It’s finally here: Windows Mobile 6.5.3, the iterative finger-friendly Windows Mobile release that should have been wrapped into 6.5.0. The latest mobile wares from Microsoft come wrapped inside the Sony Ericsson Aspen (aka, Faith); a business-focused QWERTY candybar with 2.4-inch QVGA TFT touchscreen LCD, 3.2 megapixel camera, A-GPS with Google Maps, 3.5-mm audio jack, WiFi, and microSD expansion. This latest addition to Sony Ericsson’s GreenHeart portfolio comes in black or white silver and packs quad-band GSM/EDGE with either HSPA 900/2100 or 850/900/2100 radios (depending on region). Available in Q2.

Back to Windows Mobile 6.5.3 for a second, although this is a .dot.dot update it’s actually a fairly significant move for Microsoft. For starters, this release now includes a more finger-friendly layout (no stylus needed even when digging deep into the OS), support for capacitive touchscreens (huzzah!), and acts as a platform to enable multitouch. Microsoft has also improved browser performance with faster page load times and better memory management while improving the pan and flick gestures and zoom and rotational speeds.

Some interesting tidbits came out of Motorola’s DEXT launch in Singapore today — CNET Asia had a chance to sit down with Moto’s Asia Pacific VP Spiro Nikolakopoulos, who said that the company would launch between 20 to 30 Android phones globally in 2010. Spiro also said that not every phone would make it to every market, so we’re guessing the true number will be more like 10 if you count regional variants like the CLIQ and the DEXT as one model. Just by our count, Moto’s already pretty close: off the tops of our heads we’ve heard of the Shadow, the Devour, the Backflip, the Ruth, and several others destined for China — rather impressive for a company that was on the brink of collapse just a short while ago.

I don’t know what everybody else in the phone business has been doing lately, but Inbrics has just unveiled what looks to be the near-ultimate Android phone. The Inbrics M1 is a slider handset with a (great) 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED display, 3 megapixel camera, front-facing VGA camera, 16GB of built-in storage, microSD slot and all the other usual trimmings, but what’s particularly stunning is that the phone is not only half an inch thick, but it has a full QIRTY keyboard that’s surprisingly clicky and typable. The phone is running Android 1.5 right now, but it should be up to Android 2.0 by the time it hits the market in March. The biggest concern is the 800MHz Samsung processor, the same chip that’s in the Samsung Moment, but the interface (as demonstrated in the video after the break) is smooth as butter, and they demo’d it playing back 720p video just fine.

Inbrics actually has a lot of custom UI and software running on top of Android, but the most interesting part is what they’re doing with video calling and beaming media from handset to videophone to TV to laptop over DLNA or through an access point device that plugs into the TV over HDMI. Inbrics also has a Cover Flow-style media browser that isn’t super deep in functionality, but still puts the stock Android stuff to shame, and some rather sexy custom widgets.

The plan is apparently to get a carrier to bite and rebrand this phone in the US, so price and availability are still pretty hard to pin down, but if this phone can hit the market soon it sure could give the rest of the QIRTY Android sliders out there some body image issues.

Unfortunately, the most telling element of this Blu-ray news is that it didn’t merit a mention during Sony’s CES keynote, but a new BD-Live feature will be included on This is It. movieIQ Sync updates the original by allowing users to pull up additional movie info on a PC or iPhone synchronized with the movie — we’re guessing the recently released FBI files won’t be included — without it popping up on the television. The other new feature is the ability to create & share customized playlists of the songs featured in the flick. We’ve been waiting for an event that would change both the reality and perception of internet connected features on Blu-ray — and there’s still some hope — but this probably isn’t it.

Young American woman travels over to Jerusalem to meet some friends, see the sights, live the life. Overzealous border security officers ask her a bunch of questions, take issue with her answers, and a few well-placed bullets later she is allowed entry into the country with a somewhat altered MacBook in tow. So what can we all learn from this incident? Firstly, back up all the data you consider important; B, Israeli policemen don’t mess about; and 3, distressed laptops look gorgeous no matter how they got there — just look at the way the glass trackpad has wrinkled up from the force of the bullet penetrating near it, it’s a borderline work of art. The young lady in question has been promised compensation.

It’s getting closer and closer to check-writing time for Steve Ballmer, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has just upheld a decision that would see Microsoft Word and Office banned from sale starting January 11. If you’ll recall, Microsoft lost a patent infringement suit against XML specialists i4i back in May when it was found that Word’s handling of .xml, .docx, and .docm files infringed upon i4i’s patented XML handling algorithms, but the injunction against further Word sales was put on hold pending the results of this appeal. Now that Microsoft has lost once again, we’d expect either another appeal and request for the injunction to be stayed, this time to the Supreme Court, or for a settlement between these two that would end this whole mess right now. We’ll see what happens — stay tuned.

P.S.- Just to be clear on this, i4i isn’t a patent troll — it’s a 30 person database design company that shipped one of the first XML plugins for Office and was actually responsible for revamping the entire USPTO database around XML to make it compatible with Word back in 2000. What’s more, the patents involved here don’t cover XML itself, but rather the specific algorithms used to read and write custom XML — so OpenOffice users can breathe easy, as i4i has said the suite doesn’t infringe. Existing Office users should also be fine, as only future sales of Word are affected by the ruling, not any already-sold products.
Microsoft says it’s moving quickly to prepare versions of Office 2007 and Word 2007 that don’t have the “little-used” XML features for sale by January 11, and that the Office 2010 beta “does not contain the technology covered by the injunction,” which can be read in a number of ways. It’s also considering an appeal, so we’ll see what happens next.

If you thought the automakers would be leaving CES to the TV and PMP makers, Ford would like to have a word with you. A few words, actually. Aside from announcing that in-car WiFi will be available next year, the iconic blue oval is today calling itself the first car manufacturer to offer factory-installed HD Radio with iTunes tagging capabilities. Slated to become available on select 2011 Ford models sometime next year, the implementation will enable listeners of HD Radio to “tag” songs they like via a single button press; from there, the song information will be logged within the radio’s memory, and up to 100 tags on Sync can be stored until an iPod is connected to suck them down. Once that data hits the iPod, users can then preview or purchase them conveniently through iTunes. There’s no word yet on pricing (we’re being forced to wait until CES), but we’re guessing it’ll demand quite the premium.

Guys Change Your DNS Servers Now

Configure your network settings to use the IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4