Regardless of brand or model, one of the very first accessories many smartphone owners start rifling through the parts bin for is an extended battery of some sort. Unfortunately, Palm either doesn't know that or doesn't care, because a glance through its fresh round of accessories for the 800w and Pro doesn't reveal any. What we do see is a leather sleeve case for the 800w -- fancy! -- along with a "micro" charger that comes bundled with a spare battery. Depending on just how "micro" we're talking about, that could be a decent investment. It's not the most exciting group of SKUs, but for Treo fans, excitement is pretty hard to come by anyway.

Apple's taking a pretty lackadaisical attitude toward one of the most easily avoided security flaws in recent memory, calling the iPhone's passcode lock bypass a "minor iPhone security issue" and saying that a fix will be rolled out in September. Thanks, Apple; we suppose it'd be a little too much trouble to ask for a fix sooner, even though you already fixed it once in 1.1.4. For what it's worth, a company spokeswoman is quick to point out that the flaw can easily be hidden by changing the home button double-click functionality to take you to the home screen, but most users don't know that, now do they? Way to show some hustle, guys -- cookies and gold stars all around.

That name -- yeah, don't ask us. We have to believe it has something more to do with the phone than the fact that the model's posing with one eye closed, but beyond that, your guess is as good as ours. Specs on SKY's latest Korea-only slider include a 2.6-inch wide QVGA display, HSDPA, GPS, FM radio, microSD slot, and a meager 1.3-megapixel cam; if we had to guess, it's being positioned as a fashion device, so we can give 'em a pass on the sensor if the price is right.

Announced all the way back at MWC in February, the glofiish X610 and V900 are finally nearing release -- or so E-TEN claims, anyway. Though the X610's spec sheet isn't going to get any motors running, it's a pretty sharp-looking entry level WinMo 6.1 Professional device that should find its way into a few pockets where 3G isn't needed. More interesting of the pair is the V900 (pictured), a multitalented mobile boob tube that can handle DVB-H, DVB-T, T-DMB, and DAB broadcasts in one convenient package -- and a VGA display certainly doesn't hurt its case, either. So far, the launches on these two are pegged simply as "soon," so keep an eye on the shop of your choice.

Ready for some truly staggering figures? VeriSign has reported that it delivered some 95.4 billion text messages between US carriers in the first six months of the year, setting a new record. Single-day and single-hour records were also set in the same period -- 648 million and 42 million, respectively -- proving that Americans are finally warming up en masse to text messaging as a totally valid means of communicating, probably thanks in no small part to the proliferation of devices like the enV2, Rumor, and Blitz. If you can call the complete bastardization of the English language used during texting "communicating," that is.

The hardened news hawks over at China Economic News Service would like to hit us up with some knowledge: Palm allegedly plans on outing a CDMA version of its Treo Pro "in the future" for carriers like "Verizon, Wireless [sic] and Sprint." While we wouldn't typically pay an unsubstantiated report like this much mind, Palm does see a lot of love from its CDMA partners -- and we have to believe that both Verizon and Sprint are putting the full-court press on 'em to pony up the goods after seeing how much more attractive the Treo Pro is than Palm kit they're currently able to offer. And don't give us any weak sauce 800w arguments, alright?

[Via Brighthand]

Nothing says "I'm mad as hell about my iPhone 3G's battery life and I'm not going to take it anymore" better than blasting it out of a loudspeaker. Bonus points for that loudspeaker being integrated with a battery pack, which in turn connects to your -- you guess it -- iPhone 3G (or original iPhone, if that's how you roll). Well, $44 to the folks at Brando will buy you that very opportunity, it turns out. Who knew?

It seems that Nokia's luxury brand Vertu has finally decided to take a bold leap into the 21st century with its top-of-the-line Signature series, blessing it with a refreshed design, 3G for the very first time (though not the first time for a Vertu), and -- get this -- WiFi. That should all make for a candybar that even the peasant technophiles among us can appreciate, especially when you factor in the extra little tidbit that it's apparently sporting an OLED QVGA display (not unlike the just-introduced Nokia N85). We haven't seen anything super official on this yet, but everything jibes: the Signature is long, long overdue for a thorough overhaul, and both WiFi and IECEE certifications exist for a recently-approved RM-266V (historically, Vertus have rocked Nokia model codes with "V" tacked on the end). Of course, unless you wear a monocle, odds are you can't afford this -- but if you do happen to wear a monocle, we'd really like to see.

