Given that Torch Mobile only makes one piece of software (currently unavailable), that they say their main contribution to the aforementioned "enhancement" will be "utilizing [their] WebKit-based mobile browser expertise," and that the iPhone, Android and Symbian have made WebKit the de facto standard for decent mobile web browsing, it's not hard to guess what's going on here. Also interesting: This comes just a week after rumors that BlackBerrys would soon(ishly) support Flash and Silverlight out of the box.

Now that we know RIM is serious about WebKit, the only questions left start with "when?" You know, like when will BlackBerry OS ship with its first WebKit browser? And when will everyone else finally just give up on doing anything else? [Torch Mobile via BGR]

Work rules, lame carriers, prohibitive contracts—whatever the reason you're shacked up with a WinMo phone, you've been through the same experience. You toil with the layers of menus, hidden device settings, poor browsing and crashy, inconsistent performance. Surrounded by fancy, shiny phones with even fancier, shinier OSes, you're even getting a bit jealous, and feel like you have a genuinely last-gen device. Well, as Windows Mobile enthusiasts (who are out there in droves) will tell you, it's not that terrible. With the right apps you can get quite a lot of utility and—yes—enjoyment out of your aging phone.

For God's sake, get a new browser
Internet Explorer Mobile, even in its latest incarnation, has rarely been described as "good." In fact, it's pretty much the complete opposite. No worries though—Windows Mobile, through third parties, has the broadest and most versatile collection of browsers of any of its competitors.

Opera Mini/Mobile: A Java-based browser, Opera Mini is a free download that will immediately give your phone a new lease on life. Fancy this: Now, with your phone, you can visit actual websites, rendered to a reasonable degree of accuracy! OH MY GOD!

There's also Opera Mobile, a native app with a few more advanced features, which has recently shifted its emphasis to a relatively narrow set of touchscreen devices (mostly from HTC and Samsung), on which it performs as a reasonable counterpart to Safari Mobile or Chrome Mobile. It's free when it's in beta, but will cost you for long term use.

Both browsers Opera Mini routes content through Opera's servers for optimization and compression, which can occasionally break formatting. Update: Opera Mobile runs independently of Opera's servers, though there is noticeable compression performed—presumably locally—on some images.

Skyfire: This upstart company has produced a phenomenal browser, dedicated to bringing a full desktop browsing experience to Windows Mobile phones. This powerhouse app is now available to the public, and lives up to most of its claims.

Skyfire routes web content through its servers like Opera Mini does, but with a greater emphasis on exact page reproduction. For the end user, that means fully optimized streaming Flash video, which will allow you to watch everything from Hulu to Megaporn—all automatically transcoded into a lower, EDGE or 3G-appropriate bitrate. Skyfire works wonderfully on most WinMo phones, touchscreen or not, but its version for VGA-resolution phones needs better visuals.

TorchMobile Iris: This is another browser that claims to bring the "desktop experience" to your phone, and for the most part it does, assuming your phone has a touchscreen. It got its start on the LG Dare, where it performed relatively well. In short, this WebKit-based browser render quite well, but it's not terribly fast and the navigation paradigm isn't the most intuitive of the lot. But! It's free and it's not Mobile IE, and for this I am grateful.

Give your old phone a new look
This is where Windows Mobile feels the most out of date; its interface is a classic example of design by committee, only this time the committee was made up primarily of the visionaries responsible for Windows Bob, Windows ME, Windows Vista and possibly the Pontiac Aztec. The solution? Skin it.

PointUI: About a year ago, our own Jason Chen raved about PointUI, and not much has changed—it's still fantastic. This layer, not unlike those designed by HTC, Samsung and Sony to mask WinMo, will provide pretty, finger-friendly navigation to a touchscreen Windows Mobile phone. It looks like the project is on temporary hiatus, but the app is still available here.

