickin' 5 Pocket PC phone with EDGE data, WiFi, Bluetooth, and an integrated barcode scanner for the princely sum of $1,195. The H19 meanwhile gets a little bit closer to modern era technology with Windows Mobile 6, WiFi, Bluetooth, integrated GPS, and a barcode scanner, though it shares the H16's lame EDGE radio and stratospheric price tag. The big deal here is that AT&T has officially certified the H16 for use on its network and certification for the H19 is expected (hoped) by September; in other words, corporate brass will be able to rest a little easier knowing that their wireless requisitions aren't considered unsupportable rogues by the carrier -- and with most of those types already at their daily Tums limit, any stress reduction is a good thing.

[Via the::unwired]

Read - Opticon H19
Read - Opticon H16

So when exactly is the Touch Pro launching? Unless you're in the UK, we can't answer that with terribly high certainty -- but yeah, you Brits now have a target window to start saving for. Vodafone's online business shop says that HTC's mightiest QWERTY handset is "expected" in August, and while we admit that they could simply be airing out their wishful thinking on their product pages, it'd be awfully poor form to do so. Instead, we suspect HTC and Voda are on the hotline with one another here, and we'd give the window some weight. Now, if any other carriers would care to chime in with their own windows -- preferably in August -- we wouldn't try to stop you.

[Via CoolSmartPhone]

Surely that "last stand" Motorola handset is still burned into your memory, right? No? Anywho, said mobile was just given a face courtesy of Boy Genius, and it's an, um, interesting face at that. We'll let you be the judge on its unsightliness (or beauty, depending on inebriation level), but aside from design, we're expecting this one to include Windows Mobile 6.1, NVIDIA graphics, a 5- to 8-megapixel camera, A-GPS and a Q4 release date. As always, we'll be keeping an ear to the ground for more.

It seems that Sprint's letting the cat out of the bag on its upcoming Touch successor -- within its trusted circle of retailers, anyway. We've now received some juicy morsels of information suggesting that both Best Buy and Radio Shack have been told to expect shipments of the MP6950 Touch Diamond in the next few weeks, with the big blue box tentatively expecting stock on August 17 (we think they're fooling themselves there, but it'd be nice) and the Shack expecting a more realistic-sounding September 2 launch. Along with the Touch Pro, the Touch Diamond should go a long way toward revitalizing Sprint's smartphone lineup at a time when the carrier can pretty much use every little bit of help it can get. In fact, we think we'll hook this up to a SERO plan and... ah, wait, never mind.

[Thanks, anonymous tipsters]

VoIP lovers, rejoice in unison. The latest version of your sure-to-be-favorite application has just added in support for Windows Mobile 6.1. No need to adjust your set -- the newly released Skype v2.2.0.45 does indeed play nice with the latest flavor of WinMo, so there's really no reason why you're still here reading this rather than starting a download. But we love you for it, so feel free to stick around if you wish.

[Via SlashPhone]