Screenshots purporting to be of what will be version 6.0 of the BlackBerry OS have surfaced, though there are some doubts as to their authenticity. While images of the software running on an in-development BlackBerry handset would be quite compelling, these show only the screens. While they could be imaginative mock-ups, the source is supposed to be quite reliable. All we can say for sure is that, whatever the pics show, it looks super-clean and crams plenty of data through customizable widgets onto one screen. If RIM's next OS doesn't look like this, the company should seriously think about hiring whoever generated the shots.

In the Windows Phone 7 world, a programmer took a close look at the recently-released development kit for the OS and found that he could modify the software emulator to run an unlocked version of the still-forthcoming system. It's clear why Microsoft tried to disable this capability, as some of the software's screens look very piecemeal and unpolished, but all the basic functionality is there. The functions that are getting some of the most chatter are a file explorer and process viewer, two pieces of code that would have been right at home in older Windows Mobile releases, but seem to run counter to the iPhone-ification Windows Phone 7 is receiving, including disabling cut-and-paste and multitasking. We'll just have to wait to see if they end up making it into the final release.

It's taken Apple since the iPhone originally came out to recognize the user demand for something as simple as copy-and-paste functionality, yet Microsoft looked like it was about to repeat the same error. News broke yesterday that the next version of the company's mobile OS, Windows Phone 7 Series, would not include the ability to copy and paste, despite previous incarnations of Windows Mobile being able to. Now it looks like the missing function will be an upgrade in future Windows Phone 7 releases.

If we're to believe the latest tipster, the development team behind the software is well aware of the demand for cross-application copy and paste, but including it along with all the code needed to be written and tested for Windows Phone 7 was impossible under their time constraints. Once they finally iron out the last of their bugs and get the operating system ready for release, copy and paste may be able to be considered again as an upgrade for a future software version.

At least it seems clear that the coders know they want to add this, unlike Apple's apparent resistance to the topic, but adding it after the fact could be messy. Will it break existing apps or not work with certain hardware models? Not including it from the start seems to create more problems than anything else. What do you think? Would you prefer to wait another couple months for Windows Phone 7 series if it meant getting copy and paste, or are you glad the team is sticking with their deadline?

You may have heard of airlines toying with the idea of fully-electronic boarding passes - you'd download your flight data to your cell phone, and then show the screen to the airline employee at the gate. While the airline industry isn't quite ready to embrace that use of the technology, the movie industry isn't so hesitant, as ticket-vendor Fandango is launching a similar service to get you into the theater with just a flash of your cell phone screen.

The ticketless Fandango Mobile Ticket program is kicking off in just eight cities, so it could still be some time before you get a chance to try it out, but if you're in an eligible area you can purchase your tickets online or straight from your phone and have the company send you a text message or MMS containing your ticket info. Show that message to the ticket-taker at a theater in one of those cities that's supporting the experiment, and you should be able to catch your show without having so much as a ticket stub on you.

Movie-goers in New York, California, New Jersey, Texas, and Hawaii can try out the service at participating theaters. Check out the list to see if there's one near you.

While gadgets come in all shapes and sizes, they tend to follow some basic rules for their form. Widescreen laptops for gaming, ruggedized ones for industry, and even tiny netbooks are all basically the same design, just scaled and tweaked to their intended applications. That's not to say that these relatively basic changes don't excite us - just look at the buzz around the iPad, just a scaled-up iPhone - but it's not often that we see something that just looks new. Qualcomm may be bringing such a product to market: a dual-hinged, three pane touchscreen, folding mobile device.

This innovative Qualcomm design was revealed through a patent application filing. Three panels are attached along their long edges to fold up into a Z-shape when closed into a phone-sized form-factor. The internal screens would shut off, letting you still interact with the outer ones. Fully unfolded, you'd be looking at a unified widescreen display. It may not replace a proper monitor, what with the two vertical seams running down it, but could be an awesome portable presentation tool or impromptu sign.

By folding the device partway, you'd be able to configure it to act like a laptop, using one touchscreen as a virtual keyboard, or as a self-supporting display to act as a clock or notification screen. Qualcomm intends for the device to recognize the configuration you've folded it into and automatically adjust its interface and behavior accordingly.

The logistics of making something like this make it seem like it's still a couple years off, if it ever gets made at all. It would have to be very sturdily constructed and all those screens would cost a pretty penny. We're optimists, though, and this looks cool not to get made.

Taking a cue form Apple, which turned a phone into a successful gaming platform, Sony is reportedly working on its own hybrid device, combining PSP-like gaming with a full-featured cell phone.

One of Sony's goals as of late has been to increase cooperation between its various divisions, so this seems like a perfect test run to see if the phone guys and the games guys are able to play nice and put together a polished product, rather than something that feels like a PSP just had a phone glued to its back. The seamless integration of the iPhone's ability to play games and function as a phone is a big part of why it's been so successful at doing both. On the other hand, look at a failed project like N-Gage: on the first model you had to pull out the phone's battery just to get at the game cartridge slot - the phone part seemed to be fighting to keep you from playing games on it.

