Need a Windows Phone? Got $179? Then Dell may have a deal right up your alley. Dell is currently offering the Palm Treo Pro for the low, low, low price of $179. Yes, it's a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone. Yes, it's not slated for upgrade to WM 6.5 and beyond. But it is an outstanding Windows Phone in its own right.

Also keep in mind that chef's over at XDA Developers started cooking ROMs for the Treo Pro. Even though the Treo Pro isn't "officially" on the Windows Mobile 6.5 guest list, you can get some home cooking that will sneak you in the back door.

The Treo Pro is listed at Dell as the "Dell Daily Deal" so we don't know how long this steal of a deal will last. Thanks goes out to Micky over at thecellphonejunkie.com for passing on this tip.

Update: It appears the $179 "Dell Daily Deal" on the Treo Pro has sold out.  You can still get it through Dell here and at $199 (plus free shipping) it remains sub-$200 and a heck of a deal.

Hey, a $400 unlocked Palm Treo Pro is nothing to sneeze at. But what if we told you it can be had for less than $300, and doing so won't land you in jail?

Dell's got it for a mere $269 (after an instant savings of $130). [Update: Eagle-eyed commenter Davidoff noticed that it's back up to $359. So much for that, but still not a bad deal.] Looks like So if you've been holding off, waiting for the price to drop, do you really have an excuse anymore?

Via Twitter

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em? Dell apparently plans to buy and resell mobile airtime from Japan's NTTDoCoMo to go along with its notebook side of things, a Japanese newspaper reports.

GigaOm explains:

Dell’s plan in Japan involves buying preset airtime from NTTDoCoMo and bundling it with purchase of Dell notebooks that are preconfigured with an appropriate modem. Users can then add more time (or megabytes?) if they need it. If this works in Japan, it’s something Dell may experiment with elsewhere, but it raises the question of whether or not device makers should get into the MVNO game.

This isn't all that crazy — Amazon uses Sprint for its Kindle e-reader. And Apple reportedly thought about becoming an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) for the iPhone, before AT&T picked it up. And we'll speculate one further: If U.S. carriers did in fact turn down Dell's latest smartphone offerings (or not, depending on who you ask), Dell buying its own airtime and releasing the phones itself could be a possibility. But we're not holding our breath for that one.

TechRadar via GigaOm

This is how we love starting off our day — more he said/she said Dell news! So the other day investment analyst Shaw Wu (who gets no love from Daring Fireball) said that Dell shopped two smartphones around to carriers — one a Windows Mobile phone, the other Android. The carriers promptly turned their noses up and sent Dell back to the drawing board.

Today, DigiTimes reports that's just not so.

Dell will not delay the launch of its new smartphone lineup and is on schedule to release devices in line with its internal roadmap, company CEO Michael Dell said recently in Taipei. However Dell did not publicly divulge any details indicating when products are scheduled for release.

Whom to believe? It's anyone's guess. But since everyone seems to know what Dell's up to in the smartphone market, we'll throw our guess into the ring as well. And we're pretty sure you can take it to the bank:

Dell will release some sort of technology in the next few months. It will involve circuit boards, memory chips, a button or two, and more than likely will be painted black. It might make phone calls. It might not.

You heard it here first, folks.

Oh, Dell, what are we going to do with you? For months and months and months (and months) we're teased by rumors that you might be getting back into the smartphone business. And time and time again, we see nothing.

Now comes word from Barrons [via Giz] that Dell's been shot down by the carriers for producing a couple of prototypes that were too "Dell-like."

(Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw) Wu says that he understands that Dell built prototypes using both Windows Mobile and Android, but that the carriers knocked the offerings for “lack of differentiation” versus current and coming products from HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola and others. He adds that the unveiling of the Palm Pre didn’t help, “generating interest from carriers as a viable competitor.”

Wu says that Dell's going back to the drawing board and could well be making acquitisions to try to get the job done.

