Many of you asked for a re-do of Windows Mobile browser testing after our Battlemodo declared the platform beyond worthless for surfing. So here it is, the internet running on Windows Mobile's finest hardware.

Before we get started, a quick note on the last Windows Mobile test, and what we're doing differently here. Some of you guys complained that the Samsung Epix was a crappy, slow piece of hardware. However, according to Laptop, its 624MHz Marvell processor and 128MB RAM are specs that just about on par with the three phones clamored for in the comments. Still, you get your wish: Here we lined up the Sony Xperia X1, HTC Touch Pro (AT&T's Fuze) and the Samsung Omnia, and put them through the same tests. On the Epix, for Opera testing, we went with v8.65 in order to not use beta software. (Opera's own site lists 8.65 as its most recent stable version.) Here, all the Windows Mobile hardware we've added to the test have Opera 9.5 built right in.

So without further explanation, here are the numbers—time to load the page, and how accurately it was rendered using Firefox 3 as a reference:

As you can see, the Xperia, Fuze and Omnia are about on par with the Epix when it comes to IE (they suck!), though Opera Mobile 9.5 obviously crushes 8.65 when it comes to speed and competency. I asked Opera why I saw the performance differences between the three phones and they admitted that there are some tweaks, which "are mainly with making our browser work best on the different devices." So, let's look at the new phones and see how they rate against the Epix:

Xperia X1
You probably noticed in the chart that load times are longer over Wi-Fi in a few spots. This is because it would randomly hang, not loading data, for up to 20 seconds. The Xperia was aggravating because its touchscreen seemed to be the least responsive of the three, making navigation a pain, though its optical mouse came in handy for zipping around pages, and it worked better than the Omnia's. One other annoyance is that Opera blocked its virtual symbol keyboard from coming up, which made it hard to enter one of the URLs. It falls smack in the middle.

HTC Fuze
I had the smoothest overall experience with the Fuze, and would be my closest thing to a recommendation. Its touchscreen was responsive, which made double tapping to zoom and pan around pages fast and mostly intuitive in Opera Mobile. Having symbols mapped directly to the keyboard is a big time saver while punching in URLs. This is good, since it seemed to be the slowest of the three, both over 3G and Wi-Fi. Sluggishness aside, the web experience is markedly more usable than the other two new phones.

Omnia
The all-touchscreen Omnia, despite being the fastest over 3G in a number of cases, was a nightmare. During the 3G tests, it managed to crash Opera on three of the six pages tested. I also had tons of Wi-Fi issues. Eventually I was told by Samsung that VZAppZone, Verizon's pseudo-app store that's all but pre-installed on the phone (after you fire it up, it installs), was breaking the Wi-Fi. (On the Epix in the previous showdown, I was later told by Samsung that installing Opera is what broke Wi-Fi for IE. So, uh, Samsung maybe...oh, whatever.) Also, its portrait keyboard has keys so ridiculously skinny, they'd remind anorexic models not to eat. When Opera did work and a page was actually loaded, it was the snappiest at moving around the page. But overall, yeesh.

Conclusion
So where would I slot Opera 9.5 overall if I were to slide it into the previous browser battle? I'd give it a B-. It has a great, desktop-y UI (though I wish a few of the buttons were a smidge bigger, taking into consideration fat fingers and the inadequacies of resistive touchscreens). It's really competent, and it has a solid zoom metaphor, with the double taps usually working like a charm. And it has extras like tabs. But, and this is the big but, it still doesn't feel quite as smooth or instantly responsive as Safari or Android's browser. It's clearly an OS issue, though, not an Opera one.

Speaking to that, testing these three phones actually took longer than it did to test the six in the original Battlemodo, entirely because of how much wrestling I had to do with Windows Mobile. I've used close to a dozen Windows Mobile devices over the last year, and it's still a bitch.

If you haven't noticed in our reviews of Windows Mobile phones, we've basically ceased comparing to them anything but other WM phones, in a wishful attempt at dulling our totally appropriate disdain for the OS, lest the review essentially turn into one giant bitchfest. They're clearly off in their own world of performance and function.

Even ceding the point that Windows Mobile is somehow more functional than the iPhone or Android, it's like comparing one of those 100-in-1 kitchen gadgets that'll blend, slice, dice, toast, saute, braise, set the table, clean the dishes AND suck you off while it's doing all that to a Waring MX1000 blender. It doesn't matter how much the all-in-one gadget can technically do if you can't figure out how to use it, and it performs every task with only mediocre results.

