Late last night, HTC took the time to release an official statement in response to the Apple lawsuit recently filed.

Sounding a bit like an old Family Guy episode, HTC respectively disagrees with Apple's claim that it has infringed on its patents:

“HTC disagrees with Apple’s actions and will fully defend itself. HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer, HTC Corporation. 

Of course HTC was not going to address the content of the claim specifically (save that for the courts) nor were they going to go "ya got us!" either, so in a lot of ways, this is no news.

Still, after rehashing their admittedly impressive track record of innovation in the smartphone business, this is just the beginning of the ordeal and we're sure it'll get more interesting in a few months.

Anyone ready to see Phil reporting from outside a court room? Full press release after the jump.

[via AndroidCentral]

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Of all the other smartphones and all the other operating systems we've looked at over the course of the third annual Smartphone Round Robin, none is as similar to Windows Mobile as Android. That's a little odd, as Windows Mobile at its core is rapidly aging, and Android is one of the newest players of the bunch. But it's true.

With Windows Mobile you get a high customizable operating system, with myriad options available to manufacturers, carriers, modders and end-users. We're constantly preaching the benefit of custom ROMs, chopped up from official releases and recompiled into smaller, faster packages. Android? Same thing. It's available on most major carriers, in several form factors (though front-facing QWERTY keyboards haven't really materialized), and with multiple versions of the operating system.

So is Android merely Windows Mobile's brother by another mother? Will its rapidly rising market share (and mind share) swallow up Windows Mobile and everyone else in its way? Let's talk about that a little after the break.

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We're almost there, folks. It's the penultimate week of the third annual Smartphone Round Robin, and this week Android Central's Casey Chan teaches me a thing or three about the little green robot. I've said it many a time, but Windows Mobile and Android share a lot in common, and we're definitely going to get down to the bottom of it.

In addition, I've started a thread over at AndroidCentral.com to get the help of the Android faithful. Head on over and see what they have to say. And remember than anytime you comment in an official Smartphone Round Robin thread, you're entered to win a free smartphone from that site (up to $1,000). So get to it, boys and girls!

Oh, and check out my Android hands-on with Casey after the break.

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We've mentioned in the past the growing trend of putting Android onto Windows phones and how this is not just an emulator but the full fledged OS running.

Of course the downside has been the difficult task of getting the radios, buttons and other aspects to be fully operational.

Looks like some users of the HTC Touch HD are getting quite the leg up with a nice build of Android 2.0 running on their swanky black slabs.

Big difference here?  This sucka is evidently working with the radios for once--phone calls, SMS, etc.  Looking at this from our Touch Pro 2, we're a bit envious.  On the other hand, there's hope that someday the rest of us will have our Eclair and eat it too. (Ka-ching! Pun of the day.)

See the full video after the break.

[MobileOS News via AndroidCentral]

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Well, look at this little surprise.  Looks like PPCGeeks forum user drellisdee managed to get Android 2.01 to boot up on his Verizon Imagio (see full review) using the HaRET linux bootloader.

While porting Android to our WinMo phones is not that new, nor still far from perfect (most are plagued with hardware integration issues), progress is still creeping along.

We'll just let Drellisdee summarize: 

I've gotten android 2.01 to boot on Imagio based on the topaz work on xda. After changing the the startup config's I've got the touchscreen responding properly but the hardware keys arent mapped right. The latest kernel noted in post 602 on xda didnt boot but the original pkg did. PS vol down is for vol and backup key as its mapped currently and the bottom right onscreen button on the press the android to start will let you change the lang to english.

• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• Hardware key mapping
• CDMA radio
• GPS

Baby steps, baby steps.  Hopefully within a few months we'll all be dual booting the latest Android doughnut-thingamajigger on our WinMo devices.  Why? The same reason WinMo users always innovate: because we can!

PS  Here's the TP2 bounty thread with their bootable version, still in early stages.

