The site makes the excellent point that the music you get on Zune Pass—unlimited song downloads, 10 of which you get to keep every month—is protected under the same DRM supported by Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. The video above explains the process in detail, but the gist is that by using the Zune desktop software, you can sync your downloads to Windows Media Player and onto your phone. You may miss out on some features that the Zune HD carries, like the ability to stream music wirelessly and to email your content to friends, but that's a small price to pay for what you're saving yourself in hardware. [PocketNow via on10]

Based on Flash, it looks like a simplified OS that almost makes us think of the Zune interface. A bit slow and buggy in places, we think it's got potential fo' sho', but what do you think? [MobiFrance]

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]

Apple Stomps Over Nokia to Become Most Profitable Phone-Maker in US

Despite being in the game for just over two years, gaining only a 2.5% national marketshare and selling only one main model at a time, Apple is now the most profitable maker of phones in the US market, taking the lead spot from Nokia. Apple's operating profit was half a billion dollars more than Nokia's this summer, mostly due to a high profit margin on smartphones—Nokia barely competes in the States in the smartphone category. Nokia doesn't seem inclined to initiate the kind of aggressive push into the US (they're mostly focused on their native Europe) that would be required to compete, so it looks like Apple will continue to sleep on giant beds of cash. It ends up in Remainders because this kind of thing is really only pressing news to Apple shareholders and the kind of weirdos that watch CNBC. [Electronista]

Windows Mobile 7 Is on Track for an Early 2010 Release to OEMs

ZDNet Taiwan reports that Microsoft is on track for an imminent release of Windows Mobile 7, the long-awaited overhaul of the soul-killing WinMo OS. It should be released to OEMs in the first quarter of 2010, which is in line for a spring 2010 general release. Hopefully it won't feel outdated so far in the future. This story landed in Remainders because, well, it's a rumor stating a project is on track for a release a long time in the future. Not the most exciting news ever. [ZDNet via WMPowerUser via Engadget]

Bing Videos Aggregates Hulu, YouTube, ABC and More

This is actually really cool: Bing has begun aggregating videos into its search results, pulling video from sites like Hulu, YouTube and ABC (as well as Microsoft's own MSN Video) into one clean homepage. It allows for easy searching and organization, plus a standard UI (which includes dimming and sharing features). The rollout started today and will continue to expand over the next few days, and can be accessed here. [Bing]

Non-Apple Companies to Support Mini DisplayPort Soon

I hate Mini DisplayPort. I hate proprietary jacks, I hate having to buy a $20 adapter, and I hate capitalization in the middle of words. But I have a MacBook Pro (more mid-word capitalization!) and I have to deal with it, so I guess I'm glad that VESA, the Video Electronics Standards Association, has agreed to adopt mDP as a legitimate branch of DisplayPort. That, coupled with Apple's recent decision to grant no-fee licenses so companies can develop products for it, means Mini DisplayPort could start being more than an annoying Apple idea. Expect accessories using the new standard to start popping up fairly soon. [Ars Technica]

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 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]

Today, Motorola's Christy Wyatt said that Motorola would be waiting for a next generation version of Windows Mobile before developing a new product for the platform. Instead, the company is focusing on "two strategic platforms"—one of them confirmed to be Android.

But wow, WinMo getting turned down by Motorola is pretty much the equivalent of asking the school's most shunned female outcast to the dance, only to learn that she'd prefer to sit in misery at home rather than dance in public agony with you. [phone scoop via MobileCrunch]

We've been watching Windows Mobile 6.5—or Windows Phone, as Microsoft is sometimes calling it—for months, since Jesus first laid his thumbs on it back in February. We even taught you how to install developer builds! The final version I got for testing, though, was almost identical to the builds we saw so many months ago. This means two things: That we already know what it's going to look like and how it's going to work; and that no, it's nowhere near the upgrade that Windows Mobile needs to be even remotely interesting.

It's a superficial update, and not a very thorough one. It's an interim product, and a vain attempt to hold onto the thinning ranks people who still choose Windows Mobile despite not being somehow tethered to it until the tardy Windows Mobile 7 comes out, whenever that may be. And it won't work.

The Interface

The first thing you'll notice about Windows Mobile 6.5 is Titanium, the new, menu-style homescreen. It's large and typographical, and looks almost Zune-like. This is an auspicious start.
Each menu item provides a shortcut to an app, function or widget, and most have some kind of preview capability: you can flip through photo thumbnails, see missed calls, and thumb through emails, calendar appointments and Internet Explorer favorites without leaving the homescreen. Scrolling is smooth, and has an inertia that 6.1 so conspicuously lacked. Likewise, the new lock screen brings some information to the surface, but not much. (It'll let you know that you have a text, but not what the text says.) Too bad you probably won't see Titanium, ever, since handset manufacturers will almost certainly cover it up with their own custom homescreen.

