In some ways, Skyfire had gotten a little ahead of itself. It was based on a solid server-side optimization model, which compresses websites—including Flash and Flash video—to speed up loading over a mobile connection. As advanced as its rendering powers were, it had some glaring problems. One higher-resolution screens, which are common on Windows Mobile phones, the text looked fuzzy and pixelated. The interface was functional, but a bit small and convoluted in places, which made it a chore to use on some touchscreen phones. Scrolling was kludgy, and zooming was haphazard. Cue the version 1.5 changelog:

• Full VGA Support. Skyfire now provides native support for the VGA and wVGA resolutions as seen on many recent Windows Mobile phones.
Smooth Scrolling. Kinetic scrolling has been added to Skyfire. Flick and you will see that scrolling has become very smooth.

• Finger friendly UI. There are many UI updates to enable finger friendliness, increase the ease of use and add a bit of fun to the Skyfire experience. We updated as well the start page to be simpler-to-use with high-resolution devices.

• Full screen mode. For touch screens we have a mode that will completely remove all UI elements from the screen to provide maximum visibility onto the page. Tap the bottom right corner to bring back the toolbar.

• Auto-Move text entry. This keeps any text entry box visible when the virtual keyboard is used. This convenient feature assures that web site forms are easy to use, in case the SIP (i.e., virtual keyboard) covers it.

• Latest versions of Flash 10 and Silverlight. 1.5 has been updated to the newest and most stable versions of both rich-media formats.

• Performance enhancements. Both Skyfire's client and servers have been upgraded for faster, more responsive browsing.

The best thing about Skyfire hasn't changed: It's free. [Skyfire]

When you buy a PC, the most important decision you make is selecting its OS. Do you want Windows 7, for a modern Windows machine-slash-media center? Are you a little more conservative, hanging back with Windows XP? Do you want a lightweight Linux OS on your netbook so you don't have to worry about viruses, or slowdown? Are you a Gentoo purist, building your OS flag by flag, penguin shirt moist from excitement? Or, god forbid, are you a hackintosher? Whatever choice you make, you're making a choice. You're selecting the interface with which you interact with your computer, and by extension, the entire digital world. This makes sense.

But this just isn't how things work in the mobile world. If you want Windows Mobile, you need to buy a Windows Phone, complete with a dedicated Start button. If you want Google's Android, you've got a narrow selection of handsets from a handful of manufacturers, many of which, at least for now, don't even support the same version of the OS. If you think webOS looks cool, buy a Pre. If you like Symbian, import a Nokia or settle for a Samsung. And most predictably, if you like the App Store, Apple—and only Apple—is ready to process your credit card. Like the Touch HD2's obscenely hot hardware, but don't care for Windows Mobile? Tough luck. Think the Droid is a perfect piece of machinery, but don't understand what all this Android hubbub is about? Shut up.

In the last half-decade, we've become acutely aware of what goes into our smartphones. New phones get a spec rundown that mirrors a PC's: Qualcomm processor X! RAM speed Y! Screen technology Z! It fosters a climate ripe for PC-style hardware wars, with new processor architectures competing head to head, an ongoing—and fruitful—resolution race, and each new phone edging out its predecessors with even more onboard storage, or support for a new input or output cable. It's fascinating to watch the competition unfold, but it's even more fascinating to see how tightly grouped development is. These are ARM-based phones, for the most part. They share memory types, display types, cameras, chipsets, processors and often, original device manufacturers. They're the same thing.

When you buy a smartphone, you're stuck with its OS. Your carrier might toss you a few software updates, and if you're particularly gutsy, you might install some custom-baked software of your own, though you're generally stuck with slight variations on and customizations of the handet's default OS. It's as if everyone in the mobile world is emulating what Apple does in the computer space, except worse: at least Macs have Boot Camp, for fuck's sake. (And before they did, they had the PowerPC excuse.)

I know something like this is miles over the horizon—you can't just will new hardware support into existence, and the entire industry is currently built around the bound relationship between software and hardware—and that some hardware (guess which!) is probably doomed to live out its entire life in a hollow monogamous relationship, but it's time for handset manufacturers, along with Google, Microsoft, the Symbian Foundation, and Palm, maybe, to start setting goals. Or at minimum, it's time for us to start asking them to.

