Many Bluetooth Headsets are beginning to make and market small, ultra-portable Bluetooth Headsets. Count Samsung as one of them because the Samsung WEP-500 Bluetooth Headset is a simple, stylish, and ULTRA-small Bluetooth Headset.

The headset itself is no bigger than a quarter, with such small stature does it sacrifice in performance? Or is the Samsung WEP-500 Bluetooth Headset the best of both worlds?

Read on for the rest of the review!

Design

The Samsung WEP-500 is a very impressive looking headset. It’s not the flashiest or shiniest headset around but I think that’s a good choice by Samsung’s Design Team. I think a lot of people will appreciate the WEP-500’s subtle style, it doesn’t overwhelm you with bells and whistles. The headset’s color scheme is classy, with a matte black outlining a sleeker bluish black. It also comes in a version with muted silver outlining a tasteful black.

The Samsung WEP-500 is unique because of its circular design and of course, tiny size. Unlike other ultra-portable Bluetooth Headsets, the body of the Samsung WEP-500 is fairly thin. The indicator light is also unobtrusive but also can be turned off by holding the volume button. I definitely enjoy the overall look and build quality of this headset. Too many times, Bluetooth Headsets scream ‘Hey! Look at me!’. The Samsung WEP-500 is confident enough in its styling choices that it doesn’t feel the need to overcome any perceived shortcomings.

Usability

Because of the WEP-500’s small size, the button layout is rather simple. There’s a multifunction button and volume controls. I found the multifunction button to be much too easy to press and overly sensitive. I’ve hung up on a few calls while trying to adjust the fit and didn’t know what hit me. The position of the button is expected but the button itself is just a little too sensitive for my taste; Samsung should have definitely made a stiffer, less obtrusive multipurpose button.

Another sacrifice in having such a small design is that it requires a charging cradle. I’m not a particular fan of charging cradles because it adds another item that needs to be carried. Luckily, the charging cradle doubles as a carrying case and the WEP-500’s battery life is better than similar headsets. Though 3.5 hours may be paltry to heavy users, for an ultraportable headset, it’s almost as good as it gets.

The fit is decent, the design is almost “in-ear” but it is not as bothersome as in-ear ear buds typically are. Though I did find a few instances where I felt as if the headset was about to fall out—the headset managed to stay fairly secure the whole time. However, I wouldn’t recommend running or even light jogging with this particular headset since there doesn’t seem to be an ear loop option.

A notable feature on this headset is the addition of a secondary microphone. I found it very surprising for a device so small to have TWO microphones. And you know what? The addition of two microphones seemed to have helped and make this headset a standout performer. Callers heard me loud and clear, the echo cancellation really seemed to work. Even in noisier settings, the callers didn’t complain as much as they have in testing of previous headsets.

Incoming audio quality is also very impressive. It has similar technology as Plantronics AudioIQ, which essentially means it adjusts the volume to your surroundings. Specifically, it’ll get louder in loud areas and quieter in quiet areas. Plus the in-ear design helps block out background noise, the incoming audio is really great.

Final Thoughts

Overall the Samsung WEP-500 is a solid performer. It combines subtle style with great audio performance, I am happy to use such a great piece of technology. The fit isn’t amazing but after a few times I’ve grown accustomed to it. The circular shape is unique in the world of Bluetooth Headsets and the indicator light isn’t blinding.

My biggest gripe is the sensitivity of the multifunction button. Samsung really should have made it a bit stiffer, I have accidentally ended a call too many times. After a while I got used to the sensitivity and made it more of a point to handle the headset with care. If Samsung ever comes up with a solution to this minor problem, the WEP-500 will become an excellent headset that everyone should own. In the meantime, I can still recommend this to anyone looking for an ultraportable headset because it still works as advertised: great styling and great audio quality.

PROS

• Great Subtle Design, Classy Look
• Very Good Audio Quality
• Decent Enough Battery Life Compared to Similar Products

CONS

• Ridiculously Sensitive Multi-Function Button
• Charge via Charging Cradle
• Still Not Enough Battery Life

FINAL RATING: 4.3/5

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Review: Samsung WEP-500 Bluetooth Headset

Ouch. Seems Samsung and Sprint tried to bring an Instinct to an iPhone fight. At least that’s how venerable Wall Street Journal columnist and “D” All Things Digital tech yoda Walt Mossberg made it sound in his iClonic “review” (to be fair, the still unreleased iPhone 3G gets more attention — and love — than the unfortunately release-timed Instinct).