The second most obvious change is the Start Menu, which Microsoft is so proud of that they've required all 6.5 phone to include a dedicated button for it on all "Windows Phones" a la the Windows Key on a PC. Again, it's striking, and again, it's smooth. This one, though, feels more like a design concept than a final product. For example! The only tool you're given to sort apps is a "Move to Top" command—no dragging, no alphabetical sorting, nothing except this bizarrely-chosen menu command that makes organizing apps feel like completing some kind of horrible puzzle game.

On top of that, there's no way to tell how many apps you have, to delete them, or to tell which "Page" of the start menu you're on. The offset icon spacing is awkward and occasionally ugly, and hey! That Windows button? It doesn't behave like you'd expect it to, opening the Start Menu but not closing it. This whole piece feels half-assed, to put it kindly.

Another well meaning, if not quite adequate change is to the contextual menus. Though they're ordered exactly as they were before, they're now huge and thumb-scrollable.

Things get worse when you move past the surface, revealing an OS that hasn't been fundamentally changed in years, and which bears a strong resemblance to Windows Mobile 6.1, and a startlingly not-weak resemblance to PocketPC 2002. The new homescreen Start Menu, lock screen and contextual menus are just veneers, and they're not very thick.

The remaining interface changes are subtle, and intended almost solely to make Windows Mobile 6.5 bearable to use without a stylus. (Though don't get me wrong—most WinMo 6.5 devices will, damningly, still come with styluses.) It doesn't really feel like a redesign—it feels like someone went through 6.1 and adjusted a few values. Add a few pixels of menu spacing here, some plasticky highlight graphics there, and BOOM. 6.5. Let's go to lunch.

The terrible Windows Media Player app looks the same, the photo albums are helped only by smoother scrolling and support of basic swipe gestures, and the text, email, notes and settings pages are jarringly old-looking, and seriously hostile to pointing devices any larger than a pen. Especially fleshy ones.

Come to think of it, after using 6.5 developer builds for a few months and then switching briefly back to a 6.1, the only thing I really missed was the system-wide inertial scrolling, which replaces 6.1's chunky faux-physics scrolling engine with something that at least behaves predictably.

Windows Marketplace for Mobile

Windows Mobile finally, finally has an app store—quick, look around, is there anyone left who doesn't? The interface is bit awkward, falling somewhere between the large-typeface aesthetic of Titanium and the barebones HERE'S A LIST sensibility of the rest of the OS, resulting in odd text overflow in menus (sort of like on the Zune HD, except less pretty.) You can find apps though a sensible system of categories, or by searching, and downloading and installing is as easy as pressing a button, though you'll occasionally be met with prompts from the app installer.

I can't really pass judgment on the Marketplace's offerings just yet—it's only been open for a few hours, and apps seem to be flooding in at a fairly steady rate—but the initial offerings are pretty bare, counting among themselves just a few free apps, nearly all from Microsoft, with cameos by some recognizable Windows Mobile app developers who are still obliviously charging upwards of $20 for apps that wouldn't break $5 in the iPhone App Store.

Don't get me wrong, the Marketplace is a good thing, in that it'll drive prices down and make finding apps much easier, but it remains to be seen if developers will take to it like they did on the iPhone App Store, or just kinda ignore it like they did with the BlackBerry App World. In any case, this isn't even a 6.5-exclusive service, and just about any app written for 6.5 will work on 6.1 and 6.0, and vise-versa. A victory for Windows Mobile, sure, but not one that 6.5 can claim as its own. A few more notes on the Marketplace:

• Users are entitled to a 24hr refund

• You can browse apps either on the phone or on a website

• Charges go to either your phone bill or CC bill, though nobody's signed on for carrier billing yet.

• 6.0 and 6.1 gets the Marketplace in December

• Marketplace will only show you apps that run on your specific phone

• Apps can only be installed on internal storage, despite the fact that you can manually install apps on an SD card with no problem.

• App purchases are tied to your Windows Live ID, and which can be used on up to five phones. Seems a little lenient, but hey, thanks!