For the companies, this would mean working on driver support for common componentry, opening up to the enthusiast communities who already do so much amazing software work on their own, and agreeing on some kind of common bootloader, from which users can choose to install their operating system.

For users, this would mean freedom. Going into 2010, our smartphones are more central to our lives than ever, and it's time to acknowledge that. Consumers treat smartphones like computers. The people who make them, though, treat them like dumbphones; prepackaged products, artificially limited for no good reason—at least, no good reason to the people who buy them.

The Omnia II is frustrating from the second you pick it up to the moment you lay it back on your desk, defeated and distraught. There was so much potential here, so much obvious potential. Through a series of bizarre decisions and grating software design, Samsung has managed to squander it. Every. Last. Ounce.

The Hardware Is Decent

This handset is categorically impressive, shipping with a 480x800 AMOLED screen, an 800MHz processor, a 5MP camera with 720x480px video capture, 8GB of internal storage with room for microSD expansion, and FM radio, complementing the standard smartphone trio of GPS/Wi-Fi/3G connectivity.

The screen is beautifully sharp, though the whites—as seems to be common in Samsung's AMOLED screens—often render as slightly blue. It's not that distracting as long as you don't have a whiter screen for reference, and the screen's brightness, sharpness and general color reproduction are satisfying. It's a resistive display, which is still kind of a necessary evil on Windows Mobile; as much as I enjoyed the capacitive panel on the Touch HD2, Windows Mobile 6.5—and specifically, some of its app selection—isn't quite ready to kick the stylus. The screen is no more squishy than any other 3.7-inch layered plastic display.

The design could be described as clean and conservative, if not for two features: the chrome buttons on the front, and the ill-advised secret red accents on the back. It's a bit too tuner-car chic for my tastes, but neither detail is all that offensive. The sides of the phone, which are fairly narrow (the handset is only about 13mm thick—about as thin as a HTC Hero, and slightly thinner than a closed Pre) are littered with buttons and ports, including the 3.5mm headphone jack, the volume rockers, an "OK" button, a microUSB port for charging, and lock and camera shutter buttons, which are a bit close for comfort.

(sample shot)

The 5MP camera benefits from extensive settings options, and the sensor itself is good enough to replace an entry-level point-and-shoot in daytime. The video, though it suffers from motion distortion more than your average pocket camcorder, will suffice in most situations.

The conclusion here is unsurprising: Though it's no HD2, the Omnia II is an impressive piece of hardware. This, sadly, doesn't really matter.

The Software Is Terrible

The Omnia's got a veritable arsenal of software tricks behind that spongy little screen, from the ability to broadcast video over DLNA, to the newest version of Opera Mobile, to the semi-lauded Swype keyboard, which lets you type without lifting your finger, and which takes fairly bold—but generally effective—guesses at what you're gesturing toward. And the crowning achievement, the reason that the Omnia II is worthy of a review over the rest of the same-y Windows Phones that are flooding the market right now, is TouchWiz 2.0, Samsung's take on total interface conversion, which reaches far deeper than the original TouchWiz did on the first Omnia.

And it is a disaster.

It's flawed in the most basic ways a phone interface can be, violently convulsing from one interface paradigm to another through a series of inconsistent, layered, and most importantly slow animations. Seriously, what's going on here? How did all these images come from one phone?:

The widget menu feels like its always about to freeze, and the widgeting system as a whole is laggy and disorganized, more of a free canvas for thoughtlessly-sized shortcuts than an actual, interactive dashboard. The Cube—oh, that horrible fucking cube—is just a six-sided spinning shortcut menu for multimedia apps, which feels like an obstacle, not an interface. Ugh.

And stuff like this is everywhere on the Omnia II—you can't avoid it. Windows Mobile's new Start Menu has been replaced with an iPhone-style set of icon panels, which would be fine if they didn't register half my swipes as taps, opening applications, sometimes more than one at a time, instead of just cycling between screens. The new dialpad crunches the inbuilt recent calls list into a two-item-tall sliver. The SMS interface has been replaced, but only in bits and pieces. Closing an app with one "x" button reveals a second "x" button of a different color and size, attached to that bright green start menu. The Wi-Fi selector is a floating orb of icons, in which you drag one bubble—representing a network—into a larger bubble—representing your phone. The task switcher alternates between a set of panels and a Cover Flow-esque turnstile. The media player app looks like it was hastily ripped from one of Samsung's older PMPs, and the remaining Windows Mobile native elements have been doomed to wear a black and blue neon color scheme that harks back to Windows 98's High Contrast Mode. Haptic feedback accompanies almost all animations, which makes the lagging transitions feel like they're literally grinding.