How does Mossberg sum up his feelings, some several paragraphs and umpteen iPhone mentions, references, and comparisons down?

If you’re a devoted Sprint customer, or want to avoid AT&T, the Instinct is an OK choice. But it’s no iPhone.

Read

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Rebuke of the iClones: Mossberg Strikes Back!

Pop Quiz: You’re the brain trust up at RIM and Samsung. You know that Apple might just be dropping something hawt today, and last time they did that they set your profitable if complacent industry on its ear, and your execs scrambling to clone catch up. So, your on the precipice of the WWDC 2008 Steve Jobs Keynote — the only thing anyone has been talking about of late — what do you do?

If you answered stay quiet and wait for the hype to pass, you’re now officially smarter than either RIM or Samsung. Absent something innovative and decidedly non-Apple of their own to announce, better not to announce anything at all.

Which, of course, is why the RIM all Touch-screen, all the time Blackberry Thunder iClone “leaked” via Boy Genius and and the Samsung’s i900 iClone is all over Engadget.

Nice try, but buying a cheap knock-off of the prom queen’s dress and showing up before her at the dance won’t hide the fact that you’re hairy dudes with three-piece clone-suits on underneath.

Overly harsh? Maybe, but it’s an iPhone blog on Jobsnote day. They shoulda know betta. In fact, they shoulda saved their energy for their soon-to-be-launched iClone 2.0 initiatives…

(Though they did get some press, eh?)

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Attack of the iClones: RIM and Samsung Double-Team Clonetacular Edition

Confession: The real reason I can’t wait for the iPhone 3G to drop? So that at long last the rest of the smartphone industry will have something new to copy!

Today’s offender is the Samsung SGH-i900, and boy does it run the iClone checklist: rounded rectangular slab? Check. Glossy black facade? Check. Silvered trim? Check. Job dropping interface or any sense of pride in innovation? D’oh! Not even close.

Sister site WMExperts.com offers up the usual suspects specs:

[O]ne of the upcoming batch of über-Windows Mobile phones – 6.1 Pro, 240×400 (weird) screen, 1500mAh battery, FM Radio, TV out.

Way to stand out from the crowd!

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Send in the iClones: Samsung SGH-i900 Edition

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

In this week’s edition: Windows Se7en, Great Googley Android, India’s circling the RIM, the Treo 800w guest commentary, and no other news on Safari for Samsung…

Windows Se7en

Microsoft is still the only real game on the planet, especially when it comes to business, what with their whopping 90%+ share of the market. And as Bill Gates rides off into retirement, he can be justifiably proud at how close he came to his dream of a computer on every desktop and in every home. In that light, his swan song with longtime crony and internet “monkeyboy” dance phenom Steve Ballmer at the “D” All Things Digital was particularly poignant this year, especially given that they chose to use the event to showcase their next generation OS to the public for the very first time.

What groundbreaking new features did they show off? What killer new technology was highlighted? Was it WinFS, the revolutionary all-registry all-the-time file system they’ve been promising since the code-name “Cairo” vaporware of yore? Was it MinWin, the ultra-small, ultra-modular kernel that will return some long absent agility to the platform? Was it a complete revamp of the horrible mishmash that passes for an API stack, cleansing 8-bit fossils and 16-bit artifacts, providing something uniform for the 64-bit future? Was it a renewed focus on their core business users, streamlining bloat and minimizing eye candy in favor of virtualized compatibility and blazingly fast architectures moving forward?

Nah uh.

It was 10 finger multi-touch paint. 10 @#$%ing finger multi-touch paint! Are you kidding me?! From the team that brought us the big @$$ table, we get nothing of the future promised us for decades by Microsoft, nothing by way of making up for the titanic PR disaster that has been Vista, nothing that may convince consumers who are routing towards the Mac in ever increasing droves, and businesses who are stubbornly clinging to the terribly outdated XP or jurassic 2000, to hold out for a better tomorrow. No. We get 10 @#$%ing finger multi-touch paint and yet another in the endless string of failed Gatesian prognostications about interfaces, inks, and whatever else makes him think tablets have been a booming success for over a decade. (Word to Bill – the only thing even remotely resembling a tablet that’s even approached a modicum of cultural penetration is — wait for it — the iPhone, and it wasn’t made by Microsoft).

