The Motorola Droid comes out on the Verizon network tomorrow, I’ve had one for almost a week now, and will be posting my full review of the phone soon.

Windows Mobile 6.5 has finally come out, and with the HTC Imagio, they make it somewhat useable thanks to Microsoft giving the carriers and handset manufaturers a little give and take when it comes to using the mobile OS.

The Lowdown

The Imagio is a touchscreen Windows Mobile 6.5 handset with a 3.6 inch WVGA screen, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 5-megapixel camera, 3.5mm headphone jack, microSD storage expansion (with no included card), it is also the first smartphone capable of V CAST Mobile TV, and it has a little kickstand.

It costs $200 on contract with Verizon after a $100 rebate.

The Handset

The phone is made by HTC who puts out quite a bit of hardware, but the sad fact is that they keep the specs somewhat similar. This one sports a 528MHz Qualcomm based chipsets but it only has 256MB of RAM, so it can be sluggish and unresponsive at times, and the device itself is pretty thin, about the size of the iPhone but a larger screen.

The front has a perforated grille, which gives it a good secure feel in your hand, and the bottom row of buttons sport the usual green/red call buttons, a Windows Start menu button, a back button and a V Cast button, which you can customize.

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The Software

This is Windows Mobile 6.5, so I didn’t expect much because I moved away from Windows mobile devices because they tended to crash and  be buggy. HTC has done a fantastic job of hiding the fact that you are using Windows Mobile. They replace the homescreen with a nice clock and weather, and have only the relevant items on the homescreen. the start menu is replaced with one that uses large icons, and Mobile Internet Explorer, they said no thank you and replaced it with Opera Moblie. This device is quite usable, and with the Windows Marketplace and MyPhone backup service, if you have to use windows mobile, then an HTC device is definately the way to go.

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V CAST TV

V CAST TV is based on Flo TV, and is in reality quite an impressive technology, it’s like having a mini cable box on your phone, and it offers live broadcasts of some basic cable channels such as CBS, Fox, CNN and Comedy Central. Video quality is fair and it’s definately watchable.

The main problem I have with this is that it’s live TV, and while that is a novel idea, video on demand would be more useful, and the pricing is rather high (see full review here).

Final Thoughts

The phone is good, and HTC has done a good job at hiding the fact that you are actually using Windows Mobile 6.5, but there were more times that the phone froze up or at one time it actually hard reset itself, this was frustrating, but the phone did what it was supposed to and syncing worked great on a Windows 7 machine. Mac syncing was a little more tedious, but with a 3rd party program it worked fine.

I would’ve liked to give this a better review, but Windows Mobile still has a long way to go, and it’s no iPhone killer, and next week I will be posting my review of the Android based Motorola Droid. So if your job or your personal preference is a Windows Mobile device, I would say this is one of the better ones out there, but if you are not tied to Windows Mobile, then you might want to hold off.

Click on the image to go to the iTunes store.

Tap Tap Revenge 3	Backbreaker Football	Tweetie 2
Ping!	Family Guy: Uncensored	Need For Speed Undercover
SkySmash 1918	CNN Mobile	Skee-Ball
MotionX GPS Drive

Click on the image to go to the iTunes store

Marine Sharpshooter	Alarm Clock Free	Ninjas Live – 30 Honor Points
BeerPong (Beirut) FREE	Line Up FREE	Haunted 3D Rollercoaster Rush
Race or Die	Stick Escape Lite	Kingdoms Live – 15 Legend Points
Touch Hockey: FS5 (Free)

In just a little under a month after iPhone OS 3.1 was released, Apple has just released an update for the iPhone OS, upgrading it to 3.1.2. This update fixes the widely reported issue where the iPhone would not wake from sleep, and also fixes an issue involving video playback and cellular service. This update is available for the original iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, and the iPod touch.

[via TUAW]

The folks over at Lifehacker have published a great guide for smartphone users on how to save your battery. The gist of it is:

• Follow the laptop battery rules
• Keep it cool and out of your pocket
• Switch off 3G when unnecessary
• Swith off any unneeded service
• Be frugal with background apps and notifications
• Use a black or dark theme
• Fiddle with screen time-outs and brightness
• Use mobile site versions

I recommend reading the full article over at Lifehacker for more details and information.

An Exhaustive Guide to Saving Your Smartphone Battery [Lifehacker]

Coffee has long been a big topic of discussion among a lot of people. Is it good for you? Is it bad for you? Can you drink too much of it? My coffee is better than yours, etc., the folks over at Wired have written a great article titled – What’s Inside a Cup of Coffee? go check it out to find out what you are drinking every morning.

[Photo courtesy of d u y g u]

Dropbox has finally released its full featured iPhone app (iTunes Link). It works just like it should, you can access all your files on your iPhone, and you can take photos, video or use existing media and upload them directly to the Dropbox.

On first login, You are presented with a brief welcome document that highlights some of the features of the app. Backing out of the document will take you to your Dropbox, which quickly lists any of the files and folders you may have in there. You can also tag stuff as favorites so you can quickly see the stuff you access the most.

I should also note that if you want to watch video you can, you can upload any media file that quicktime will play and you can stream it to your iPhone.

If you don’t have a Dropbox account, get one. It’s a very handy service, and I guarantee you will love it once you start using it.