Hey, it's touch to top what HTC's doing these days. And there's certainly tons of excitement surrounding the Pre. But shouldn't Dell have a little more to show by now?

It's been rumored, sqaushed, rumored and rumored some more, but the Wall Street Journal (pay site) says it has confirmed that Dell is getting back into the smartphone business.

Dell Inc., aiming to rev up sales as its mainstay personal computer business struggles in the recession, is preparing a move into cellphones as early as next month, said people familiar with the matter.

The Round Rock, Texas, company has had a group of engineers working on the phones for more than a year from an office in the Chicago area, these people said. They produced prototypes built on Google Inc.'s Android operating system and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile software, these people said.

Unwiredview dives a little deeper:

Dell has not committed themselves to launching a smartphone yet and may abandon their efforts anytime. But, according to WSJ, Michael Dell has been looking into a smartphone opportunity ever since his return in 2007.

Also, according to WSJ, Dell smartphone development team spent much of last year meeting with suppliers of phone components, several phone software companies, and Asian manufacturers of phones.

Dell smartphones? As early as next month, eh? Don't sound so surprised. We know they've played a part in the Pharos line. That said, the WSJ is quoting unnamed sources, so anything can happen. But might we see some sort of announcment at Mobile World Congress?

A week ago today we posted up this story about the Dell Pharos, confirming longstanding rumors that Dell was finally going to get back into the Windows Mobile game. Then, as Malatesta and I were discussing it during the WMExperts podcast last week, yours truly did a double-take.

See that there Velocity 117 on the left? Looks a might bit like the Velocity 111 on the right that we did a brief hands-on with at CTIA, don't it? Heck, some Engadget commenters suspect that the Pharos 127 is a prettified version of the Velocity 103 (though our money is on it being a prettified Velocity 301).

Either way, it's nice to see Velocity finally get some marketing oomph and it's equally nice to see Dell find a way to jump-start it's entry back into the WinMo landscape. All that being said, these devices don't exactly project the aura of absolute power that used to come with the Axim line.

Remember the Pharos, those GPS-centric things? It's OK. It's been a long while since we first got wind of one running Windows Mobile.

Fast-forward nine months, and a pair of devices — that's the 127 on the left, and the 117 on the right with its VGA screen — reportedly have been birthed on Dell's Web site, reports Engadget Mobile.

The links to the devices are down at the moment, so we have to go with Engadget's specs. We're reportedly looking at aGPS, WinMo 6.1 Pro and 2-MP cameras on the back, and VGAs on the front. They're also reporting tri-band 7.2Mbps speeds for data, which would just be blistering fast. We'll have to keep an eye on these.

Thanks to Patrick for the Tip!

Samsung does it. Palm does it. Motorola still (barely) has its head above water. HTC is doing better than just about everyone else. HP. Velocity. Toshiba. MWg. The list goes on.

Now, according to Digitimes [via], Acer is set to launch its own brand of smartphones in Q1 of 2009. The first devices would be released in Western Europe and Russia.

Windows Mobile isn't specifically mentioned, though it's a pretty good bet, considering the source.

And it's been a couple of months since we've reported any rumors of Dell getting back into the smartphone game, so here goes:

Michael Dell recently told Engadget Mobile that they eventually could be producing "smaller and smaller devices that have capabilities of the [iPhone]."

There. Feel better? Us, too.

Never one to be left out of the smartphone rumor mill, Dell now is rumored to be possibly working on a smartphone.

Maybe.

In an interview with Om Malik, founder Michael Dell drops the following bombshell:

"We are certainly looking at the whole smartphone category, but I wouldn’t expect anything anytime soon."

There you have it, folks.

OK, he did talk about five opportunities that Dell is looking into - consumer business, mobile computers, emerging nations, enterprise and medium/small businesses. And he did note that he's not ready to go public on any plans to work with Android or Symbian.

So that's more than enough to get things going. Let the speculation begin!

Read the GigaOM interview (via Engadget Mobile)