I won't go on too long about how this interface looks. Let's just say it's oppressively ugly, and leave it at that. But the way it functions is inexplicable, and inexcusable. It's as if Samsung assigned each tiny piece of this phone's software to a different team, and ordered them not to speak to one another under any circumstances. This isn't design by committee. This is worse than design by committee. And the effect on user experience is crippling: Fiddling with this thing for a few minutes is akin to being yelled at by a panel of six men, none of whom speak languages you've ever heard before, and all of whom take pleasure in your cranial pain. You could conceivably get used to this with enough time, but it's an order of magnitude less usable than the regular Windows Mobile 6.5 interface, which hey, isn't that good. Perhaps more importantly, everyone I handed this to was visibly frustrated within seconds. You can't turn it off, either: With a little effort you can kill the homescreen, but the rest of the modifications are there to stay.

The most alarming thing about this interface is that it's Samsung's entire design philosophy now. Matt said of the Android Behold's UI:

TouchWiz is the first custom Android interface that's worse than the standard one, and shows what kind of horrible things emerge when Samsung's interface designers are left unchecked.

It only got more scatological from there. The Omnia II's UI is essentially the same concept, adapted for Android and intended to penetrate a little deeper. There are even some striking similarities between the Omnia II's interface and that of the Omnia HD, a Symbian-based phone from a few months ago. In short, TouchWiz is an epidemic at Samsung. And for all intents and purposes, the pathogen is fatal.

What To Buy Instead

At the $200 price point, it's hard to recommend anything else but the Droid on Verizon's network—it's their clear flagship, and it's an extremely capable phone. But even if you're specifically set on buying a Windows Mobile phone, there are better options, like the HTC Imagio, which benefits from HTC's vastly better TouchFlo or "Sense" UI overhaul, or even the Touch Pro2, which despite having Windows Mobile 6.1 (which you can probably just upgrade yourself) offers a much more pleasant experience. Because unless you replace the software entirely, a pleasant experience is miles from what you'll be having with an Omnia II in your pocket.

It's another in what I expect to be a long line of impressively spec'd Windows Mobile handsets

The camera is better than average, though it still suffers in low light

It's a Windows Mobile phone, which will be a dealbreaker for some, and a feature for others.

It's almost always laggy, despite a fast processor

It gives you a headache to use, like reading tiny text in the dark, or reciting the alphabet backwards when drunk

As we noted when we first saw the ai.rs video below, the TouchWiz 2.0 UI looks nice, but the resistive touch lag is a shame given the 800Mhz processor.

Key features:
• 3.7-inch ultra-brilliant (Wide Video Graphics Array Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) responsive touch screen
• Virtual QWERTY keyboard with Swype technology: input text faster and easier with one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard
• Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional, which keeps customers connected with corporate and personal e-mail and synchronization of schedules and contacts
• Microsoft Office Mobile: manage Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents
• Enhanced 3D cube user interface
• Full HTML Web browsing capabilities with Opera 9.5 enhanced browser
• One-touch access to social networking sites via shortcut widgets
• Supports Verizon Wireless services, including V CAST Music with Rhapsody, V CAST Video on Demand, V CAST Song ID, Visual Voice Mail, VZW Tones, VZ NavigatorSM, Mobile IM and Mobile Email

Additional specifications:
• Full messaging suite, including SMS, MMS, Mobile IM, Mobile Email and Corporate Email
• Access to social networking applications, including YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, with Samsung's TouchWiz 2.0 user interface
• 5-megapixel camera with flash and auto-focus and camcorder and decoder with DNSe technology and on-device editing capabilities
• 802.11b/g Wi-Fi (no N)
• Support for Divx and Xvid movie files
• 8 GB internal memory and expandable memory of up to 16 GB with microSD memory card (card sold separately)
• Bluetooth® profiles supported: headset (mono and stereo), hands-free (car kits), object push for vCard, basic imaging, phonebook access profiles. Also supports serial port, dial-up networking, object push for vCalendar, file transfer, basic printing and human interface device profiles

