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!

Well this was bound to happen. Ahead of schedule, Walt Mossberg has turned his official review of the new iPhone 3G, and we've got the recap. On the whole, Walt stays mostly positive about the device; he likes the form factor (which he wants to stress really hasn't changed much), says the 3G speeds are a big improvement over EDGE (no kidding?), and informs us that the audio quality and phone reception are -- thankfully -- improved all around. Downsides? There are plenty. Mossberg takes issue with AT&T's new pricing policy, which he finds steep, says he barely squeezed 4 hours and 27 minutes of talk time out of the battery, and gripes that you can only sync Exchange or personal calendars and contacts -- not both. If you're like us, you'll probably want to just read the whole thing. Too lazy? Check the video after the break.

Update: David Pogue of the New York Times has also turned in a kinda-sorta review of the iPhone 3G, though it reads more like an overview of its features than a honest-to-goodness critique. He also makes passing reference to the GPS antenna being "too small" to function as a proper GPS, which makes roughly zero sense to us. Feel free to figure it out on your own.

Update 2: Can't forget Ed Baig of USA Today, who says the new model is "worth the wait" (not to say we have any option at this point anyway, seeing how hard it is to find an original anywhere). He seemed to have trouble picking up 3G service in some locations, though it's not clear whether that can be chalked up to technical issues with the handset or a lack of coverage where he was testing. Like the others, Baig discovered a noticeable improvement in audio quality and a noticeable hit in battery life when hooked up to the 3G network. Gotta pay to play, we guess.

We had a chance to play with Research In Motion's upcoming BlackBerry Bold handset tonight, and we came away happily impressed. To start things off, the keyboard felt easy enough to use, at least easier than the 8830 we're often forced to use for work email. Gone are the sharp protrusions, replaced with a nice flat surface upon which to click.

Of note was the Bold's user interface. Menus are clean and easy to read (despite some strange icon choices, see below), and response time is about as quick as one could hope, especially compared to other phones out there that seem to struggle with their operating systems.

While Nokia makes a habit of practically defining "featurephone" for the industry, traditionally it's handsets like the N95 that hog all the spotlight, leaving Nokia's few QWERTY phones in the shadows. Not that they've been trying too hard -- while the E62 and E61i have both shipped over here, neither has featured 3G data in US bands, and the E62 even had the distinct pleasure of having WiFi stripped out. Enter E71, the successor to those phones, and Nokia's very first QWERTY device to feature US-friendly 3G.

Nokia is also (finally) taking form factor much more seriously: at 10mm thick, the E71 is one of the slimmest Nokia phones to date, and Nokia claims it's the thinnest QWERTY smartphone on the market. The E71 also attacks the drab, plastic looks of its predecessors with chrome accents and a glossy screen. The phone is incredibly pocketable, and comfortable to hold and use. Of course, with the smaller size Nokia had to cut down on screen real estate and keyboard spacing, but at a QVGA resolution there's little suffering on that front. The keyboard had a much more rigid, clicky feel to it compared to the spongy keys of the E62, and we were virtually typo-free on it within minutes.

It was simply inevitable: someone was going to lay the iPhone and BlackBerry Bold down beside one another, and if John Mayer won't stop sending himself emails long enough to do it, CrackBerry's sister site will. There's really nothing here that you couldn't put together yourself from checking out galleries and videos of each device separately, but feel free to humor your sick mind by glancing over the comparative images in the read link below or examining the vid waiting after the jump.

Every so often you get to play with a device you haven't used before and suddenly wonder how you ever got by before you had one. The QuadCharge from Gomadic is such a creature and after our extended play date with it -- by play, of course we mean left in place charging stuff -- we can't live without. Click on through the continue link for our thoughts and more pics.

Okay, now we know what you're thinking. Sure, we (lovingly) raked Palm over the coals in our open letter to the company, and yeah, we haven't been the sweetest of hearts to the crew from Sunnyvale (with good reason, of course). However, If you've paid attention to our past good-intentioned prodding, then you'll know that getting our hands on a new Palm device still gives some of us geeky chills.

After seeing scores of "leaked" photos of the Centro, and hearing enough internet chatter about the device to make your brain vibrate like a tightly-wound piano string, actually getting our hands on the phone was honestly a bit of a surprise, both bad and good. We're going to break it down piece by piece and hopefully give you a rounded impression of the smartphone crown-chaser (or at least princess-in-waiting).

You know the newest member of the Chocolate lineup that just launched moments ago? Well, the sly folks over at PhoneArena were somehow able to scrounge up a VX8550 for themselves and give it a good once over for the rest of us doing without. The crew was able to inspect the minutiae that we're all intrigued by, including the chrome scroll wheel, rearranged keypad, microSD slot that handles cards up to 4GB in size, and all the application critiquing you could ever want. Review wise, they seemed quite pleased with the overall call quality, noting that it was "better than the previous model" and featured "noticeably less noise and distortion when the volume was raised to the highest setting." It was realized, however, that the quoted battery life was about an hour overstated, and although the new navigational pad presented a few quirks, the overall vibe was definitely positive.