My Phone

Another touted feature of 6.5 that will also happen to be available for every other Windows Mobile phone, My Phone is a decently capable backup service. We've seen most of it before, but today there are a few new features in top of the super-simple backup service that Jason went so far as to call "fancy:"

• Phone wipe will let you remotely purge your phone

• Locate your phone lets you put it on a map, in case you were wondering where it went/where you neighborhood petty thief eats lunch

• You can search text messages

And I kind of love this one:

• You can switch your phone from silent/vibrate to full volume remotely, in case you lost your phone in the couch and just need it to ring

Alas, these cool extras will be part of a premium version of My Phone, price TBD. UPDATE: It's free until November 30th, after which it's $4.99 for 7-day access (most of the premium services are for emergencies, so this makes sense). The free user experience will be a lot like the beta, which is to say basic, but useful for backing up contacts, photos, and other basics on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. The web interface is nice, too—more on that here.

The Browser

The confusingly-named Mobile Internet Explorer 6 is to Mobile IE 5 what IE 7 was to IE6 on the desktop. Get that? This is to say it's a massive upgrade, but like IE7, which added tabs and popup blocking about two years after everyone else had it, Mobile IE6 is at least a generation behind its competitors. For what it's worth, it adds smooth panning and scrolling, intelligent zooming and full(er) support for CSS and Javascript pages that MIE5 used to choke on spectacularly.

Rendering is good, but not WebKit good, and the browser has a tendency to reflow text in an odd way, formatting columns of text more narrowly than it should. And even though rendering is vastly improved—though inexplicably, not to the point of the Zune HD's browser—the experience is still glitchy. Page loading is slow even on a fast Wi-Fi connection, and there's often a pretty wide gap between when a page looks like it's done and when the browser actually becomes responsive enough to interact with. In short, you're going to want to install Opera or Skyfire, the former for faster rendering and easier navigation, and the latter for better Flash support (IE6 includes Flash Lite, which is better than nothing, but can't stack up to Skyfire's compressed full-Flash trickery.) And hell, one of the two will probably come with your phone anyway, because whoever sells it to you probably wants you to like it.

Of course, you won't be able to completely abandon IE, since Microsoft is planning on using it for a new Windows Mobile widget platform. This sounds like a bigger deal that it is—these are just web apps, not desktop widgets or anything like that, but they'll rendered using IE6's engine, and be available in the Marketplace, mixed in with the other apps.

Performance

Microsoft isn't really advertising the SUPER SPEED of Windows Mobile 6.5, which makes sense: 6.5 is based on the same underlying Windows CE version (5.2) as 6.1, and even 6.0. In other words, its guts are oooold. In practice, this means that cold app launches are quick enough, but not noticeably faster than 6.1, even on slightly more powerful hardware. (A Touch Diamond2 for 6.5, and a Touch Pro for 6.1)

For Windows mobile, the perception of slowness has always been more of a problem than actual slowness, since flashy animations are sparse, and the manner in which apps load, close and minimize can look a bit clunky. The smooth scrolling and easier navigation at least give the impression the 6.5 is a little leaner and less laggy, but there's not much new going on under the hood to back that feeling up.

That said, I don't see why not, since ROM cookers the world over have been squeezing impressive speed out of Windows Mobile for years now, and have even done some admirable work on 6.5 pre-release.

The Crux of the Problem

Last month I reviewed the HTC Touch Pro2. It was too expensive to recommend, but its software was a pleasant surprise. Contextual menus had been skinned with larger, finger-friendly buttons; there was a panel-based app launcher; the supplied browser was pretty good; certain version had a replacement for the start menu; and hey, there was even inertial scrolling across all apps. The catch, though, was that this was a Windows Mobile 6.1 handset. HTC had replicated almost every feature of 6.5 with their own software tweaks, and provided a much better homescreen than Titanium with TouchFLO 3D. All before 6.5 even came out. Install My Phone and Marketplace for Mobile on there, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a single reason to upgrade to 6.5.

To put it another way, handset manufacturers have done more in the last two years to improve Windows Mobile than Microsoft has, which borders on pathetic. In the time since Windows Mobile 6.0 came out in February of 2007, Apple has released the iPhone—three times. Palm has created the Pre, with its totally new webOS. Android has come into being, and grown into something wonderful. RIM has created a touch phone and a revamped BlackBerry OS. For these companies, the world has changed.