If the iPhone ran half as poorly as Windows Mobile phones, Apple haters would (rightfully) scream as loudly as Apple fanboys do about Vista. If any BlackBerry was as much of a flustercuck, reviewers would trash the crap out of it. I'm sorry, but at this point, any apologist left defending Windows Mobile is either delusional or full of crap—either way, not worth listening to.

I won't touch another Windows Mobile phone until WM7 or at least 6.5, no matter how awesome the hardware looks. Call me when it runs Android.

matt buchanan

Oops, someone at Best Buy leaked a presentation that's revealed the ship dates for several upcoming handsets. For instance, the titanium version of the Verizon Blitz, now has a ship date of October 26th (it's only marked as Coming Soon on the Best Buy site. Other cellphones dropping on the 26th include Sprint's HTC Touch Pro and black Samsung M540 Rant, AT&T's BlackBerry Bold 9000 and T-Mobile' BlackBerry Pearl Flip. Oh yes, the BlackBerry Storm's on there as well, with a ship date of November 16th. [BGR via Electronista]

Elaine Chow

Filed under: Cellphones

There's really no denying it -- T-Mobile's G1 and Sony Ericsson's XPERIA X1 are two of the hottest mobiles around right now, and as predicted, all sorts of sparks flew when the two sat down for a side-by-side photo session. In a Dutch comparison of the two handsets, reviewers pointed out that the G1 was "significantly larger" than the SE counterpart, and while it's completely subjective, they also asserted that the X1 was a "true piece of art in comparison to the dusty look of the G1 [nice one, Google Translator]." Do yourself a favor and check out the whole thing in the read link.

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Darren Murph

When T-Mobile announced that they had sold out of the initial G1 pre-order and were tripling production to meet demand, they said that you could still pre-order a phone through Oct. 21 to receive it at a later date. Unfortunately, it looks like a much later date. If you pre-ordered one after Oct. 3, you'll have to wait until at least Nov. 10 to get your phone. Meaning at this point it's probably better to just line up on launch day if you're dying to get your hands on one as soon as possible and didn't plunk down your money early. [T-Mobile via Android Community]

matt buchanan

Filed under: Cellphones

Not even a fortnight after HTC's Touch HD went official in Germany, out pops a review from Deutschland calling it the best thing since sliced bread. Okay, so maybe our translation skills are a bit off, but one thing's for sure -- it was hailed as the first "iPhone killer to deserve that name." Right off the bat, reviewers praised the TouchFLO 3D interface for masking Windows Mobile, and of course, the expansive display was drooled upon numerous times. Additionally, critics praised the Opera browser while scolding Internet Explorer, and while it's hard to say for certain whether the battery life was remarkable, it definitely seemed to get their vote of approval. Of note, the 3.5-millimeter headphone jack was also loved, making us weep while thinking of what could have been with the T-Mobile G1. At any rate, it seems pretty clear that the Touch HD is going to rock some socks off, but we're trying to push it out of our minds until it becomes available on this side of the drink. Too bad that approach isn't working at all.

[Via WMPowerUser]

Read - Early Touch HD review
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Darren Murph

We were surprised to see the HTC Diamond just coming in white, but those in France now have the opportunity to pick up the Diamond in one of seven colors: White, blue, brown, fuchsia, yellow, purple or rose. Unless you're packing up to move abroad, chances are you'll never see most, if any of these Skittlesfied options. But we thought we'd show you just to rub it in. Happy Monday! [Phone and Phone via NowhereElse]

Mark Wilson

Filed under: Cellphones

Steve Ballmer's whirlwind UK media tour ahead of the Professional Developers Conference just keeps giving us sound bite gems: first it was Windows Cloud, then Zune on Windows Mobile, and now Stevie's taking shots at Android and the G1. Calling Microsoft David to Google's search Goliath, Ballms said that he wasn't worried about Android because it won't be "attractive" to other handset manufacturers because it's "version one... and it looks like version one." Not only that, but he apparently thinks Google's going to sit still, saying "they've got one handset maker, we've got 55. They're available through one operator, we've got 175." True for now, sure, but we know Android isn't going to languish on a single handset on a single carrier for long -- and we're pretty certain Steve knows that HTC and T-Mobile aren't exactly minor players, regardless. Still, it's some masterful bluster from a master of bluster -- now if he'd just back it up with Windows Mobile 7, we'd be way more inclined to believe him.

