2008 was, to say the least, a banner year for Windows Mobile hardware. Windows Mobile software... well, that's another story; we're still patiently waiting for the same thorough overhaul we'd hoped for years ago, but in the meantime, manufacturers have done an absolutely stellar job of taking the platform to its limits and packaging it in ways that could make any smartphone envious. For this first time, VGA screens (and beyond) have come to market en masse, and -- unlike the 8525s, Tilts, Moguls, and XV6800s of yesteryear, the latest batch of QWERTY sliders look like they've actually got a lick of intelligent industrial design in their DNA.

So these puppies are similar, yes, but they're not the same -- so let's take a quick look at what separates the Sprint Touch Pro, from the Verizon Touch Pro, from the AT&T Fuze, from the Sony Ericsson X1 (whew!).

Generally speaking, when cable providers offer up "triple-play" packages, that third leg is a digital phone that acts as a standalone landline. Singapore's StarHub has a better idea, and it's calling it Home Zone. Hailed as the first commercial 3G femtocell service, the setup puts a MaxOnline-enabled router (free on loan) in the home "so that users can make voice and video calls and send SMS over StarHub's cable network from their mobile phones." Any 3G phone is compatible, and up to four calls can be made simultaneously on a single box. Moreover, all outgoing local voice calls, video calls and SMS are free, though the Home Zone subscription will run customers $30 per month -- unless they get in prior to the start of '09, which will give them half off for the next twelve months. Better hurry, too, as the whole shebang is only available to the first 200 customers at present time.

Brutal honesty here: on election day this past November, the entire Engadget staff (well, those of us with US passports) collectively agreed that casting our vote via SMS or some other incredibly simple method would be infinitely more awesome than trudging out in the streets and waiting in hour-long lines. Clearly, some higher-ups in Estonia are on board with that concept, as its Parliament has approved a law that will likely make it the first nation on Planet Earth to give citizens the right to vote by phone in something that matters (American Idol notwithstanding). 'Course, those who choose to take advantage must first obtain a free authorization chip for their handset, which sort of kills the whole "not having to leave your house" aspect of all this. Ah well, at least we're moving in the right direction.

MTV and French carrier SFR are back at it with yet another remix of their Modelabs-sourced music phone, and this one's just about as funky fresh as we've seen 'em. Following the MTV3.3, the new MTV3.4 carries the torch with one-click access to MTV content (in other words, you'd better really be into MTV to buy this thing), a 2-megapixel camera, 3G, video calling, and microSD expansion. It runs as little as €9 (about $12) depending on the plan and the contract -- so MTV aside, it seems to be a pretty good deal considering you're getting a tricked-out 3G slider.

Look, we needn't tell you that things aren't exactly kosher for Sprint right now. SK Telecom just said "thanks, but no thanks" to a potential relationship, it managed to post a net loss of $326 million in Q3 and it's staring down the barrel of a $1.2 billion class-action ETF suit. All that considered, the sudden and apparently unplanned departure of the carrier's head of CDMA isn't apt to help things. John Garcia, without any (public) rhyme or reason, has decided it best to not clock in on Monday, and at the moment of his leaving, the company had no comment on the situation. Bigwig Keith Cowan has been chosen as the interim replacement while it searches for a successor, and in related news, Bill Morgan (SVP of brand management) will begin reporting directly to CEO Dan Hesse.

[Via mocoNews]

We can't recall the last time a mega-corp informed the public that it had a "good" quarter (as in, it literally described the quarter as "good" in its headline), but we can't help but chuckle at this one. Deutsche Telekom has done what few other companies have managed to do of late, and that's post an impressive Q3. Even in a "difficult market environment," net income was up €0.6 billion ($775 million) to €0.9 billion ($1.16 billion) compared to a year ago, and it managed to snag 670,000 new T-Mobile USA customers all the while. As with most other carriers these days, DT also found lots of income flowing in from data usage; total data revenue (excluding messaging) was up 28.3% to a whopping €639 million ($825 million). For number crunchers and optimists alike, tap the read link for more material you're sure to love.