But what does Windows Se7en have to do with Smartphones, you may ask? (After all, WMExperts.com thought it barely worth a mock-mention). Unlike Apple, aren’t Microsoft’s mobile offerings similar only in that both have the word “Windows” grafted in front of them? Nope. They’re also similar in terms of the minds driving them, the vision of the future those minds have, and the experience those visions seek to bring to us, the end users.

And right now both Windows Se7en and WinMob Se7en are driven by minds so drunk off their collectives posteriors that their futuristic visions are entirely consumer by 10 @#$%ing finger multi-touch paint.

Great Google-y Moogley: Android Gets Slightly Less Vapory!

Microsoft loses money on search, which is pretty much just a way to glue eyeballs to pages so said eyeballs can be blinded by flashing neon “hit the bouncing monkey!” banners. By contrast, Google’s bouncing monkey banners net them somewhere near 8 kazillion dollars a year. Likewise, while Microsoft’s busy showing off a 2010 desktop OS that really, truly hopes to be competitive with Apple’s 2007 mobile OS, Google is readying an iClone that may just ship this year!

Confession: We thought the Google Android demo was right skippy. Caveat: We though the exact same thing when Steve Jobs did it at Macworld 2007.

Memo to Google: We know your CEO, Dr. Evil… er… Eric sits on the Apple board of directors. We’ve heard he recuses himself from iPhone discussions to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Here’s a thought: how about avoiding the reality of one as well?

Apple is all about the paradigm shift. The command-line in your home with the Apple II. The GUI on your desktop with the Mac. Multi-touch in your hand with the iPhone. It’s what Apple does. The gloss, the shine — the boom.

You need to embrace what Google does. All white screens with nothing but search boxes. That’s what Google does. Forget about the overcrowded iClone market and embrace that. That’s your niche. That’s your Zen.

Circling the RIM: India’s Never-Ending Ultimatum

Yeah, we thought this had been resolved too. Seems India’s still demanding and RIM is still claiming it has a headache. Or whatever. Crackberry.com somehow retains the energy and interest to cover it. We just can’t stop snickering over the fact that it’s the Network Operations Center (NOC), pusher of all pushers, single-point-of-snooping, that let’s India push RIM so hard to begin with.

Big brother FTW!

So You Think You Can Smartphone?

Okay, so we’ve been giving the Treo 600… er… 800w a bit of a hard time around here. Fair point. Certainly opinions must vary, and much like we had special guest quotes from Windows Super Siter Paul Thurrott a few posts back, in the spirit of equal time we turn this segment over to TreoCentral uber-editor Dieter Bohn. Go ahead, boss. Tell us all how great the 600 v3 is:

Look at it. It looks cheap. It looks cheap. I’m like secretly hoping that this isn’t the final casing. That they have a secret casing and this is just the stuff they’re sending out to the beta testers. [...] It doesn’t look professional. I mean recessed screens are so 2003. Whatever. Right? [...] The way it’s recessed looks chintzy. The soft buttons underneath the screen are just sort of randomly there. Nothing about it speaks like… It doesn’t speak like… to being solid or futuristic. [...] A business phone should project an aura of power. [...] This is just not good looking. I’ve been saying for a long time now that this is the year you’ve got to cut Palm a ton of slack, and I’ve been cutting Palm a ton of slack, but this looks like cr@p. [...] It does not look great. This needs to look great. They should have one great phone this year and this does not look great. This looks the opposite of great. [...] I tell you what, [when This Week in Smartphone Schadenfreude put up an image of the Treo 600 as the Treo 800w] I didn’t notice. Somebody had to point out the joke to me.

Score!

For those truly interested in the complete, uncensored, Treo 800w curbing, check out the podcast (spoiler: in the name of all things merciful and nostalgic, Mike pulls Dieter off and holds him at bay until the Smithsonian can show up and cart off the old girl’s mangled, circuit board-strewn corpse. NOT for the squeamish).

And in No Other News

Speaking of maulings, some Executard or PR flack over at Samsung, in a fit of drunkful-thinking, shot up a release stating the notly anticipated L870 S60 slider (honestly, do they pull these names off of pseudo-random password generators?) would have not just a WebKit browser, but the full on iPhone Mobile Safari king-of-all-mobile browsers. Absent, you know, an OS, UI, or the basic design and engineering skills to support it.

Riiiiiiigggghhhhhttttt…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

This Week in Smartphone Schadenfreude, May 31st Edition

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

Official: RIM’s Finally Flipped!

