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As part of PhoneDog's multi-part series on the Palm Pixi, Noah looks at WebOS, Palm's mobile operating system. WebOS features unified messaging for easy tracking of IMs and SMS/MMS messages.

As part of PhoneDog's multi-part series on the Palm Pixi, Noah looks at WebOS, Palm's mobile operating system. WebOS features multi-tasking and Synergy, a system for aggregating data from online accounts.

Microsoft’s Phil Moore, the company’s Head of Mobility UK speaking at the Fifth Annual Global CONNECT conference in London over the weekend, said that Windows Mobile 7 has been delayed once more and won’t be out until ‘late in 2010′.  This comes a short while after another rumuor said that we could be seeing the new operating system as soon as March 2010.

He continued to say that when it finally does arrive, Windows Mobile 7 will ‘give consumers what they want’ and that we’ll get ‘flexibility on a much easier touch UI’.  In a surprisingly frank admission, Mr. Moore also said that Microsoft were ‘playing catch-up’ and that ‘Apple caught us napping’ with the release of their iPhone.

So, far from being a refresh designed to fill the short time before Windows Mobile 7, version 6.5 is looking more like 6.1, in that it’s a relatively minor update set to hang around for a year or more.  We’re aware of several updates to 6.5 waiting in the wings, but they’re only small revisions and unlikely to attract or covert the customers Windows Mobile so desperately needs.

Despite knowing they are some distance behind the competition, delaying the OS which could potentially bring them on par will ensure they stay that way.  Remember, although we have yet to see it, closed testing of Android 2.1 seems to have started, so a Q1 2010 release seems probable, plus the likelihood of the next Apple iPhone coming during the middle of the year is very high - leaving Microsoft’s OS starved of attention.

The only hope is that Microsoft will forget all about the competition and innovate rather than replicate what it sees as popular now.  Windows Mobile 7 can still be fantastic, but it’s going to have to be seriously impressive to regain the market share it will inevitably continue to lose if we have to live with 6.5 for another 12 months.  We know they can do it, proved by the Xbox 360 following the first Xbox, but can they do it in the mobile world?

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

iPhone owners should brace themselves for a shock, as Scandinavian systems are already upgrading to 4G - and you can be sure Apple won’t be far behind.  The only alternative would be for their handsets to not be the latest and greatest in everything, absolute anathema to their early-adopting überfans.   The two new networks have been installed in Oslo and Sweden, and are set to top ten times the speed of existing 3G connections.

The system is so far into the future that phones haven’t caught up: no mobile exists that’s able to access the system with the networks set for dongle-equipped laptop owners.  These are sure to become must have items as slow internet connections now annoy people more than poisoned bees or being on fire.

With Samsung and Ericsson behind various 4G components, and Chinese telecom firm Huawei as well, it won’t be long before megapixels are part of the past - the only question will be “4G or not 4G?”  And call us crazy, but there might just be another elegant white phone at the head of increasingly ironic “this one really is the the ultimate” iPhone queues.

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

It’s a shame this latest Nokia announcement deals with a phone that won’t go on sale until the beginning of next year, as it would have been a really excellent Christmas present.  The phone in question is the 5235, a touchscreen phone in the style of the 5800 XpressMusic.

Instead of wearing the XpressMusic tag, the 5235 is a Comes With Music phone, giving the owner the chance to download as many songs as they like from the Ovi Store, free of charge, for an entire year!  The price is likely to be around £130 SIM free and will be available on both contract and Pay As You Go making it in out opinion, something of a bargain.

The 5235 will be available in black or white, both of which will have a blue surround, and while one may have expected the phone to be a standard feature phone, it’s not, as it runs Symbian S60 5th Edition.  The screen is 3.2″ and has a resolution of 640×360, there is a MicroSD card slot for a card up to 16GB in size, Bluetooth, an FM radio, 3G with HSDPA and GPS.  The spec sheet is only slightly let down by the 2 megapixel camera which also shoots video, but has not autofocus or flash.  To fully make use of the music focused 5235, a 3.5mm jack socket is present for your own headphones.

While Nokia’s 5235 may not break any new ground on terms of design, it has a great feature list and a really good price, especially when you factor in the Comes With Music subscription.  Look out for it early next year.

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

The Google Phone rumour has been bubbling under for, well, years really!  But over the last weeks talk about a handset which would be sold via Google themselves began to increase, until this weekend when everything from pictures, a new name and a potential conspiracy theory surrounding the phone hit the wires!

It all started with a Tweet from a Google employee who said they were ‘playing with the new Google phone’, a message accompanied by a picture of said phone.  On the same day a Google blog post spoke about employees being given a new piece of ‘innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android’ to experiment with over the holiday period - a process they refer to as dogfooding.

Next came news from the Wall Street Journal, who backed up the previous rumours of Google readying a phone to be sold directly to consumers, with the extra news that it would be called the Google Nexus One and was being manufactured not by the Tyrell Corporation, but by HTC.  It didn’t stop there either, as Engadget dug up some more pictures of the phone inside Google’s Picasa gallery, plus specification details started to circulate, including the phone running Android 2.1 and having a Snapdragon processor, a 5 megapixel camera and an OLED screen.

So, in the space of 48 hours we saw a huge amount of information spread around the Internet, but how much can be viewed as most likely factual?  The phone is obviously real, but it’s also very similar to the HTC Passion pictured a month or so ago, with only the HTC branding missing and a position swap around of the touch-based navigation keys.  The spec is also consistent with both the Passion and interestingly, the Bravo seen on the recently leaked HTC 2010 roadmap.

Things take a turn for the odd when noted mobile insider Eldar Murtazin got involved.  He says that we’re all being led up the garden path on this one and not by Google or HTC, but by Apple!  The phone pictured is indeed the Passion but it’s the 2.1 Android update that is being tested and it’s Apple throwing out all the other rumours to take the focus off the current tech-press darling, Motorola!

One thing is for sure, if Google are planning a phone and the January 2010 launch date is correct, we’re going to find out what’s real and what’s not soon enough!

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.