We're only half kidding when we say we haven't slept since June 29! Come reap the mighty review we've sown over on Engadget, broken down into three easy-to-swallow sections -- we promise it's worth the time.

Until just very recently, the terms "smartphone" and "fashion" seemed doomed to travel very different paths, never to intersect -- not in a product consumers could actually get their hands on, at least. As carriers and customers demand that their mobile companions become ever more featureful, though, the line separating high-end dumbphones and full-out smartphones bends, then bends some more, then finally breaks, leaving a clear-cut market for ultra-stylish open platform devices in its wake. There will always be buyers ready and waiting for handsets like the RAZR 2 and the Shine, but when Joe and Jane Businessperson are looking to open Word documents by day and get noticed in the bar by night, something's gotta give.

First, a disclaimer: this is a peripheral no one wants, but many will need. The Belkin Headphone Adapter for the iPhone simply allows you to do what you should be able to do without any adapter whatsoever -- plug in a plain ol' set of headphones. This was a pretty clear-cut play on Apple's part to give itself and official accessory manufacturers some license to further scar our already irreparably damaged wallets, and frankly, we're bitter that we had to buy it for a stiff $9.95. But yeah, whatever, let's get on to the good stuff.

One of the inevitable first questions that gets asked when laying out hundreds of dollars for a device with a giant, glossy, gorgeous touchscreen is, "just how the heck am I going to protect this thing?" It turns out that the iPhone may not need any particular babying, but for the paranoid among us, Power Support is offering its "Crystal Film" through Apple stores. Ironically, Apple itself says that protective films aren't recommended since they can interfere with the iPhone's ability to register gestures, but sho' nuff, walk into any brick-and-mortar Apple Store and you're going to see these packs on the shelf. No matter how scratch-resistant it may seem, we figure there'll be plenty of people willing to lay out the $14.95 sticker price for the marginal additional peace of mind Crystal Film offers, so we wanted to take a look at just how user-friendly the stuff is.

With just a few days to go before launch, Apple has apparently lifted its embargo on the lucky few journos to get their hands on an iPhone a couple weeks early, and David Pogue, Walt Mossberg and USA Today's Edward C. Baig are doing the first honors. And honors abound: three out of three reviewers agree that the iPhone is pretty much the sexiest phone to ever hit the market, and there was no small amount of praise for the high resolution screen, svelte form factor and sturdy construction -- nano scratchers rejoice, nobody managed to make a mark on this thing. The iPhone turns out to be a bit of conundrum, excelling and even revolutionizing certain phone functions, while utterly failing at others. First the bad: call quality is only average, and AT&T's weak sauce signal wasn't doing the iPhone any favors. It also can be a rather multi-step affair to even make a call, since there's no home screen speed dial or voice recognition, and the phonebook can't be searched, only scrolled through. Other failings like the lack of MMS, IM chat and video recording are even more mysterious. And that EDGE data? Pogue found himself longing for the days of dial-up, while waiting 1-2 minutes for popular sites to load, and while WiFi was quick to save the day in many instances, that's hardly an excuse in the year 2007. Luckily, there's plenty to love about this new approach to phoning, like an excellent web browser, mail client, visual voicemail and Cover Flow-enhanced iPod functions -- they're what Apple has been tooting its horn about, and they all seem to work as advertised. The keyboard more or less requires "faith" in the word auto-correction, an Apple rep likened it to using The Force, and while all three reviewers were able to get up to speed sooner or later, it's most certainly agreed that this is no BlackBerry-killer. Battery life was a non-issue, outstripping most smartphones, and nearly meeting Apple's claims.

Read - David Pogue "The iPhone matches most of its hype"
Read - Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret "Despite its network limitations, the iPhone is a whole new experience and a pleasure to use" (Check out Walt's video review after the break)
Read - Edward C. Baig "Apple's iPhone isn't perfect, but it's worthy of the hype"
Read - Steven Levy "one of the most hyped consumer products ever comes pretty close to justifying the bombast."
Read - Phil Baker "The iPhone's ability to perform so many capabilities in a single device and still be intuitive to use is a remarkable achievement."

Known as the Titan, the PPC-6800, and the XV6800 in its various forms, Sprint's Mogul from HTC represents arguably the most anticipated piece of CDMA hardware so far this year. Why? Well, for starters, its direct predecessor -- the PPC-6700 "Apache" -- isn't getting any younger. Don't get us wrong, the PPC-6700 was a well-loved device that held its own for a good long while, but let's be honest: aerial antennas and Windows Mobile 5 are getting a little passé (to put it lightly). We've had the good fortune to be able to spend a few quality minutes with a production Mogul this weekend, so let's have a closer look, shall we?