And Microsoft? They eked out some performance enhancements and a new homescreen in 6.1, and executed a gaudy facelift for 6.5. This is what they've done to Windows Mobile. What's amazing is that in the time it took Windows Mobile 6.1 to lazily morph into 6.5, Microsoft—Microsoft!— designed one of the most spectacular handsets I've seen in years, loaded it with brilliant, inspired software, a decent web browser and a fledgling app store. One problem! It's wasn't a handset. It was a Zune. I understand the the two platforms aren't directly comparable, and as is, Zune OS wouldn't work very well for a smartphone, but it's a taste of something great. And why on earth does the HD have a better browser than Microsoft's smartphone OS? It's almost like the Zune team was trying to embarrass the mobile guys or something. And to their credit, if they're looking for it, they did.

Just Not Enough

Judging from the first wave of 6.5 handsets, the change OS will barely be noticeable to most folks. Alternative interfaces like TouchFLO and TouchWiz will remain, and won't outwardly change, nor will included apps—they're all compatible. Customers will buy Windows Mobile phones based on the quality of their 3rd party interfaces; carriers will continue to carry them because certain people, chained by their employers or a specific piece of software, will need them; and app makers will be slow to take to the Marketplace, since hey, how much longer do these Windows CE 5-based OSes even have left? It'll be a sad, long slog until April (or god forbid, December) when Windows Mobile 7, whatever it is, finally hits phones.

I'd like to think that 6.5's stunning failure to innovate is a symptom of a neglected project—maybe Microsoft just needed something, anything to hold people over until the mythical Windows Mobile 7 comes out, whatever it is. But as Steve Ballmer himself has plainly admitted, it's worse: Microsoft has simply lumbered in the wrong direction for two years, letting everyone, save maybe Nokia, fly right past them. [Microsoft]

The new start menu, homescreen and lock screen at least look like they're from 2009

The default browser is acceptable, whereas it used to be horrible

MyPhone and Marketplace are welcome additions and both show plenty of potential, but both will be available on pre-6.5 phones

The core of the OS is almost exactly the same as 6.1, and 6.0 for that matter

It never takes more than a few finger taps to get from the pretty, new 6.5 interface, to the blocky, old, finger-hostile one

Seriously, it reminds me of Windows for Workgroups

After carriers and handsets manufacturers have their way with it, it will be literally indistinguishable from 6.1.

The Touch Pro2 only has a last-gen Qualcomm chipset and TouchFLO 3D is still running buttery smooth, so we can only imagine how well it'll run with the Leo's 1GHz Snapdragon. The early build of the WinMo skin is available on XDA-Devs, if you want to give it a try. [PocketNow via MobileTechWorld via Engadget]

Twitter user Beninato quotes Ballmer in saying "This will not happen again" and "We've pumped in some new talent," and Pjozefak gives the blockquote in our headline: Microsoft screwed up with Windows Mobile, and it should have already launched. We've seen a few promising bits previews of Windows Mobile, notably the browser in the Zune HD (it's not perfect, but it bodes well), but Windows Mobile has been a stinker for years now and Microsoft had better bust out the big guns to get it right with WinMo 7. [Twitter and Babbling VC via WMPowerUser via MobileTechWorld via Engadget]

According to Boy Genius Report and PPC Geeks, "Microsoft has confirmed the existence of a ‘kill switch' for apps." The current explanation is that if at any point in time an application is unapproved and removed from the store, it'll also go bye-bye from your handset. This is a bit disconcerting when we think about some of the things we've seen with Apple and what we know about Google. Hopefully Microsoft will play nice and have a reasonable process. Like letting us keep the apps we download. [PPC Geeks via Boy Genius Report]

Multitouch has passed Windows Mobile by, mainly on account of the fact that 6.1 doesn't support capacitive screens—the kind needed for multi-finger gestures to register. Even if it did, the OS is far from multitouch-ready.

With the Leo, it looks like HTC's pulled another Hero: They've taken an OS that isn't designed for multitouch out of the box—in this case Windows Mobile 6.5 instead of Android—and added gestures to specific applications themselves: in this case the browser, Google Maps, the photo viewer and the video app. But where else would you want it, honestly?

Best of all, the Leo's 1GHz Snapdragon processor renders pinch zooming waaaay more smoothly than the Hero's dumpier processor, also from Qualcomm, handling multitouch video gestures without a hint of stuttering.

It looks like the Leo isn't just an experiment in hardware porn after all, and that with HTC's help, Windows Mobile 6.5 might not be that bad. [PocketPT via WMPoweruser]

While the GW550 is mostly aimed at overseas (non-U.S) users, the two mystery phones "will be introduced initially for early adopter customers in Europe, the United States and Asia before being made available globally."

Microsoft's app store for all 6.x WinMo phones arrives on October 6, along with a bunch of Windows Mobile 6.5, more than likely including the new LG models. [Newswire.co.kr]