See what we did there? Used the alternated spelling of colored. You know, for Canada. Anyhoo, Electronista says "sources familiar with its [HTC's] plans" have it that the Canadian network will be the first in North America to pick up the HTC Touch2, a lower-end touchscreen Windows Mobile 6.5 phone, and that they'll be available as red, black ok blue slabs. No word on actual availability. [Electronista via Engadget Mobile]

The Xperia X1, Sony Ericsson's great mediocre experiment, apparently is headed for a soft launch on Canada's Rogers network. [via BGR]

Stores will start getting stock on June 9, but it doesn't look like they'll all have it on hand. If the stores aren't selling copius amounts of data, well, no X1 for you! June 30 is still named as a full retail launch, with the 3-year contract price listed at $249.99, and all the way up to $749 sans contract.

Canadian GSM carrier Rogers has decided that they like Windows Mobile, apparently, as next year they'll be snapping up pretty much everything that's on the roadmap. What's in store for the first half of 2009? Xperia X1, Check. HTC Diamond and Touch Pro: Check. Heck, they're even snapping up also-rans like the Motorola Q11 (Think Q9 minus 3G plus WiFi), Touch Viva, and Touch 3G.

These and more juicy details at the HoFo thread where the leaked slides of their roadmap appear.

Get some reasonable data rates on the network and, well, we might just consider brushing up on our Canadian accents.

Thanks, Bla1ze!

Rogers already carries some nice Windows Mobile phones, including the Samsung Jack (presumably no Canadian company dare call a smartphone “Blackanything”) and we've confirmed that they'll be getting the HP 910c soon too.

The exciting news, however, is that we've received confirmation, based on the internal doc above, that Rogers is definitely going to be picking up the HTC Touch Diamond. That's the GSM version, friends (it being Rogers and all) and it's going to work with Rogers' 3G network. As in: it will have the same 3G bands that AT&T uses in the US of A. As in: you'll now be able to buy a Diamond from Best Buy and from Rogers, but there's still no word yet about AT&T.

Come on, you lovable blue globe, you know you don't want to let Rogers have a North American exclusive on this, right? Besides, you wouldn't want the HTC Fuze to get lonely.

Our pal Kevin over at sister site CrackBerry.com snagged a Rogers Quarter 3 Roadmap. They're interested in the Blackberrys, of course, but we're interested in this: it looks like Rogers will officially be picking up the HP 910c, which our dear reader Eric reviewed for us a few weeks ago. Pricing and exact availability dates are unknown, though you can pick one up yourself directly from HP for 500 clams.

Eric was a fan of the 910c and rightfully so, but the question of whether or not AT&T will officially pick it up the US is still up in the air. Nice to see Rogers step up to the plate, now if they'd only continue their trend of capitulating to user demand and reducing data prices.

Our neighbors to the north are getting the BlackJack II (priced at $299.99 on a 3 year contract, $399 without. Canadian dollars, natch). However, they're not calling it the BlackJack II, they're just calling it the “Samsung Jack.” Why's that? We don't know for sure, but we suspect that it's related to the fact that Canada is the home turf for Research in Motion, who settled a suit with Samsung over the BlackJack name just over a year ago. We're not going to say that suing Samsung over using the word “Black” in a device name is a sign of fear, because it looks like it's Rogers/Samsung who are the nervous ones here.

Or maybe it's not so nefarious as all that, maybe Samsung is taking a page out of HTC's branding book, the page titled “Just call it whatever the heck you feel like.”

via Smartphone Thoughts