As was foretold at this site in October, so it has come to pass. The surprise Motorola Q9 with WiFi that the Boy Genius recently got his hands on has turned out to be more surprising than anybody expected: it's loaded with Windows Mobile 6.1.

BGR is down for the count at the moment, but when they return this page should give you a 100 picture gallery of WM6.1. Engadget managed to snag the above screenshot before the traffic laid waste to everybody's favorite spoiler. BGR's RSS feed provides some additional info:

• Copy / Paste (finally!)
• Domain Enroll in Settings (Enrolling in a domain will connect your device with company resources.)
• New home screen (pan left and right to check out missed calls, notifications like email, sms, etc.)
• Change Master Security Code
• Added text input settings
• Recent Programs when pressing Start menu
• Threaded SMS!
• When you compose an email, or SMS, and start typing the name of the contact in the “To:” field, the contact names finally pop up like Windows Mobile Professional!

via Engadget

Update: BGR's Gallery is up

Ed Zander wearing some RAZRWIRE glasses

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p>Ed Zander will be stepping down as CEO of MOTROLA. He'll be replaced next month by GRG BRWN, who is currently the COO and PRSDNT. ZNDR will stay on the BORD for a few MNTHS after his RZIGNASHN. The money quote:

"Next year marks my 40th year in the technology industry. This is the right time for me to move on to the next phase in my life and spend more time with my money."

At this point I'd like to raise the possibility that I may have misquoted him. I've purchased 2 RAZRs -- they were great phones with cruddy software. If the software would have been great on those RAZRs, I'd have not jumped ship to their competitor's featurephones and I would have strongly considered a MOTO smartphone. Because of that bad software experience (and everything I read about their Q), I just blindly assume that their software sucks now. I hear some positive things about the new Q that has 3 letters -- QRS? QZX? Not enough good things to want one or to listen attentively when someone adamantly insists that they've gotten better.

It looks like there's a new contender for syncing Windows Mobile phones to Macs. The latest software from Eltima, called SyncMate, will do all the fundamental desktop syncing tasks for the low, low price of $0 American. SyncMate is a version 1.0 product, with the practically-necessary-nowadays "Beta" tag after its name. It requires Windows Mobile 5 or 6, and a Mac with OSX 10.4 or later.

Though I've long lobbied for the use of a Windows Mobile phone to actually test stuff like this before I report in Dieter's absence, success eludes me. I don't know if this will work with Palm's "secret recipe" threaded text messages on the Treo 750, or really if this will work at all, caveat emptor. [via]

So, it's not uncommon knowledge that Symbian has around 70% of the world smartphone market, nor is it uncommon knowledge that smartphones in Japan tend to be more advanced than what we use stateside, and they tend to have more functionality. This would probably bother Americans, save for the fact that Symbian enjoys approximately a 0% share of the US market and generally no one has heard of it -- the Nokia E62 is the only notable Symbian phone to come to a US carrier in ages (AT&T), and even then it's pretty well under the radar (it's worth noting that the Symbian powered E62 is about the same functionality-wise as your standard Windows Mobile phone).

So Symbian started up a marketing website called Boo Hoo for You, where you can learn about Symbian and watch a crazy Japanese-style animation where you can learn details about Japanese Symbian phones from an, uh, adorable piece of sushi and an equally, um, adorable octoplegic octopus. I mean, naturally, right? What else? (again, it's worth noting that the E62 does more or less none of what's listed as features)

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p> Dieter and I commented about the earlier Palm Flash ad site we thought was bad in our podcast. This one is worse. Waaay worse. Which probably means it will win the Nobel prize for bad flash ad sites. Check out the video for proof. If somehow you're not convinced after that, there's naturally two bad ringtones to seal the deal. [via Engadget]