The hot rumor on the ‘nets right now has release 1.1.3 of the iPhone’s operating system pegged for this Saturday, bringing with it a pair of moderately hot features: voice notes and disk mode. Of course, we already have these sorts of goodies available to us through the magic of third-party development, but it’s always nice to get ‘em straight from Cupertino so developers can turn their collective attention to more pressing matters. Since Apple’s unspoken policy here is something to the effect of “new firmware versions don’t exist until we announce them, we won’t announce them until they’re available, and we’ll make them available when we’re good and ready,” we’ll believe it when we open iTunes and get the upgrade notification — good to have something to look forward to, though, hm?

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The Gadget: The Cowon Q5W PMP that has a feature list as long as my leg, which (and this is abbreviated) supports a bunch of video formats such as DivX and XviD, along with various nerd-friendly audio formats like OGG and FLAC. It’s also got an optional GPS mount as well, in addition to 60GB of storage and a 720×480 display.

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In an already interesting article chronicling the last 10 months of the second coming of Michael Dell at his namesake, Forbes mentions two more interesting upcoming products: A suicide chip for stolen laptops that remotely nukes the hard drive, and a smartphone co-produced with Quanta that has “video, an MP3 player and Internet access and [will] be unleashed on the world early next year.” It’s a little off the initial release projection–nowish–but Forbes’ tidbit indicates the rumored project’s still alive and in the oven. Obviously, it remains mostly a blank slate of speculation–what’s the OS going to be? Still WinMo6 or will Dell mix it up? Will it have a touchscreen, QWERTY or both? The list goes on. One thing’s for sure, it’ll be a certifiable test of the new design chops Michael Dell’s been pushing so hard, which we hope are up to the task since there’s nothing worse than a poorly designed smartphone. What do you think should go into a Dell smartphone?

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Let’s start this off this by stating there’s more to this device than what will be listed. This is just what’s known at this point, although these details have yet to be confirmed as final specifications. The BlackBerry 9100 will sport a screen with the dimensions of 480 x 320 (or maybe that’s 320 x 480), 1GB of on-board memory, and an Intel XScale PXA270 processor at 624MHz, clocking in slightly faster than the 620MHz ARM 1173 processor found in the iPhone. The BlackBerry 9000 will sport the dual-threat of GPS and WiFi as well as introducing 3G support (multi-band HSDPA) to the GSM carrier family devices, answering the prayers of many of us. At this point in time, there’s no update to the camera, which remains at 2 megapixels, although we’re hearing there is the possibility of seeing a 3.2 megapixel camera at launch. You all know the drill! Rest of the goodies, after the break!

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So we can’t really delve into a lot of specifics, but today Microsoft showed off the next version of Windows Mobile at their annual Mobius conference. Nope, it’s not Windows Mobile 7 / Photon, but what we saw “is an update, not an upgrade”, was running on current hardware, and is due to manufacturers Q108. Our first impressions: very slick, and has a lot of features that just about any WinMo user will agree is way overdue. In other words, we’re expecting users will be stoked — no doubt about it. Expect specific details on features and the like in the near future, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear more about it CES.

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Color us fairly skeptical friends, but the word from the web is that Moto’s new line of multimedia handsets are going to be dubbed Motorola ZiNE — yeah, we thought the same. We’d heard rumors that new and wildly unoriginal ideas would be rolling out of the labs and design studios at Motorola in the near future and (fingers crossed) hopefully these’ll bring a change of fortune. Apparently the “ZiNE” line will feature a Z10 successor with a big touchscreen, WiFI, and GPS and an 8 megapixel monster with optical zoom purportedly created in conjunction with Kodak. Of course, all of this is fluff and smoke ’til we see the real deal, but know we’ll be posting the dodgy and blurry pics if and when we get our hands on ‘em.

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According to a report from Bloomberg, Apple-BFF and mobile-telecom-extroidinaire AT&T is in talks with Google about joining the Open Handset Alliance. In an interview today, Ralph de la Vega — chief executive officer of the company’s wireless unit — said that the provider is, “Analyzing the situation,” concerning the use of Google’s Android operating system for some of its handsets. Although Mr. de la Vega hasn’t personally met with the search-engine giant, the fact that AT&T is even considering joining the Alliance could have a palpable impact on the industry’s perception of the forthcoming mobile OS contender. As you’ll recall, T-Mobile and Sprint have already jumped on the OHA bandwagon (though to what extent no one knows), and adding the de facto US leader to the mix might really get this stew boiling over. [Warning: read link requires subscription]

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Hoping to catch a little Black Friday love, Samsung and AT&T will be launching the BlackJack II at the tail end of this week, November 23. The Windows Mobile 6 Standard device — successor to AT&T’s pretty darned popular BlackJack — features integrated GPS, a 2 megapixel camera, HSDPA, support for Video Share, and stereo Bluetooth and will be available both in the original’s black (albeit a bit glossier) and in “red wine.” Black launches first, with red wine following on December 6 for $149.99 on contract after rebates.

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Here’s the Venus. Let’s forgot about the connotation of the name because there’s nothing girly about this phone. I’m pretty sure I like it more than the Voyager. Again, I didn’t have too much time with this one last month so a full review will follow next week. I just wish the entire screen was touch, but you can’t have everything in life. Enjoy the pics in the mean time.

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Nice to see Samsung’s sliding gem get a little more real courtesy of the fine peeps at Phonearena. We first saw this guy back in March of this year at CeBIT and have been loving it ever since, cause, what’s not to love, right? QWERTY goodness, giant touch screen, and we’ll be able to get it over here, not just in GSM-land or on Vodafone. No word on dates yet — as this is apparently an early prototype of the final device — but this sort of in the flesh thing seriously makes out hearts sing. Go Verizon!

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