In the ultimate comparison of apples, oranges and kiwi; PCWorld has released its list of Top 10 Cell Phones. Not coincidentally, all of its selections are smartphones of some flavor. One thing that is interesting is that the top two devices on the list are probably the two most heavily marketed mobile devices in recent years, but Apple’s iPhone was ranked second, not first. The Motorola Droid came in at the top of the list, which is void of any explanation on what the rating criteria was.

The only Windows Phone that garnered a top 10 ranking was the Samsung Omnia II. Without knowing the criteria for this rating it is hard to determine why solid devices like HTC’s HD2 and Touch Pro2 were left off of the list.

Google’s Android platform placed the most entries on the list, taking 5 of the available slots (1 - Motorola Droid, 3 - Motorola Cliq, 5 – T-Mobile myTouch 3G, 7 – Samsung Behold, 10 – HTC Droid Eris). Research In Motion has 2 BlackBerrys (Bold 9700 and Tour 9630) in the top 10 as well. Palm came in at number 6 with the Pre.

From a hardware standpoint, Windows Phone heavyweights HTC, Motorola, and Samsung each placed 2 devices; though the majority of these feature Android.

What do you get when you shove an HTC Touch Pro 2 and HD2 into the hands of a longtime Android user? Besides a pair of hands that tremble under that much power, you get Casey Chan (of AndroidCentral fame) in the opening round of the third annual Smartphone Round Robin. Casey gets a look at how HTC Sense and TouchFLO 3D stand up to stock the Android OS, as well as on HTC Android fare. Check out the fun here.

But even better than that is the discussion Casey's started in our forums. He has questions, and you guys have answers. And remember that every time you post in a Round Robin thread (either here or at one of our sister sites), you're entered to win a Windows phone from us, worth up to $1,000. Cause we're givers.

We've seen some odd things of late, but the G3 is definitely on top assuming that this ad is accurate (we're skeptical, see below).  Perhaps HTC was just getting lazy or they were like "eh, forget it, lets just throw WinMo on this and see what happens!".

The new HTC G3: a clone of the HTC Hero but sporting WM6.5?

• 460MHz processor
• 320 x 480
• 3.2"
• 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM
• 5-megapixel camera,
• GPS
• Wi-Fi
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• FM radio
• $220

On the other hand, look at the image: clearly that's Android copy/pasted into this mockup, with the Android buttons and no Windows Start key.  This is starting to look more like an advertising error or maybe HTC is confusing everyone. We have a feeling we'll be seeing more of these situations in the future as Android and Windows Mobile routinely swap bodies....they're swingers like that.  Yeesh.

[via UberGizmo]

It is with awe and envy when we see chief Windows phone manufacturer HTC take one of its devices and convert it for the competition.

And that seems to be the case here as the rarely talked about HTC Rome, now appropriately dubbed Touch.B, takes the stage for the first time. And guess that labeling on the back is here to stay? We're okay with that.

Not much is known about the specs, so nothing to get worked up over at this time. It certainly does look nice and we suppose it's not that different from the Eris (which to us trumps Motorola's DROID).  

Still, it is odd having Android running so closely with Windows phones these days. It's like our twin sibling ...an evil twin sibling plotting to kill us.

[UnwiredView via MobiFrance]

Acer, who entered the smartphone market this year, has launched ten phones so far: nine for Windows Mobile and one for Android (that would be the Liquid). Not too bad.

However, in 2010 Acer is looking to "balance" their offering, meaning more Android and less for WinMo (they will continue to offer between 8-10 devices).

No doubt, as the article points out, Android has a lot of momentum going behind it right now (cough, marketing, cough), so we can't really blame Acer for scaling back and going where the money is flowing.

Still, Acer is taking a nice, measured approach to the business and not biting off more than can chew.  Windows Mobile doesn't so much need more devices as a few really good ones--so we'd rather see a company like Acer concentrate on that latter part.

Plus lets not kid ourselves, while WM6.5 is a decent upgrade, it's really the calm before the storm that is Windows Mobile 7 late in 2010.

[Android Central via Reuters]