Ah, Treo 500, you arrived on a wave of crazy, mixed up “gandolf” rumors, landed with a splash, and were promptly washed away across the sea - we'd hoped you'd be available in the United States, but our hopes were dashed. Turns out, though, that though the Treo 500v is slightly underwhelming on paper, it's actually not to shabby in person. Great build quality and a relatively small price make it a modest success. Palm looks to capitalize on that modest success by offering it unlocked (instead of tied to Vodafone), according to Reg Hardware. It should happen sometime next year.

Good on Palm. Now, if they'd only make a version that would work in the United States (and bring back the ringer switch!), we'd be happy. During the TreoCast recording last week (and getting published soon-like), Mike suggested that such a move would help the 500v out in China. See, China requires miniUSB on all their cell phones .... and the Treo 500v is the only Treo (heck, the only anything) that charges via miniUSB. hmmmm.

So as a few of you may know, the Motorola Q Q9c on Sprint is the first Windows Mobile device on that network to have GPS enabled (throw your hand-made confetti in the air!). Not only is it enabled, but it is fully “open” meaning the COM Ports are visible to external programs, like Google Maps or the arguably superior Microsoft Live Search with Speech input (cue more confetti).

Interestingly, it appears that the GPS enabled on the device is only set for direct satellite connections--there are no connections to Sprint’s aGPS assistance servers. In this sense, the Moto Q9c’s GPS is more like a true-standalone unit. Good, right? Not really, it could be better.

StarmanDX over at Sprint Users kindly posted this little trick which will not only keep your satellite guidance, but add Sprint’s assistance servers. The benefit? Your GPS signal acquisition should be a lot faster, stronger, and work indoors as well as city environments. Win-win if you ask me.

Full instructions after the break!

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We have been talking about developing technologies for offering massive storage for mobile devices for 2 ½ years now in the "Flash or HDD? That's the Question thread".  Intel just announced a huge step in offering GBs for cell phones with their new Solid State Drive (SSD) that is smaller than penny and weighs less than a drop of water, according to their press release:  

The tiniest in the industry, the Intel® Z-P140 PATA SSD is designed for ultra-small mobile internet devices, digital entertainment and embedded applications and is part of the proposed Intel “Menlow” platform. The Intel Z-P140 PATA SSD comes in 2 Gigabyte (GB) and 4GB densities, extendable to 16GB.

According to the Intel Product Brief this little SSD can hold its own with Read Throughput at 40 Megabytes / sec and Write Throughput at 30 Megabytes / sec and is tested with a Mean Time Between Failures at 2,500,000 hours (which if you are curious is 104,167 days... which is just over 285 years... which leads to... how in the heck did they come up with that?).

Today we are begging phone manufacturers to include at least 128 mb in any given phone and we willingly fall to our knees in praise when they put 256 mb of memory / storage in a phone.  Could you imagine the reality of having somewhere between a 2 GB to 16 GB of internal memory / storage on a phone be commonplace? Because we here at WMExperts can (and do).

When is this really going to be a reality?  I am not sure.  The Intel Fact Sheet does not come out and say specifically, but it does alludes to the possibility that it will be released with their proposed Menlow platform, which will be released to manufacturers sometime during the first half of 2008. Though, again, it's not clear that that the Z-P140 PATA SSD will be included with this first generation release of the Intel Menlow platform. 

All of which means that 2009 is probably the most optimistic projection for inclusion in GSM phones.  For those of us on CDMA networks here in the states, well, we'll probably be waiting another year after that for the typical catch-up and personalization phase (assuming, of course, that our CDMA carrier is even around anymore!)

I was just chatting with Merlyn3D about the BlackJack II and he wondered, innocently enough, whether or not the BlackJack II would be upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1. I smacked my forehead - of course it will be upgradable. We know because Microsoft told us so in October.

“But WMExperts,” you ask, “Windows Mobile 6.1 is still in the ethereal land of myth and rumor. How could Microsoft have confirmed the upgrade back in October, when 6.1 was but a whispered dream?”

We reply: that's some fancy prose there, bub. But check it: at CTIA in October, they announced Microsoft System Center, Mobile Device Manager 2008 (aka MSCMDM). As part of that announcement, they mentioned that it would require “forthcoming versions of WM devices.” “Forthcoming versions,” eh? Sound like WM6.1 to you? Because it does to us.

They also mentioned a couple of devices that would--for sure--be compatible with the device-management software:

• The Treo 750
• The BlackJack II

So either the Treo 750 (recently upgraded to Windows Mobile 6) and the BlackJack II have secret settings for MSCMDM or - more likely - they'll require an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1. Those were the only two devices named by, er, name; but we also know that HTC, Palm, Motorola, Sprint, and i-mate all announced they'd be on board with MSCMDM at or around launch in the 2nd Quarter of 2008. Nothing shocking there, but good to file away.

So WM6.1 is probably coming. But when? Make a couple (wildly optimistic) assumptions: that both Microsoft and these device managers will be on time; then you should see WM6.1 before Q3 of next year, say by the end of the summer. Why “wildly optimistic?” Maybe you haven't noticed, but Palm got their WM6.0 update for the 750 in just under the wire and Samsung has yet to release the long-promised upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.0 for the original BlackJack. So we aren't going to be placing any bets that Palm and Samsung will get their upgrades out on time.

At least we know WM6.1 running on at least one Q9h somewhere, somehow. Hope, as it tends to do, springs eternal.

Read: CTIA: Liveblogging the Steve Ballmer Keynote - WMExperts