[Via mocoNews]

In the wireless biz, simple economics ensure that the little guys have a harder time of everything, including the all-important matter of getting decent handset selections from manufacturers. That's just the tip of the iceberg, though -- beyond the lack of hot hardware, rural carriers are struggling to find a way to pay for network upgrades that'll get them in line with what the rest of the world's up to. Some 28 companies so far have banded together as NextGen Mobile, a consortium designed to share the cost of network upgrades and give smaller operators a unified voice for approaching manufacturers and demanding what it calls the "next 'it' handset." Though members haven't yet been identified, everyone involved in NextGen is GSM-based and either has or intends to deploy UMTS -- and down the road, LTE. We're probably not looking at a team that's going to be challenging Verizon or AT&T for market dominance here, but if it means more people are going to have access to high-speed data faster, we're down.

As much as we hate that true, no-strings-attached unlimited data plans are being killed off one by one, we appreciate that carriers have had the common decency (well, sometimes) to impose caps as "soft" ones -- going over repeatedly might irk 'em into throttling your bandwidth or tearing up your contract, but at least you wouldn't be getting a bankruptcy-inducing bill in the mail without any warning. Watch yourself, boys and girls, because that's now changed on AT&T, where the one and only domestic DataConnect plan offered for laptops -- 5GB for $60 -- now features an overage charge of $0.00048 per kilobyte. Running the numbers, that works out to a staggering $480 per extra gigabyte -- and on a laptop, a gig isn't hard to burn through at all. We guess AT&T would probably either cut you off or give you a call if you went way over, but by then, you've dug yourself a pretty deep hole. It's all pretty ridiculous, and we're hoping they're only a few lawsuits away from reconsidering the way they're handling this.

[Thanks, Bill]

Update: Several tipsters have written in to let us know that AT&T shuts you down after you've racked up $100 in overage, which seems awfully arbitrary. If we're seriously going to keep going with this per-kilobyte model, can we get a configurable hard cap or something? Thanks, everyone!

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Yahoo reports that ComScore a leader in measuring the digital world, today released April 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, revealing that U.S. Internet users viewed 11 billion online videos during the month, with YouTube.com accounting for more than 4 billion of that total.

Nearly 135 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 82 videos per viewer in April. Google Sites also attracted the most viewers (83.7 million), where they watched an average of 50 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (52 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (37.3 million) and Microsoft Sites (29.9 million).

A fresh look at Yahoo's search results Thursday by Hitwise Intelligence raises the question of whether Yahoo could survive just fine without its search engine.

Such a question is rather important to Yahoo investors, given the Internet search pioneer has given a cold shoulder to Microsoft, which has previously expressed interest in buying Yahoo's search assets. Yahoo, however, rebuffed the offer, noting in its investor presentation that selling its search assets, including its algorithmic search, would:

Jeopardize the Yahoo user experience and make it difficult for Yahoo to maintain search and display volume.

But Heather Hopkins, vice president of research for Hitwise, noted in her blog that Yahoo's valuable sites would not necessarily fair poorly without Yahoo's search engine.

Hopkins took Yahoo's top 20 U.S. Internet properties for the month of June and ranked them, based on user traffic.

As expected, Yahoo Mail represented a 37.5 percent slice of the traffic pie, followed by the main Yahoo site with 30.6 percent and Yahoo search with 12.l percent.

Microsoft plans to cut the price of its best-selling Xbox 360 Pro model by $50 to $299 in the next few weeks, the Hollywood Reporter reported, citing anonymous sources.

The price cut for the Xbox 360 model with the 20 gigabyte hard drive will come before the video game industry's biggest trade show, E3, taking place in Los Angeles on July 15-17, the report said.

Rumors of the Xbox price cut swirled on popular gaming blogs Joystiq and Kotaku last week. The two sites received snapshots of Kmart and RadioShack flyers advertising the $299 price.

A Microsoft spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.

Microsoft last cut the price of the Xbox Pro in August, from $399 to $349, prior to the release of Halo 3 the following month.

A cut to $299 would make the Xbox 360 Pro $100 less than one of the console's major rivals, Sony's PlayStation 3 with a 40GB hard drive.

Microsoft is locked in a three-way competition with Nintendo's Wii and the PlayStation 3, which comes with a high-definition Blu-ray video player.

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