Likely you've already managed to snag your update because we caught these upgrades early as they were posted (early) late last week (Here's your Mogul Update and here's your Touch Update). If you haven't or if you're the sort who rigorously follows the rules, now you can get the official Windows Mobile 6.1 update for the Sprint Mogul and the Sprint Touch. Both will get you EVDO Rev A, A-GPS, and some Sprint TV Action, but strangely the Touch gets an on-board Opera browser while the Mogul is left out in the cold, freezing (literally?) winter of PocketIE.

Anybody applied this yet? We'll hit up the official update ourselves in just a bit, but we're curious to know exactly which version of Opera the Touch is rocking, let us know in the comments!

First we heard it would be the first part of July, then we saw an unofficially official leak of the ROM, now we have the 6.1 ROM itself, available for download at HTC, here.

JayTV wrote in to give us the heads-up and adds that the file is the “Same filename as last week's DCD leak, except a _2 rev on the ROM, and slightly smaller.” Otherwise HTC lists the benefits of the ROM thusly:

1. Upgrades the operating system from Windows Mobile® 6.0 Professional to Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
2. EV-DO Rev. A functionality for faster download and upload speeds when utilizing data services wherever EV-DO Rev. A coverage is available.
3. Advanced GPS functionality including the Sprint Navigation application.
4. Adds the Opera browser.
5. Adds a full Qwerty on-screen key Qwerty keyboard.

Updates 4 and 5 were news to me, but that might just be because the Touch isn't my daily driver. Anybody tried it yet? How's it going?

Thanks, JayTV!

While many will be perusing the Sprint site today to get ahold of the Treo 800w, Solsie noticed that there are a couple of other nice bits there or those of use who aren't addicted to WM Pros with front-facing keyboards. The Samsung Ace World-phone and the Sprint Touch both look a little less awesome compared to the Treo 800w and their prices have been dropped to reflect that, both are now just 99 bucks after the 2 year contract. Go grab 'em if you've been waiting for a price drop.

Hot on the heels of the unofficially official Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM for the Mogul, Frank tips us off that the same soon-to-be-official style Windows Mobile 6.1 action has been bestowed on the Sprint Touch, courtesy of XDA (by way of PPCGeeks). It's Windows Mobile 6.1, it's at your-own-risk, it's likely to be officially official in the very near future, what more can we say?

Frank's looking for confirmation that it's not going to fry his Touch and we suppose we are looking for the same. Anybody dare take the plunge? Perhaps lalala, who saw the Mogul's update and became forlorn because the same wasn't available for the Touch?

We're back a little later than we'd like, but we'll nail this puppy down eventually. This week I'm talking a bit about the Sprint Touch - specifically how Sprint managed to ruin TouchFLO by adding their own applications that feel like they're little more than attempts to pull more money out of you. Fortunately, there are ways to customize the TouchFLO cube on the Sprint Touch. They come to us courtesy of PPCGeeks. Links after the break!

• Download it directly with this link
• Subscribe via iTunes
• Subscribe directly to the Podcast feed with your favorite Podcatcher here
• Check out Microsoft's Getting Started with Podcasts article
• Just listen to it here with this flash player:

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The voting came in on our “Pick Out Next WM Smartphone” contest and the winner was the Sprint Touch by a wide, wide margin. Actually, the real winner was blue4shizzle, who was picked in a random drawing from amongst the votes for the Touch. Congrats Blue - email coming shortly with your prize.

It's actually no surprise to me that the Sprint Touch was chosen to take the place of the Motorola Q9h. Our comparison of the iPhone and the original HTC Touch, lengthy-video-style, is still amongst our top articles.

So! I'll be rocking the Sprint Touch for a couple weeks, forwarding my text messages because I still can't find a service that offers universal phone and text forwarding (Dear Google, Please Fix This, Love WMExperts). If you've got questions, the Sprint Touch currently sitting in my hand has answers. Ask 'em in this thread and I'll answer them.

If your first question is “How's all that TouchFLO 2 action?”, let me answer that right here, right now: Sprint ruined it by putting their own apps on it, apps I don't want. Time to get registry hacking.

As has been previously discussed on WMExperts, all modern CDMA phones on Sprint and Verizon have Qualcomm’s gpsOne chipset in them for e911 purposes and they have also been used for 3rd party services like TeleNav, offering GPS services directly to the consumer via the carrier. Part of the reason why the carriers want to charge for these services, besides the obvious, is to recoup the cost of being forced to implement the e911 initiative, something that we all help pay every month (e911 tax). This may also be the motivation for why Sprint legally threatened the developer of Mobile Gmaps, who offered a free aGPS mapping solution to Sprint customers.

Read on as Malatatesta collects the evidence that gpsOne (though not full gps) for the Mogul, Sprint Touch, and even the 800w!

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As we mentioned in the sidenote yesterday, we're at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment Expo this week. The conference starts today, but last night we got a chance to hang out with Vincent Nguyen of Slashgear and ogle his Sprint Touch for a spell.

New details and photos after the break, y'all.

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