The Jawbone Bluetooth headsets from Aliph have been around for a few years now and have impressed many with their noise cancellation features. The original Jawbone would eventually be succeeded by the Jawbone Prime.

Aliph recently released the Jawbone Icon, a chopped down version of the Jawbone Prime, to bolster their line up. The Icon comes in an assorted colors and styles ranging from black dimpled to gray smooth to gold. Each with its own unique nickname (Hero, Rogue, Ace, Thinker, Bombshell, etc.)

We had the chance to take one of the Icons -- the Hero -- out for a test drive and just ease on past the break to see if the Icon lives up to standard its larger siblings established.

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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 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]

Admittedly, we're borrowing a lot from our Android brethren today. But with good reason. The hardware of the just-announced HTC Hero is pretty much the same as what you'll find in the latest Windows Mobile phone from the Taiwanese manufacturer. Qualcomm 7200 processor at 528MHz, 512MB ROM/288MB RAM and so on and so forth.

And so, with the announcement that we'll see a Flash 10 beta on Windows Mobile this fall, let's take a look at how Flash looks on the Hero. Of course, there are two major differences here: The operating system, and the browser. Android uses Webkit for its default browser, same as the iPhone's Safari, and it's a smooth little devil. So we're not really talking apples and apples here, but we should get a decent idea of what Flash could look like in a Windows Mobile browser – be it Opera, IE (gasp) or, eventually, Firefox.

Gander the video here. Discuss in the comments.

And that's the question of the day. HTC has released a slick new phone (pun intended — the darn thing's got a Teflon shell!), with a slick new UI called Sense. So, of course, one of the first questions asked is, "Will Sense come to Windows Mobile?"

HTC, so far, isn't saying, of course. Can't really blame them, seeing as how Sense is all of 6 hours old at this point. But NetworkWorld [via wmpoweruser] is saying otherwise:

The company calls the new software HTC Sense, and it will be introduced in HTC's entire portfolio of mobile phones starting with the HTC Hero. The company is the world's largest maker of Microsoft Windows Mobile smartphones, and handsets running that software will also run HTC Sense in the future.

That's taken from an interview with HTC's chief marketing officer, John Wang, though it's not a direct quote. So we're taking it with a bit of a grain of salt. But we're willing to bet we'll see some Sense knocked into Windows Mobile at some point (sorry, it's just too hard to resist). Whether it replaces TouchFLO remains to be seen.

Update: Oh, yeah. Forgot about this line from the official HTC press release, emphasis ours:

Built on a culture of innovation and a passion to enhance peoples lives, HTC shapes the mobile experience around the individual. Debuting on the HTC Hero and available on all new HTC devices moving forward, Sense delivers on three basic principles: Make it Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected.

So, there you go.

We'll let our pal Casey over at Android Central (hi, pal!) do the heavy lifting here. But that HTC event in London this morning? Heavy on Android, light on Windows Mobile. (The success of the Touch Diamond was touted, apparently.)

HTC unveiled a new phone called the Hero (think G1, only cooler and without a keyboard) and, more interesting to you Windows Mobile fans, a new TouchFLO-like UI for Android called Sense.

Also of interest to you WinMo peeps is that the new phone and UI will be the first to support full-on Flash. You'll recall that we're expecting a Flash 10 beta for Windows Mobile sometime this fall. We're unsure if that's what the Hero is getting, of if it's something different.

So, HTC has been hard at work. And it reasons to say that they're still hard at work on Windows Mobile, so let's hope we see something new from them in the coming months.

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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