Truth be told, beyond a few more catch-up CES postings later today, there wasn't actually as much action as we'd hoped for, Windows Mobile-wise, at CES 2008. There wasn't much action outside CES, either, but there were a few pieces of Windows Mobile news you might want to know about.
First off, our favorite software keyboard, TouchPal, has hit version 2.0. For those wondering how CooTek managed to give it away for free before, now we know. There's still a free “standard” version, but they've added a “professional” version for $19.99 (on special for $10.98 for the rest of January) that has some fancy new features like Mistyping correction, Dynamic layout resizing, and more. If you're rocking either a Touch or a slider device, we still recommend this software - it's as cool as when we first saw it.
Given alltel's track record of picking up phones, it's not surprise that they are now offering the HTC Touch. The specs are identical to the Sprint version, but the cool silver is all alltel. It's $199.99 after contracts and whatnot. The only bummer here is now when we refer to “HTC Touch” we have to specify whether we're talking about the GSM or the alltel verion. Ah, branding.
We're thinking something was lost in translation when Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Bill Gates said Microsoft wouldn't compete with the iPhone. Gates said, “No, we won't do that. In the so-called smart phone business we will concentrate solely on software with our Windows Mobile program.” We're going to assume that he meant that Microsoft would never release a phone that was just media + phone, but rather that they're sticking with the power of Windows Mobile.
Yahoo News
We don't use Windows Live on Windows Mobile ourselves here (we would if more of our buddies would drop AIM or if Microsoft and AIM would start talking to each other, civilized-like), so we missed the brief moment of panic many had when they saw the error message at right. It basically implied Windows Live client on WM may not be free for much longer. Not to worry, though, Microsoft doesn't currently plan on charging you directly for their services (yet), opting instead to let the carriers keep paying for it (yep, they are).