SPB Mobile Shell: This one isn't free ($30, actually) but does provide a fairly complete conversion. It reaches deeper into layers of the interface than PointUI does, is a bit more friendly for QWERTY-based phones and offers a load of user skins.

ThrottleLauncher: HTC's TouchFlo 3D is a wonderful Windows Mobile shell, but unfortunately can be difficult to port due to its 3D acceleration requirement. ThrottleLauncher is a TF3D replacement, which works on most Windows Mobile touchscreen phones. It looks like TF3D, and offers skins to look like Android, iPhone OS and others. There are a fair number of bugs present, but they're tolerable.

Fill out your app list:
Most of those things that modern smartphones have—the swank maps, the messaging services, the productivity apps—you can have too. They may not be as polished, but they work very, very well.

Google Apps: Aside from plethora of mobile web apps offered by Google, there are a few native ones as well. Google Maps is a must-download, and provides almost all of the functionality of its iPhone/G1 brother, including GPS integration. Google Mail provides a nice, speedy interface for your Gmail account, offering relief from Windows Mobile's occasionally frustrating mail app, and allowing for relatively easy switching between accounts.

Skype: Here's an area where Windows Mobile generally trumps all others OSes—voice over IP. The native Skype app is lovely, functioning well over Wi-Fi and cellular data connections, provided your carrier allows the latter.

Palringo: Palringo is a multiprotocol IM app, which enables messaging on many networks at once in a single program. AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ—they're all there. Like any decent IM app it works with the WinMo notification system and runs in the background, so you can be constantly apprised of your new messages, just like those smug BlackBerry users. In fact, I think it's fair to say that in the area of messaging, Windows Mobile shines. Similar, also good: Fring.

TCPMP Media Player: Its development has been discontinued, but the app is perfectly usable as is. What is it? It's a barebones media player that'll handle almost any codec, audio or video, that you throw at it. In other words, you can encode video for mobile consumption however you like, something that can't be said of most other OSes (cough*Apple*cough).

Pocket Scrobbler: An unofficial client for the fantastic Last.fm internet radio/social network service, this app will handily stream endless, personally catered internet radio over a cellular data connection or Wi-Fi. Windows Mobile actually has a distinct advantage with this type of programs: the ability to run apps in the background!

Dealzmodo Hacks are intended to help you sustain your crippling gadget addiction through tighter times. If you come across any on your own that are particularly useful, send it to our tips line (Subject: Dealzmodo Hack). Check back every other Thursday for free DIY tricks to breathe new life into hardware that you already own.

Looking like the classic Anglepoise and acting as a desk lamp? Naughty. *Squeak* At least that other 4-in-1 webcam looked pretty different. I know it's just $59, but you can't beat an original, know what I'm saying? *Squeak* Right, now we understand each other, I've got stuff to do. Where'd that ball go? *Hop hop hop...* [Everything USB]

Says the press release:

Users can play iPod videos on the big screen, with big-screen quality, clarity, and freedom from video-noise, "jaggies," or blocking-artifacts.

Speaking of connectors, that little dock has a boatload of them: HDMI, component, and standard-def S-Video and composite video outputs, plus coax and optical digital-audio, and headphone and line-level analog-audio outputs. It even has HDMI input for a pass-through, so you don't lose an HDMI jack on your TV or receiver, and a USB jack for iPod syncing to a computer.

And of course iRIS comes with a wireless remote control, in addition to control buttons on its face for source selection, iPod syncing, and shifting video format and aspect ratio to fit the screen.

Meridian Unveils iRIS Universal Dock for iPod

A First From iPod Videos: High-Quality Video on HD Screens

Cambridgeshire, England, September 5, 2007—Meridian Audio, the British firm credited with creating digital home theater, will introduce and demonstrate a unique new enabler for the Apple Computer's hugely popular iPod™ family of personal media devices at the 2007 CEDIA Expo. Like many other iPod "docks," the Meridian iRIS ™ Universal Dock for iPod accepts the full range of current iPod models and delivers battery charging and home audio-system integration and control. Additionally, the Meridian design features high-end video up-conversion processing (up to 1080p) that produces astonishing images with clarity and detail, delivering true big-screen performance from iPod Video.