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Nilay Patel

Here's the first full unboxing of T-Mobile's G1 Android phone which, despite the rabid anticipation of the device, manages to be pretty boring. We're glad to see it out in the wild, but the lame carrying case and decision to include the trademark uncomfortable HTC earphones, complete with a chunky mic. But as my mother (or probably the head of marketing at T-Mobile) would say, it's what's inside that counts. [TMoNews]

John Herrman

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

It goes without saying that any company hooked up with Android's patron saint -- the Open Handset Alliance -- has at least a passing interest in actually doing something with Android, and in Motorola's case, we're going to go out on a limb here and say that, you know, in all likelihood, they were fixin' to drop an Android build onto a phone or two at some point down the road. Indeed, BetaNews has received a brief, largely unhelpful statement from Moto saying that it "look[s] forward to delivering great products in partnership with Google and the Open Handset Alliance community," which -- in light of the recent Android hiring frenzy alleged on Moto's campus -- is about the minimum amount of disclosure a company could make shy of saying nothing at all. While it probably stings from their perspective to see HTC get all the glory for the first Google-ified phone out of the gate, let's hope (for their sake, if nothing else) that this stealth-mode, take-our-time philosophy leads to some killer material out of Schaumburg down the road.

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Chris Ziegler

While Namco jumped headfirst into the Android Market by giving away Pac-Man, EA Games is going to sit out for the time being, at least until there's a billing system in place for apps in the Android Market: "EA will support the Android platform...but has elected to wait for the launch of a content billing solution to bring their premier IP to market."

Right now, the anything-goes Android Market only supports free apps, but that should change right around the G1's launch, at least if Google is serious about having premiere apps populate the store from the start, like high end games. There's a lot of fantastic freeness to be had—like out of the Android Developer Challenge or as Apple's App Store shows—but some developers want some hard coin for their code, and not just evil corporations like EA.

On the other hand, EA has experience with digital distribution and you can sideload apps without going through the Android Market, so why don't they sell them straight through EA's site? [Pocket Gamer via Crave]

matt buchanan

Having received a tacit endorsement from President Medvedev, the iPhone might have won the political battle for Russian touchscreen dominance, but Emblaze has a more traditional plan to take on Apple: with price and features. Emblaze's Edelweiss is an impressive slab of phone, with an HTC-trumping 480 x 854 touchscreen, 3G, GPS and 8 or 16 GB of internal storage. If the OS is passable and the phone can undercut the ludicrously expensive iPhone 3G then purported carrier MTS might have a winner on their hands come October. But that's not all. According to their website, Emblaze has bigger plans.

Slated for release in H1 of 2009, the Monolith, built in partnership with Sharp and Japanese software company ACCESS, could be even more impressive. Breathlessly touted as the "ultimate holistic (?) device," the Monolith will be a full-featured touchscreen phone with an in-house Linux OS that is, if Emblaze is to be believed, able to compete feature for feature with Windows Mobile, iPhone OS and Android. This raises questions about what exactly the Edelweiss is running, though WinMo is a likely candidate. Of course these are just (Russian) words on a screen for now, but the promise is seriously tantalizing. [Mobile Review via UnwiredView]

John Herrman

Filed under: Cellphones

We don't hear too much from Emblaze Mobile around these parts, just the occasional boastful proclamation about revolutionizing mobile communication. So, color us surprised when we got wind of an entirely new and impressive sounding handset due to ship in just a month. The Edelweiss (named after a flower representing purity) is a 3G, touch-screen handset with internal GPS and either 8 or 16GB of storage. That may sound familiar, but what this has over the competition is a massive resolution of 854 x 480, more than twice that of the iPhone and greater even than the previous high-res handset king, HTC's Touch HD. Right now Herr Edelweiss is due only to release in Russia, but if it lives up to it promise we'd certainly expect to see it elsewhere. Oh, and that other project to revolutionize mobile communication? They're still working on that too, dubbing the Linux-based device "Monolith" and promising release sometime in the first half of next year.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Tim Stevens

The iPhone may be the only game in town for serious mobile Web developers right now, but that won’t last long. Next year, the iPhone will see some serious competition from Google’s Android platform. Of course, T-Mobile will start selling the first Android phone, the G1 made by HTC, on October 22. But other cell phone manufacturers are gearing up for a major Android push.

The most significant of these may come from Motorola. One of the original partners in the Open Handset Alliance behind the open-source mobile OS, Motorola already has 50 people on its Android team and is growing that to 350, according to an Android developer approached by a headhunter to join the team. That is a huge commitment that shows how big a bet Motorola is making on Android.