What, you thought we’d go straight to the outage double-header? Come on. While we certainly agree there’s no better time to hit a mobile than when it’s (service is) down, even we have some small modicum of mercy. (And by mercy we mean it happens so often it’s not really considered news anymore…)

So we’re switching gears, just as Crackberry.com tells us RIM has flipped out. Good news, RIM has taken a short break from trying to iClone the Apple iPhone. Bad news, they’ve decided to clone the Moto RAZR instead… StarTac much?

Seriously though, we applaud diversity and innovation, and can’t wait to see Blackberry’s next exciting form factor. The brick? The suitcase? The rotary-dial booth? Sarcastic minds want to know!

Storm Warnings

Remember that short iCloning break we mentioned earlier? Neither does Blackberry, apparently. Not content with merely copying the iPhones silver bezel and rounded slab factor, Crackberry.com tells us they’ve now got their sites set on the touch-screen too.

Known as the Storm — or not — RIM affectionately refers to it as the Apple Killer because, as we all know, being able to murder fruit falls right below HTML email on the feature list. Box, consider yourself checked!

No specs or date or anything but desperate promissory vapor yet, though. When exactly did RIM become Microsoft?

Speaking of Microsoft and iClones…

As Redmond gets the Mobile OS X 1.0 competitive WinZuneMob 7.0 ready for beta sometime around two-thousand-and-never, hardware partner HTC is picking up the iClone slack with not one but two little “Inspired by Apple in Cupertino” numbers.

First up, running version 6.6.6 (or 6.1, it’s so hard to keep track!), is the Sony Ericsson branded XPeria (proudly sporting a VISTAperia Capable sticker, no doubt). WMExperts.com expects it to ship mid-September, and in typical Windows fashion it will try to compete with the similarly expected iPhone 2.0 by throwing in every feature they can think of, including a slide-out kitchen sink.

Second up is the Diamond Touch or Touch Pro or Out of Touch or whatever millionth derivative of the Touch trademark they’re overcompensating with next. Similar specs (though smaller screen — c’mon HTC, we know if you try really hard you can iClone Mini your way into a postage-stamp 720p!) hampered by the same OS.

Looks like it might just be rocking a “squircle” control there, doesn’t it? Could this be the fabled Zune Phone? We’re one Monday morning Monkey Boy dance away from knowing for sure…

Microsoft Kills the Digital Stars

Does MSN Music play on WinVistaZuneMob devices? We don’t really know, since we don’t really know anyone who uses MSN Music… or WinVistaZuneMob. But if they did, and you do, they won’t for much longer.

Proving once again how Digital Rights Management (DRM) is all about enhancing consumer enjoyment (TM, RIAA), Microsoft has announced it will soon be enhancing the amount of time consumers will enjoy no longer listening to their MSN purchased music.

As of August 2008, turns out MSN Music will be turning off, meaning no more authorizations. Sure, you can keep on using any machine you already authorized, provided you never, ever, change it or its OS. (No worries there, though, hey Vista sales numbers?)

Hmm, maybe this is why Microsoft tossed the “PlaysForSure” name last December. After all, can’t call it “PlaysForSure” if it doesn’t anymore, right? So what did they rebrand the new, non-working name to? Oh, right… “Certified for Windows Vista”…

All Access Pass

Typical bonanza week for Palm news…

So, anyway, Dieter Bohn (the man who totes more smart phones than the FCC) caught up with Access, formerly Palm Source, formerly Palm, the makers of Palm OS Garnet, (which has literally shipped on every Treo since the stone age), Palm OS Cobalt, (which has literally never shipped), and now the Access Linux Platform (which is only taking slightly longer to develop than Longhorn at this point).

His conclusion? Things are going better than he previously thought. (Of course, any long time listener of the Treo Central Treo Cast knows how low a bar that was to crawl over…)

And In No Other News…

Remember last week:

Our Norfinwedish friends over at Nokia may have convinced Sony BMG to join Universal Music in offering the “unlimited” Comes-With-Music-And-Hefty-Price-Bump market-fart. Maybe. It’s been delayed until mid-2008, probably to get the DRM working extra-poorly. At least that’s all Engadget can Google-translate for now. No doubt they’re preoccupied getting a post ready for when the service goes bye-bye, the DRM locks down, and everyone’s stuck with “unlimited” Can’t-Be-Authorized-Again-Silence…

Sounds even better after the MSN Music debacle, doesn’t it?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

This Week in Smartphone Schadenfreude, May 3rd Edition

Apple Insider’s Prince McLean, whose pieces often seem.. ahem… Roughly Drafted… brings us an in depth look for what we might see in the next generation, 3G iPhone, and in a word, it’s hardcore.