The Meridian iRIS design incorporates uniquely sophisticated and specialized video processing courtesy of its Qdeo™ digital processing engine from chip-maker Marvell®. This empowers the Meridian iRIS to derive upscaled and upconverted video—including full-HD-format 1080-progressive mode—with unprecedented quality. Instead of the lower definition resolutions "native" to small-format iPod Video clips, downloaded video can be displayed on the large screen in impressively tight, HD-formatted full-screen video—up to 1080p on HDMI, or 1080i or 720p via the Meridian iRIS analog component-video outputs. Qdeo technology further incorporates advanced DSP for per-pixel, motion-adaptive video processing that corrects both color and contrast losses.

Simply put: Users can play iPod videos on the big screen, with big-screen quality, clarity, and freedom from video-noise, "jaggies," or blocking-artifacts—a first for any iPod Video-integrating solution.

"It's not big news that the iPod continues to influence every aspect of home entertainment," says Meridian co-founder and Chairman Bob Stuart. "But the video side of the ubiquitous portable's capabilities has eluded effective usefulness in any sort of high-performance environment—until now. With the Meridian iRIS, Meridian can offer astonishingly good big-screen playback on today's HD displays, from an affordable device that features simple, 'dock-and-hit-play' usability."

The Meridian iRIS circular design provides a standard Apple 30-pin dock connector on its top surface, accepting any current or recent "3G" iPod or iPod Video model, while its rear edge includes HDMI, component, and standard-def S-Video and composite video outputs, plus coax and optical digital-audio, and headphone and line-level analog-audio outputs. There's also an HDMI input to accept an outboard non-iPod source such as a DVD player or game-console, and a simple source-select button to switch between a docked iPod and an external source—so the iRIS needn't "use up" an HDMI input on the home system. Another simple iRIS button selects video format/aspect-ratio, matching the displayed clip to the home screen. A third automatically synchronizes the iPod with a computer linked via USB.

Volume up/down keys complete the very simple and entirely intuitive iRIS controls. However, the Meridian solution also supplies a compact wireless remote controller that commands the docked iPod as well as the Meridian iRIS itself, and since Meridian iRIS displays iPod menus on-screen in the same format and organization as on the portable itself, there's no new interface to learn.

Meridian's iRIS Universal Dock for iPod is available November, at a manufacturer's suggest price of $379.

Meridian Audio Limited is based in Huntingdon, near Cambridge, UK, and was founded in 1977 by Allen Boothroyd and Robert Stuart. With a 30-year history of innovation and development of the highest quality consumer audio systems, the award-winning company is widely recognized as a world leader in digital and analog audio reproduction. Meridian developed the world's first audiophile CD player, the world's first consumer digital surround controller, developed the MLP lossless packing systems mandated for use in DVD-Audio and included in emerging high-definition disc formats, and is the only UK audio hardware manufacturer to be a member of the DVD Forum. The company's optical disc players, DSP-based loudspeakers and Digital Theater systems are unique in the industry, maintaining a super-quality digital audio signal throughout the path from the source to the amplifier, and using digital signal processing to generate advanced crossover characteristics that would be impossible with conventional passive analog systems. Meridian is also the exclusive manufacturer and distributor of Faroudja High-Definition video processors and projectors.

The Shangri-La, which is the HTC Shift, is also listed, and sports both CDMA and EDGE and has a 800MHz processor, 30/40 GB hard drive, VGA camera for video calls and fingerprint recognition. We're looking forward to all of these.

– Jason Chen

HTC phones galore [CTI Miami via Boy Genius Report]

This works fine as a security device until you think of all the times in the movies where someone's eye gets cut out in order to authenticate on a computer/security system.

Product Page

Iris Scan Camera Jiris JCP1000 [i4u]