[Via friedblogs]

Read - WiFi interoperability certificate
Read - IECEE certification

So we might not have a physical device here, but these packaging renderings are pretty solid evidence of exactly what BlackBerry fans on Verizon -- particularly those jealous of the Bold -- can expect in a few weeks' time. It looks like RIM's first foray into the scary world of touchscreens will be officially branded the 9530 Storm, will be global (it includes a SIM card, after all), and will feature an 8GB SanDisk microSD card preinstalled. Wondering what happened to the Thunder name? Turns out that'll apparently be reserved for the version of the phone launching on Rogers up in Canada and on Vodafone across the pond. Those Storm users on the screen there sure look happy, don't they?

Remember that wild, sporty W6 that Moto unveiled a few weeks back? TmoNews is claiming that T-Mobile will be picking up a suspiciously similar handset known as the MOTOACTV W450 in early September. There's really not terribly much going on here other than water resistance, apparently, with a 1.3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, media support with microSD slot (the phone's designed to be jogged with, after all), and that's pretty much it. Fortunately, the pleasure of shrieking at your own yellow keypad should only run you $30-50, so they say, when it launches.

The lowly Moto V365 really can't soldier on forever as AT&T's only "rugged" (and we use that term loosely) clamshell; we'd thought the W760r was coming in to save the day, but sadly, it's yet to materialize. So what's a butterfingered AT&T subscriber to do? With any luck, the answer is to wait just a few more weeks, because Boy Genius Report claims that the Samsung a837 will launch in the mid-September timeframe with HSDPA, Video Share, Bluetooth, GPS, push-to-talk (naturally), and a 1.3-megapixel cam, making it AT&T's first and only beefed-up 3G set. Yes, it could be prettier, but something tells us that's not really the market AT&T's going for here -- then again, with de facto competitor Casio trotting out the Boulder in orange, maybe we're off base on that one.

It's still anybody's guess when the Touch Diamond will actually launch on Sprint, though the latest rumors suggest that it has once again been moved up to September 2 after initially being pushed back to October. The fact that promo materials are starting to show up would certainly support that theory, too, now wouldn't it?

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Let's be real: a four-digit code isn't very much separating a determined bandit from your data, which is all that the iPhone affords. Granted, the phone locks up after a few attempts to slow your arch-nemeses down a notch or two, but if your code is your birthday or the last four digits of your phone number -- and you know it is, so just admit it -- they'll eventually figure it out anyway. On second thought, though, never mind, because it turns out there's a pretty effective way around these formalities -- 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 have both been confirmed to let you around the passcode lock simply by hitting Emergency Call and double-clicking the home button. At this point, the user will have access to your Favorites list, which is pretty bad as-is, but from here, they'll be able to click on an arrow and use links within your contacts to get out to the SMS, Maps, or Safari apps. If you change the home button functionality from the default (Favorites) to Home, then nothing will happen at the Emergency Call screen -- your phone is safe from prying eyes, we guess. The iPod option will kick the user into the iPod app, though, which we think is almost as bad as the Favorites exploit, because we'd really rather not our thieves know that we listen to Hannah Montana. MacRumors is reporting that it may have already been fixed for a future firmware release, so yeah, any minute now would be just great, Apple.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Don't worry, you throng of dual-band Samsung smartphone fanboys and girls out there -- Verizon hasn't forgotten about you. It's been a little while since we've heard anything about the i770, but a new slide shows that Big Red's positioning it (or trying to, anyway) for Q3 availability, which just happens to be the very quarter that we're currently in. It features GPS, quadband GSM (which is strange -- typically Verizon's dual-band devices only do GSM on non-North American bands), WiFi, a 2-megapixel camera, EV-DO, and possibly biometric security, though that particular feature is currently marked down as "tbd." Next up in the global stable is the u810, a stylish clamshell with a microSD slot, 2-megapixel cam, and not bloody much else -- not really a great choice for the globetrotting businessperson, so Verizon might have the frequent pleasure traveler in mind here.

[Thanks, HTC Kid]

We're not sure if it's coincidence or if there's some concerted effort to push out overdue Windows Mobile 6.1 updates all of a sudden, but for whatever reason, Verizon's XV6800 is joining the AT&T Tilt this week in offering an official upgrade package for the first time. Could've come a little quicker, honestly -- Sprint beat 'em out the door by a country mile -- but let's just thank our lucky stars that it finally happened, shall we?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]