McLean begins with a profile of Imagination’s Open GL ES 1.1, PowerVR MBX that powers the current iPhone (and many other mobile devices), and then gets into the next generation, 2.0, PowerVR SGX — which brings the shaders, and the VDX core with its mobile HD video codec.

Putting the pieces together, including an unprecedented Samsung announcement that it will be manufacturing these technologies, Imagination’s mysterious unnamed licensee, and the flexibility the newly acquired PA Semi gives them, design-wise, McLean (through some assumptive leaps, to be sure), paints a glowing picture of Apple’s future gaming and video potential:

By gaining access to exclusive new generations of mobile graphics technology, Apple can differentiate its products from other smartphones and mobile Internet devices with an edge in performance while offering full support for industry standard OpenGL ES graphics. [...]

Whether this theory is ultimately proven true or not, I think the SDK event — and its clear focus on games — showed that Apple finally might just be taking the space seriously. What do you think?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

3G Rumors: Next Gen Gaming Going Hardcore?

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

Outages Online

CrackBerry.com’s near-constant updates on Blackberry outages not enough for you? Need the latest, greatest, up-to-date-est news on RIM’s downtime in near real-time? Well, apparently so does the guy behind DataOutages.com. (Yes, we realize the domain name doesn’t explicitly convey that the site tracks RIM/Blackberry outages, but it’s with extra special schadenfreude we point out there really isn’t any other kind, b’okay?)

Amazon Pays People to Order Blackberries

We knew the mindset was shifting to Apple, the cool kids were all Cupertino-bound, the status simple was no longer cheap-plastic black but aircraft-grade aluminum, but — wow…

According to Crackberry.com, Amazon was actually paying people to take Blackberries off their hands last week. You read right. $75 big reasons to stick yourself with a tiny screen, tic-tactile keyboard, and all the outages you can eat.

Yeah, still too expensive for us as well…

India or Indiana?

No update on the great Indian crackberry crackdown this week, but in related news American GSM RIM-bounds have discovered their MyCingular.BlackBerry.net email is now being blocked — nay, permanently disabled — as well. Crackberry.com claims it’s some pre-announced corporate branding transition thingy-thangy. Sure. C’mon. Like they couldn’t try to come up with an even somewhat believable cover story?

Someone steals the White House Blackberry recycling box the very same week and we’re supposed to just accept it’s a coincidence? (Good thing they’d already switched to iPhones. Yeesh…)

Balmer: Can Has Moto Q for $99?

Yes you can, and I’ll cede the soap-box for a moment so John Gruber can tell you how that works out:

Motorola’s quarterly results: 27.4 million phones sold and $7.45 billion in revenue. But the bottom line? A $194 million loss. What matters is profit; market share and revenue only matter insofar as they lead to making money. Motorola sold 16 times more phones than Apple for at least 8 times more revenue — but is there a person on the planet who would trade Apple’s phone business for Motorola’s?

Epic failure there, Steve. No achievement points for you. What? You’ve got the RROD anyway?

Karma.

Hit up WMExperts.com for the grisly details…

Palm Dumping Unlocked 750s?

Massive markdowns on the ancient handset, at least according to TreoCentral.com. Will that help? Probably not. They need to take a page from RIM’s book and start paying people to order them? $1000 a pop sound about right?

Treo Tips and Sightings

Brian has branched out his excellent Tips column to TreoCentral, with a handy, dandy gem for contact lookups. By accident, however, he seems to have included screenshots from the 1999 vintage Palm V PDA’s app instead of the latest, greatest Treo 2008 version. The 2-bit, non anti-aliased interface is a dead give a–

What? Those are screenshots of the latest, greatest Treo?

Gulp! Moving on…

Seems Jennifer found Treo’s showing up all over TV. At first I thought that, what with the writer’s strike and all, the networks were so desperate to fill slots they used stuff from the History Channel. Turns out they were new episodes. For something called “Ugly Betty”.

Harsh.

And in No Other News

Our Norfinwedish friends over at Nokia may have convinced Sony BMG to join Universal Music in offering the “unlimited” Comes-With-Music-And-Hefty-Price-Bump market-fart. Maybe. It’s been delayed until mid-2008, probably to get the DRM working extra-poorly. At least that’s all Engadget can Google-translate for now. No doubt they’re preoccupied getting a post ready for when the service goes bye-bye, the DRM locks down, and everyone’s stuck with “unlimited” Can’t-Be-Authorized-Again-Silence…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

This Week in Smartphone Schadenfreude, April 26th Edition

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

Blackberry Out of Outages?

