Qualcomm Incorporated today announced the Company has sampled its first dual-CPU Snapdragon™ chipsets. The Mobile Station Modem™ (MSM™) MSM8260™ and MSM8660™ solutions integrate two of the Company’s enhanced cores running at up to 1.2GHz. Targeted at enabling high-end smartphones, the MSM8×60 solutions are third-generation chipsets from the Company’s expanded Snapdragon platform, which has been powering smartphones, tablets and smartbook devices in markets around the world.The MSM8260 for HSPA+ and MSM8660 for multi-mode HSPA+/CDMA2000® 1xEV-DO Rev. B feature two enhanced CPU cores running at up to 1.2GHz for high levels of Web application and multimedia performance, including a powerful GPU with 3D/2D acceleration engines for Open GLES 2.0 and Open VG 1.1 accelration, 1080p video encode/decode, dedicated low power audio engine, integrated low power GPS, and support for 24-bit WXGA 1280 x 800 resolution displays.

Although there is an application called Google Maps Mobile preinstalled on almost every new Windows Mobile device, not every user is happy using services from such an "evil, privacy spying" companies like Google. Fortunatelly, there is an alternative mobile client called OpenMobileMaps used to access maps and other data on the online map server named OpenStreetMap. Sure, it is not as good as GMM but it is sufficient for all basic actions like viewing maps in many zoom levels, locking position using GPS or GSM triangulation, searching addresses, calculating routes and a few others. An internet connection is required to get the maps, however you can still download the map tiles with your PC and transfer it to your smartphone using JTileDownloader or get them directly on your mobile device using PDA TileManager so you can save your money and mobile bandwidth. You can get OpenMobileMaps for free in out freeware section now.

Although it seemed that Samsung fell in love with Android and its own Platform called Samsung Bada, fortunately it doesn't mean that there will be no Samsung Windows Phone devices anymore. As you can see yourself on those two YouTube videos, there is work in progress on at least one Samsung WP7 device. Besides a very nice demo of system speed and responsiveness an that fully functional Samsung prototype, there is also a short demo of an Xbox Live Arcade / iPhone game port called Twin Blades by Press Star Studio. It was done in a week by one programmer using 90 percent of the Xbox Live code which is quite impressive. More…

Since there is quite a little of interesting topics in the Windows Phone 7 area these weeks, number of rumors and unofficial information grows rapidly. Yesterday we told you about the new HTC Mondrian where all rumors including image renders were based on info found in the leaked ROM and now there is another HTC Mondrian with different specs and render in colors. According to PocketNow.com, this version of HTC Mondrian supposed to be powered by Qualcomm QSD8672 chipset running at 1.5 GHz, 16GB of internal memory and 512 MB RAM, 3.7" WVGA AMOLED capacitive touch screen and 8MP with auto focus with camera flash with High definition 720p video capture. Dimensions of the new device could be 116.7 x 58.7 x 11.9 milimeters. So, take your pick...

The very first moment when the new device is unboxed and turned on for the very first time is called "Out-Of-Box Experience" and is considered to be a very special and important moment for all users. According to XDA developers, it seems that Windows Phone 7 will bring major change to the OOBE process. Unlike the current version, Windows Live service will be required for complete use of WP7. The following image from a confidential Microsoft document shows us the exact way that WP7 will be customized. As you can see, internet connection of any kind (GSM, WiFi) is required to activate a new device; if there is no connection, the activation process will be suspended until you get some.

This weekend, there was the very first Windows Phone 7 ROM image spotted on XDA developers. According to the file name, it was downloaded from an unknown device called HTC Mondrian. Now, there is more info about the device. There is a device image which could be the HTC Mondrian, but which could also be just an universal Windows Phone 7 image used when the device is connected to the desktop computer. There are also references to a 4.3-inch WVGA (480x800) display from Optrex and a 1.3GHz QSD8650A/B Snapdragon from Qualcomm in the file. Of course there will be many other features like digital compass or Bluetooth but seems to lack a keyboard.

Just in case you missed it, Microsoft released the final version of Office Mobile 2010 last week. This useful pack contains five applications - Word Mobile 2010, Excel Mobile 2010, PowerPoint Mobile 2010, OneNote Mobile 2010, and SharePoint WorkSpace Mobile 2010. While there are not any significant improvemets in the first three named, PowerPoint Mobile is now much better. Not only it allows you to edit the presentation (well, at least it supposed to but when I tried it, I got the "PowerPoint Mobile doesn't allow editing of .ppt, .pps., .ppsm and .ppsx files" error message), but also features a new "Presentation Companion" option allowing you to control presentation running on desktop from your mobile device. Also business users will be pleased with the SharePoint WorkSpace Mobile 2010 tool enabling direct access to the documents stored on company's SharePoint server. More…

Beginning today you can download the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP Refresh (WPDT CTP) from http://developer.windowsphone.com, which means you can now build Windows Phone 7 apps on the final release of Visual Studio 2010 (VS2010). While this update is primarily intended to enable development using the final release of VS2010 there are a few new things here too. More…

HP and Palm, Inc. today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors. The combination of HP’s global scale and financial strength with Palm’s unparalleled webOS platform will enhance HP’s ability to participate more aggressively in the fast-growing, highly profitable smartphone and connected mobile device markets. Palm’s unique webOS will allow HP to take advantage of features such as true multitasking and always up-to-date information sharing across applications. More…

One of the most unpleasant features of the current Windows Mobile is very difficult way of upgrading to the new OS version. Now only the manufacturers are responsible for the updates and since there is no direct profit for them developing and distributing updated versions for yet released devices, they are usually not so active. And we don't talk here only about the major upgrades, but also about smaller fixes and updates. The good news is that in the upcoming Windows Phone 7, there will be a big change in this system because only Microsoft will be responsible for both developing and distributing system updates and upgrades. At least according to Charlie Kindel who is an important member of the Windows Phone team in Microsoft and talked about it recently in this interview. More…