Sony hasn't leaked the details on just what this new gaming phone will be. We don't know if it's going to be directly compatible with the PSP, or maybe forgo the optical drive and play downloaded content only. You won't have to wait long to find out, though, as the project is scheduled for this year.

Also on the Sony horizon, the company is working on its answer to the iPad, again drawing on resources from multiple divisions within. Think laptop meets e-book reader with a dash of gaming thrown in. This one should also be headed out of the gates sometime in 2010.

If you were planning on buying a smartphone now with Windows Phone 7 Series in mind as a future software upgrade, you might want to think twice. Microsoft is being so strict about conformance to its design goals for Phone 7 devices that, unless a product matches them precisely, it will be denied the upgrade.

Case in point is HTC's HD2, which has the same capacitive touchscreen about to become commonplace on Phone 7 handsets. Even though the phone has the processing power to spare, and all of its specs at or above Phone 7 minimum requirements, there won't be a Phone 7 update available once the OS is out, simply because it has too many buttons.

Microsoft has it in its head that a proper Phone 7 device will only have three buttons, while the HD2 has five. While having two unused buttons doesn't seem like a big deal to us, apparently it's a deal-breaker for Microsoft. Could this be the start of an Apple-like focus on design over functionality?

Windows Phone 7 Series should be released before the end of the year.

It's been just over a week since Microsoft revealed its Windows Phone 7 operating system at the Mobile World Congress, and we've already got the first word on a release date. According to sources from manufacturer LG, the first Phone 7 devices could be out by September.

This LG rumor initially started life a month ago as a hard-and-fast September release, though that window has softened up a bit. Though this leak has now been confirmed, the target date is now given as somewhere between September and November. As we were ready to wait until the very end of 2010 before we could expect Phone 7 devices, knowing they'll be out at least a bit sooner is nice. It may be overly optimistic, but we're still holding out hope for a September release, as the date did show up twice from these LG sources. Waiting is no fun.

Sprint's put a lot of time and money into building up its 4G network, which will expand this year to cover even more big cities, like Boston and New York. A network's only useful when there are people using it, and though Sprint offers 4G WiMax data connections for PCs, there's yet to be a phone available that takes advantage of 4G speeds. The company has now revealed that it will have a 4G handset up for sale as soon as this summer.

Sprint declined to describe exactly what phone it plans to bring to market to inaugurate its 4G system, but has let a few key details slip. The phone will be an HTC smartphone running Android. It will support dual mobile broadband modes, so when there's no 4G signal available it can fall back to 3G speeds. Price and other key details are still up in the air, though some guesses name it as the HTC Supersonic.

Assuming all goes smoothly and without any network hiccups, we hope to see even more 4G handsets available by the end of the year.

Goodbye, Windows Mobile; we hardly knew you. Hello, Windows Phone 7 Series!

Microsoft finally announced the next generation of its smartphone platform, recognizing that the days of PDAs are over and Windows Mobile has become a smartphone OS. The company has scrapped the look-and-feel of past iterations, where you'd use a stylus to pick through menu after menu, in favor of large icons clearly designed with fingertips in mind. Rather than each executing a program, pressing one leads you to a themed hub, built around social networking, media, games, and the like. In light of the iPhone's success as a games platform, we're likely to see a renewed focus on games from Microsoft; Xbox Live is already integrated into Phone 7.

The new OS will also bring some hardware changes, such as the requirement for all phones running the system to dedicate a hardware button to bringing up Bing to do searches. We know Microsoft is pushing Bing hard, but this seems a bit heavy-handed. Dell, HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and more have signed on to develop handsets for Phone 7, and all the major cell providers have expressed interest. The first smartphones should be available near the end of 2010.

Sometimes a new gadget is sparse on details when word of it first pops up. We tell you what we can about it, let you know what specs are subject to change, and update you when whoever's behind it makes an official announcement. Today the first signs of a new HTC smartphone have appeared on the edge of our radar, the HTC Scorpion, but some are doubting that this reveal is anything more than a hoax.

The source that mentions the Scorpion is a configuration file for forthcoming Android software. As it's just a text file, there's nothing stopping anyone from editing it to say whatever they choose, and without corroboration, could seem a bit thin. That said, there are plenty of references to the Scorpion in the file, so if this is a hoax, someone took his or her time.

Assuming for the moment that the Scorpion is real, it looks to be quite the impressive handset. If it appears as described, the phone will run the next version of Android, its 2.2 release, on a very fast Snapdragon processor. Though microprocessors have evolved such that it's unfair to compare the performance of different chip designs based on clock speed alone, just as a reference point consider that this Snapdragon is to run at 1.5GHz and most netbooks only run a hair faster at 1.6GHz.

One of the few other details we could gleam from the leaked file is that the Scorpion would be able to run on WiMAX networks for high-speed data connectivity. As what little we know about this phone is pretty exciting, we'll be sure to keep you updated anything backing up or discrediting this initial report.