Given CrackBerry.com’s near-constant updates on RIM’s outages, unscheduled, scheduled, re-scheduled, and beyond, I thought there would be no way RIM could top themselves again. Boy, was I wrong. This week marked the first time in a long time (long time being the history of this series, ‘natch) that RIM was complete out of outages!

Talk about poor supply-chain management. Sure, they’ve had infrastructure and service failures before, but a failure failure?

Brain trust in Waterloo: get on it!

India to RIM: Push This!

Those hoping RIM would conceded to India’s desire to invade the privacy and security of every user in the nation — by, for example, setting up proxy servers the way they have in China and Singapore, or just giving Indian security agencies the keys to encryption-city — tough luck!

Crackberry.com tells us Sriprakash Jaiswal, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, has gone and forced carriers to block any and all Blackberry to Blackberry messaging.

India and RIM will meet again soon, but the carriers aren’t wasting any time in fighting back themselves. Expected this week: new advertising campaigns, boasting the first Blackberries in the world with equally good email and media handling!

Microsoft: Gotta Get You Some! (Taste, That Is!)

While WMExperts.com was all over the WinMob news this week (doubtless yet another iterative handset or 3rd party patch for missing OS functionality), I really couldn’t follow it after exposure to Microsoft “leaked” “internal” “moral-booster” video for the troops. Blind and deaf, yet unmercifully not amnesia-tic, I’m left to wonder why they insist on releasing things the world can never un-experience?

(Poor Paul Thurrott was so traumatized he blamed the interwebs for not getting the “joke”, not realizing there are levels of joke, and failing at a joke this spectacular becomes an even bigger joke — laughing at it, not with it, b’okay Paul?)

Treo 800w — Beta!

You’re Palm. You revolutionized the handset industry only to fall so far behind you can no longer see the competition. You’ve saddled yourself with a monstrous OS almost as dated as your design specs. And due to chronic mismanagement you have no hope of releasing your own product or updated OS in the foreseeable future. What do you do?

Drop the beta bomb.

That’s right. Treocentral.com brings us word that Palm is looking for a few good beta testers. Beta, of course, implies unfinished, unfinished demands forgiveness, forgiveness leads to understanding when the inevitable shortcomings and delays follow.

So the company that should have innovated us an iPhone-class device 5 years ago may manage to release a single, dated device this year. In beta.

Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rubenstein!

And in No Other News…

Zip. Zippo. Ziltch. You’d have better odds getting Motorola’s software and hardware divisions working together. Seriously. It’s getting to the point where you just want to give Samsung a gesture alright…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

This Week in Smartphone Schadenfreude, April 17th Edition

Let’s see, another day, another trade show, another shameless iPhone knockoff…

We’ve covered (and recovered) the disappointing iPhone-esque stylings of the new Blackberry, and the interwebs have pretty much beaten the Meizu into a sparking, frying pulp, yet it seems the mobile design world just can’t get enough of Poppa Jobs’ little industry revolutionizer.

It’s been over a year since Macworld 2007, and what has Samsung been cooking up? Something totally unique, original, and game changing all their own? Something to keep pushing the industry forward? Er… not so much. Gizmodo brings us a quick look at the “new” Instinct, set to rock the Sprint network, in all its iPhone “homage” glory:

Samsung’s Instinct may be the best stab at the coveted title of iPhone killah this CTIA.

Oh, really? Stalwart Apple pundit site Daring Fireball retorts:

I enjoy how in this initial report, based on a press release and press screenshots, Gizmodo dubs it a “decent iPhone competitor”, but then when they actually got to see one firsthand it ends up — surprise surprise — that it’s buggy as hell. Plus the web browser, despite the magic bullet of 3G networking, is “painfully slow”.

And provides a Twitter post from Macworld editorial director Jason Snell, both pithy and profound, to sum things up:

Dear writers, announcing an iPhone knockoff is not “upping the ante.” It’s not even calling. It’s putting your watch into the pot.

So, is imitation the sincerest form of flattery or just a sign that no one else in the industry has any of their own Big Ideas anymore? Are you sticking with your iPhone, or just dying to rush out and snap up an iClone? What do you think?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Send in the iClones: Killer Instinct?!