Here's some Friday fun for you: Tilt Mobility says the have some internal docs from AT&T showing the specs on many of the upcoming HTC Smartphones in 2009.  We recognize more than a few of these from the massive HTC leak and adding to its credibility is that these specs seem to line up pretty well with the previously leaked details on said HTC devices.

The "SuperStar" running an nVidia AP16 with an monster 3.7" screen sounds pretty tasty to us. We are a little surprised to see "Captain" and "Chief#W" here, could one of them just be another word for "Maple?" Anybody seeing anything else in this list that gets you pumped?

Update: Er, the Tilt Mobility story no longer says that all these phones are slated for AT&T, which makes more sense.

While everbody awaits what we expect will be the announcement of Windows Mobile 6.5 at Mobile World Congress in just under a month, we here at WMExperts know from long, hard experience that with Windows Mobile the announcement of a new version of the OS comes well before that OS is actually available on devices.  Even if Microsoft does announce that they've shipped it off to manufacturers, it takes awhile to bake it in to a device, customize it, and get it finalized for a launch. 

So this DigiTimes report [via] claiming that we'll see 6.5 devices in the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2009 comes as little surprise, especially since the report also claims that Microsoft won't ship the OS to manufacturers until "Mid-2009."  From "Mid '09" to a 3rd quarter launch of a 6.5 device is actually quite fast, so perhaps that will mean that the cool new 6.5 interface we saw surface back in November will be enough to convince phone makers that they don't need to take the time to re-invent another skin to slap on top of it.

Well this is going to take the wind out of HTC's sails a bit for whatever they were going to unveil at Mobile World Congress in a couple months.  See, images marked "DIYPDA.com" (re-posted by user Arlen of PPCGeeks and via Modaco and wmpoweruser) have cropped up -- a full twenty five photos of upcoming HTC devices. We have the full gamut here, from the HTC Iolite (previously seen) to stuff we've been waiting for for quite awhile, like the above HTC Mable, which looks to be the long-awaited 3G update to the Excalibur/T-Mobile Dash.  

We have the Twin, Topaz, Rhodium, quite a lot.  There's everything from WinMo Standard Messaging devices to black slabs to sliders, and they all look good.  Darn near every carrier is represented too.

More after the break

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Welcome to 2009, everybody. We have some big things planned for this year (you should really really be sure to check in on Saturday, January 4th), but let's take a look back at the year that was rapid-fire style. Here's what y'all liked last year:

• Review: First Impressions of the Xperia X1. First review on the net to get beyond the little things with the X1. Sadly, we're still waiting for a wide release of the X1a here in the US (some lucky folks in California notwithstanding).
• GPS vs. aGPS: A Quick Tutorial. Speaking of firsts, Mal's post on the ins and outs of aGPS finally cleared up what the heck was going on with all that stuff. Sadly, we still have all sorts of GPS issues on Windows Mobile and that's not going to go away anytime soon, but at least now we have a better place to start from.
• Reviews Section. Sure, it's not a story per-se and sure, technically our biggest traffic is (naturally) the front page, but our review section is actually chock-full of awesomeness. Accessories, software, smartphones, you name it, we got it, and we have a pretty decent way of navigating the whole thing. If nothing else, this makes us proud of our writers.
• AT&T Tilt ROM Update. A lot of people have the Tilt, yo, and in its initial incarnation the base ROM was a little slow and a little buggy -- hence the anticipation for this bit of news.
• HTC Touch Diamond vs. Xperia X1, Hands-on. Another first and another sign that, at least for the first half of the year, the slavering desire for all things Xperia was nigh unquenchable.

That's some good stuff right there, but there were plenty of other stories that haven't had half the year to build traffic that we're especially fond of ourselves. If you missed them, we recommend:

• Help us Save GPS on Windows Mobile
• Review: HTC Fuze on AT&T
• Inside an HTC Facility: Rumors Galore!
• Motorola Q9h Silver: Firmware Updates Over the Air, and More on the Q9 Series
• Smartphones and Identity: You Are What You Dial
• WMExperts: How-To. Seriously, so much goodness here.