Available Colors: Black with red accents on the battery cover

As we noted when we first saw the ai.rs video below, the TouchWiz 2.0 UI looks nice, but the resistive touch lag is a shame given the 800Mhz processor. Still, there you have it. Engadget's tipster says the phone will hit telesales, online and retail stores on December 2. [Samsung via Engadget]

Omnia II (I8000) Specification

Network: HSDPA 7.2 Mbps / HSUPA 5.76Mbps
EDGE/GPRS 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900MHz
UMTS 900 / 1900 / 2100MHz
Display: 65K WVGA AMOLED Display (3.7", 480 x 800)
Advanced R-type Touch Screen
OS: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Camera: 5 Megapixel CMOS / Auto-Focus /
Dual Power LED / Face Detection / Smile Shot
Mobile Blogging / Geo Tagging / Photo Editor
Audio: Audio Format Support (MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA)
WMDRM, OMA DRM 2.1 / Find Music (Music Recognition)
Bluetooth® Stereo Headset (A2DP)
FM Radio with RDS / 3.5 earjack
Video: Video Format Support (DivX, XviD, H.263,
H.264, WMV9, MPEG4)
Video Recording & Playing (30fps@ D1(720x480))
Video Editing (Trim video, Audio dubbing,
Live dubbing, Add subtitle)
Value Added: A-GPS with Navigation (3D Map) / LBS
TouchWiz 2.0 UI with Mobile Widget / 3D Media Gate
Multi-task manager / 3D Interactive Games
Connectivity:Bluetooth® v 2.0 / USB 2.0 / Wi-Fi
Memory: Internal Memory : 2GB/8GB/16GB
External Memory : microSDHC™ (up to 32GB)
Size: 118 x 60 x 11.9 mm
Battery: Talk time : Up to 10 hours (3G)
Standby time : Up to 430 hours (3G)

Microsoft's take on an app store got off to a timid start, so the accompanying news that the catalog has hit 800 apps is definitely promising, as is the expanded userbase: now that the millions of 6.0 and 6.1 handsets are part of the Marketplace's potential userbase, developers will be more enthusiastic about actually developing for it.

And even if it's not quite up to speed yet, it's a much easier way to find the basics than scavenging the app download hellscape that is the Greater Internet, and some of Microsoft's new codeveloped apps—Facebook, in particular—are pretty great. You can download by pointing your WinMo phone's browser to mp.windowsphone.com. [Windows Team Blog]

The security features are really more like anti-piracy measures, but that's developer stuff—what about us consumers? Well, the new online portal seems like a solid idea, albeit one that implicitly acknowledges that app browsing is not that great on a WinMo 6.5 phone. You can access the portal from any browser, taking advantage of your computer's larger screen and faster loading to find apps that much quicker. They'll be downloaded as soon as you open the Marketplace app on your WinMo device. The site looks nice, too—cleanly organized and easy to use. It's not a substitute for a good on-device app store, but it's a nice feature to have. [Windows Team Blog via Engadget]

It takes all open webpages, applications, and widgets and organizes them in a way that you can easily flick to leaf through the selections. Actually, the more I think about it, the more it seems almost exactly like the card system. With fancy page-flip transitions in between.

Each page of the virtual book is the UI of a service or function of the handheld electronic device. Flipping the pages of the virtual book means browsing and selecting the services and functions provided by the handheld electronic device. This book-like UI enables the user to use and manage these applications, widgets, and web pages in an easy and intuitive way like browsing a conventional printed book. The book-like UI hides the differences among applications, widgets, and web pages so that the handheld electronic device can be accessed through a uniform and convenient UI.

The patent also describes a really cool rolodex-style method of browsing, where the UI collapses apps and pages towards the top and bottom of the screen while expanding the item you're looking at in the middle. Imagine (again with the Palm comparisons) the Pre's calendar, and you'll get the idea.