This same source has also seen people from Nokia and Verizon at a recent Android developer conference. The conference was put on by Google last week for developers who had not yet seen the G1 to help prepare them for its launch. In general, in order to be an attendee, you had to have an Android app. Neither Nokia nor Verizon are official members of the Open Handset Alliance.

Nokia recently acquired the rest of Symbian it didn’t already own, and is determined to keep that OS as long as possible, since it powers all of its S60 phones. But Nokia may have an Android team sniffing around, which is smart even if it is for nothing other than to gain competitive intelligence. And if Android takes off, Nokia could decide to hedge its bets and launch its own Android phone.

There is a certain inexorable logic behind all the interest in Android.

1. It is a more capable mobile Web computer than anything other than the iPhone.
2. It is a very appealing development environment for app creators—and just like on the PC, apps will drive adoption.
3. Most importantly, as an open-source OS, manufacturers don’t have to pay a licensing fee to whoever controls the OS. Given the razor-thin margins in the cell phone business, that alone is reason for manufacturers to embrace Android (with the exception of Nokia, which owns Symbian). But you can see why Motorola might see Android as the key to its recovery.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

The T-Mobile G1 launched today with a rich feature set, but how does it, powered by the Android OS, stack up against competition from Apple, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile? We pieced together this chart so you can size up the G1 against its competition at a glance. Click through for the image big-sized. And keep in mind that MicroSD cards max at 8GB for the time being, even though some of these phones technically support more.

Mark Wilson

The T-Mobile G1 with Google powered by Android was unveiled this morning in New York with a list price of $179 -- undercutting Apple's iPhone -- and confirming many of the rumors that had been floating around about the device over the past few weeks.

Wired.com

Chris Snyder

Filed under: Cellphones

Like they said they would, Sprint just spun the HTC Touch Diamond out for retail. $250 (after $200 instant savings, $100 mail-in rebate, and 2-year contract) takes home this WinMo 6.1 candybar with HTC's TouchFLO 3D salve layered atop a 2.8-inch touch-screen display, 4GB of memory, WiFi, 3.2 megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, GPS, and EV-DO Rev. A. The tough decision is buy now, wait for Sprint's Touch Pro launching on October 19th, or hold-out for Best Buy to get its act together and put the $700 unlocked 3G Touch Diamond out onto store shelves.

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Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Cellphones

While that 480 x 800 pixel display has everybody in a feverish pant, MoDaCo has released even more unconfirmed specs on the rumored HTC Touch HD guaranted to pound a lustful wave of disruption into your handset purchasing plans. To start with, it's listed at 115 x 62.8 x 12-mm making it almost exactly the same size as the svelt 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3-mm iPhone 3G. That's a good start. Now slip GPS, HSDPA data, a 5 megapixel camera (no flash), stylus, microSD slot, 3.5-mm headphone jack, and 1350mAH battery into the mix and you've got the stuff of serious, WinMo fantasy. We'll know if it's all legit soon enough as MoDaCo claims a retail date by Christmas. Yes, really. Only thing missing is WiFi... and Android.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Oh, come on, you know there's a part of you that wants it. A big part, even. The Touch Diamond is the first new HTC piece to get teed up for Sprint, but the Touch Pro is hot on its heels a few weeks later -- and with a QWERTY keyboard, it's hard to ignore. Question is, is it worth the extra wait? Well, ease your troubled mind for just a second and take a gander at our gallery on Engadget Mobile -- we're not saying it's going to make your decision any easier, we're just saying everyone likes pretty pictures.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones

It's not exactly a huge surprise, but Reuters is now reporting that T-Mobile will start selling a "mobile phone based on Google Inc's Android software" (otherwise known to everyone else as the HTC Dream) "within weeks," citing people familiar with the matter. The official announcement will apparently happen in New York City this month, with two sources further pegging the date for the announcement down to September 23rd, which mostly lines up with the details The New York Times reported last month. Buckle up, folks. Things are about to get interesting.
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Donald Melanson

Filed under: Cellphones

You know you love it, new Windows Mobile -- even new carrier is good enough for us -- hardware always gets us all thrilled and chirpy. Sprint's really blown it open today with the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro announcements, so to honor them we got our hands on the Touch Diamond. Engadget Mobile's got the gallery and details, so hit the read link to get at it. Enjoy the pics.

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Sean Cooper