The Pre might already have a lot of what's described here, but I'm totally cool with HTC ripping it off. Because if anyone can knock this interface out of the park, it's HTC. [UnwiredView via Slashgear]

Warning: Elevator/porno music accompanies this video. It's not NSFW, but we could well see it accompanying material that is.

The Omnia II has a huge AMOLED touchscreen, measuring 3.7 inches, but why Samsung chose to go resistive instead of capacitive for the screen is anyone's guess. Performance in the video seems okay, but the slight lag is disappointing given the Omnia's 800MHz processor. The interface seems nice enough if you're tired of HTC's TouchFLO UI, I guess, and the phone's specs aren't too bad (5MP camera, up to 16GB storage, good video codec support). Overall it should be a fine addition to Verizon's lineup, but it's bound to get overshadowed by the upcoming Android releases. [Ai.rs via Engadget]

As you can see in the video, Ballmer acknowledges that Windows Mobile 6.5 is receiving negative reviews, but I never get him to actually admit that the platform still needs work. He says, "reviews aside," he's happy with what Windows Phones (running 6.5) can do now.

And faced with competition of iPhone, BlackBerry and others, he contends it's currently "kind of a horse race." The only clear leader, market-share wise, is Nokia, and they're losing ground. When I said that Nokia was another developer currently lambasted by reviewers, Ballmer replied:

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what the critics say, it matters what the customers say.

Perhaps given the power of advertising (still mighty, even if it's on the decline), there may still be a way for a product to get positive sales despite negative reviews. But the internet has changed that landscape, and the lines between critic and customer blur more every day. We all share knowledge in order to make better choices. So who, in the end, is this customer, who is so different from the critic? Not anyone who reads Gizmodo, that's for sure.

Stay tuned for more exciting Ballmer moments (and facial expressions) over the next day, and then the full uncut interview video on Friday. Video by Mike Short

Steve Ballmer Exclusive Interview Series:
Part 1: Ballmer Talks Natal, Says Blu-ray Add-On for Xbox Coming
Part 2: Ballmer on the Smartphone Race: "It Doesn't Matter What the Critics Say"
Part 3: Ballmer on Zune: Sometimes You Get It Right The Third Time?

The shots are branded Windows 6.5.1, but as PocketNow says, we know what 6.5.1 looks like and it definitely doesn't share the modern, finger-sized aesthetic of these shots. The screenshots cover basics like the call screen, contacts list, mail, and on-screen keyboard, and all in all it looks substantially more modern (read: Similar to Android, iPhone, WebOS) than WinMo ever has before. Interestingly, the trademark Windows Start button appears to be a no-show: Is this a conscious choice to move away from the WinMo of the past? [PocketNow]

Apparently, these minor improvements (slider, toggle switch, soft keys, pivots) were initially slated for WInMo 6.5.1, but so far they have not shown up in the build. Again, these shots are only a rumor at this point, but some of the elements do seem to be in line with earlier leaks. [WMExperts via WMpoweruser]

Some of the especially jarring UI elements, like the Windows 3.1-esque radio buttons and aging contacts app, have been given a bubbly, antialiased skin, which, like it or not, is at the bare minimum less retro than what was there before. The start menu has been pulled from the top tray to the bottom menu, and the formerly text-based contextual buttons, present since 5.x, have been awkwardly iconified. If 6.5 was elective plastic surgery, 6.5.1 is a new suit.

Microsoft's given no indication as to when 6.5.1 is due to ship, or what the final product will look like—a while back I posed the question to Robbie Bach directly a few weeks back, and it was immediately deflected. Even more to the point, there's no guarantee that it'll ever come out, and that these aren't just escaped beta-chunks, slotted into cooked ROMs by eager homebrewers. Even if 6.5.1 shipped tomorrow, though, to the WinMo fans who've stuck it out this long, it'd be a pittance. [IStartedSomething via Download Squad]

The Browsers: Even if the latest version of Mobile IE isn't spectacular, Window Mobile is still a great OS for browsing the web. Opera Mobile, now in 9.7 beta, renders pages about as well as the best WebKit browsers on the iPhone, Android, and the Pre, and promises compressed rendering for faster pageloads, as well as some Flash support. Skyfire can play back Flash videos without a hiccup. You don't have these kinds of options anywhere else, at least for now. Bolt and Opera Mini both optimize the hell out of your pages, helping them load amazingly quick.

The Hardware: I've seen my fair share of clunky Windows Mobile hardware. I've also seen the OS powering some of the most spectacular handsets in the world, like the Toshiba TG01. Even disregarding the really sexy stuff, the average customer has a lot to choose from, from touchscreen-only devices to sliding QWERTY phones to candybar-style messaging devices. And given some of the latest from HTC, there's plenty more to come.

: There aren't a whole lot of fans of the stock Window Mobile interface. It feels old, to put it gently. Handset manufacturers do all kinds of interesting stuff with alternative interfaces, skinning Windows Mobile until you can barely recognize it. This keeps things interesting, but so do the fantastic third-party shells like SBP Mobile Shell and PointUI Home 2, which anyone can install. These are total transformations you can apply in a matter of seconds, which is basically unique to WinMo.

Tethering: We've been grousing about the lack of tethering on other platforms for a long, long time. All the while, Windows Mobile has had a dedicated settings panel for enabling tethering built right in. [Pic via MakeTechEasier]

Infinite tweaking: Over the last few years, hobbyists have reached deeper into Windows Mobile's guts that it seems Microsoft has, and they've come up with some impressive stuff. Just about anything can be changed swapped out or customized. Want a new onscreen keyboard? A different system font? A entirely new homescreen layout? Deep changes to power management, processor control or memory allocation? Automatic orientation controls for all apps? Voice controls? It's all just a matter of installing a .CAB file or two.

Open apps: This is a double-edged sword. Windows Mobile's new Marketplace doesn't have a whole lot to offer yet, and without a good centralized source, it can be a pain to find apps, to find out if they're compatible, and to get a decent deal. That said, there is literally nobody between you and your apps. If someone wants to make a VoIP app that uses your carrier's network, they can do that. If they want to stream live video over the air, they can do that, too. You might face a reckoning with your carrier, but that's fine: at least it was you choice.

Members at XDA, a cloistered online pit of despair where thousands of obsessed individuals diligently find, execute and post about literally every possible permutation of every conceivable Windows Mobile hack (side note: I love you guys), have ripped the Marketplace installer out of 6.5, and shared it with the world. The Marketplace itself could still use a few months to ripen, but it's far from terrible as is.

The first version, a few days old and in stock form, is here—it seems to work for most folks. The second version's been fiddled with a bit, has been hacked so as to allow app installation on SD storage, which the Marketplace disables by default. Both are simple .CAB downloads, so all you've got to do is throw them on your handset and run them as installers.

Let us know how it works in the comments. [XDA via Pocketnow]

He's not revealing the method for ethical reasons, but anybody wanna fill us in on how these shenanigans work, so hopefully it'll get fixed so developers don't get screwed? [XDA via Engadget]

Q3 financials are in, and they show nothing but pain:

Smartphone maker HTC Corp reported Tuesday an 18% drop in third-quarter net profit... The company, the world's largest maker of phones using Microsoft Corp.'s operating system by shipments, said its net profit for the three months ended Sept. 30 fell to NT$5.76 billion (US$179.0 million) from NT$6.99 billion a year earlier.

This is worse than predicted. So OK, let's think: What could it be? Look closely:

The company, the world's largest maker of phones using Microsoft Corp.'s operating system by shipments

Ah, right, this. As much publicity as HTC's Android phones get from the tech press, they're still a Windows Mobile company at their core, a fact which is becoming more ballast than fuel. That, combined with all the money they're spending on changing that, i.e. marketing their Android push, makes being HTC right now a pricey proposition. Pull through, guys! Then you can put Android on the Touch HD2 and we can all go home happy. If that's not your plan, somehow, then kindly sulk off and die. [WSJ]

The Samsung Intrepid is a full QWERTY phone with a 2.5-inch, 320x240 touchscreen, packing ho-hum features like a 3.2MP camera and Wi-Fi. It'll cost $150 with a 2-year contract on Sprint, which seems pretty pricey considering the Palm Pre retails for the same, but could be a decent businessphone if your business happens to be attached to WinMo. It'll be available October 11th. [Laptop Mag, Press Release]