Best of SPE, CTIA 2009 Edition

This week three of our intrepid editors headed out to CTIA 2009 in Las Vegas to catch as much coverage as we could -- and catch it we did. From the Palm Pre emulating the PalmOS to BlackBerry App World to Hands-on time with the Nokia E71x to hands-on time with half a dozen Windows Mobile devices, it's been a pretty crazy week.

It wasn't all Vegas Baby, however. TiPb has been all over the rumors of next-gen iPhone hardware and both the iPhone and Android picked up new document editing capabilities.

You'll find the details on all of that and much more inside as we round up the best of Smartphone Experts!

Stop us if you're heard this before: a huge cellphone trade-show and Android news is nowhere to be seen. That was once again the situation at the CTIA 2009 conference. Nevertheless we did have plenty of Android news outside the conference. First and foremost, it's clear that Samsung is getting in the game soon, but just whether their Android devices will be "Google-like" or "Samsung-like" is an open question -- one we endeavor to answer. We're also well-pleased to have Documents to Go available on Android, as it helped ease the pain of finding out that while tethering apps are available in the Android Market, they aren't available for T-Mobile users

The big big news of CTIA from RIM has to be the release of App World: it's live now, so get your download on. Outside of RIM there were plenty of BlackBerry partners and developers presenting, see our Special Coverage of CTIA 2009 for more from Qik, Netflix, iHeartRadio, and more. We couldn't help ourselves, we pulled a little April Fools Day action. To help you recover from the (possible) shock of that story, be sure to settle down with part 2 of our BlackBerry 9630 Review!

Our resident Nokia Expert, Matt Miller, got some hands-on time with the Nokia E75 and the finally-its-landing-on-AT&T-and-holy-cow-it's-only-$99 Nokia E71x at CTIA 2009. Meanwhile, we're happy to say that the best Twitter client on Symbian -- or on any smartphone, now that we're mentioning it -- it Gravity. Here's why.

After a few weeks of relatively little news (outside of release date rumor-mongering, the Pre world absolutely exploded this week. PreCentral.net broke the story that webOS will support PalmOS emulation via an app called Classic -- an app we demo'd on video the very next day. We also brought you a video of new 3rd party apps on the Palm Pre, were live at the Web 2.0 Expo, and are even looking forward to Push services for the webOS. As far as Pre news goes, every one of those links is pretty much as momentous as it's gonna get before the Pre launch, but stay tuned to PreCentral.net, because we have no intention of slowing down!

Previously on theiPhoneblog.com: iPhone 2.0 Beta 2 hit fast, but next generation iPhone rumors are hitting faster -- faster CPU, faster GPU, faster 3G networking, and low-power 802.11n WiFi. They'll likely need all that to handle the 3.5 or 5 megapixel camera...

Meanwhile, Skype landed on the iPhone (everywhere but Canada!), was downloaded over 1,000,000 times in 2 days, was almost banned by AT&T's new TOS, though AT&T quickly backpedaled, and was the subject of a lawsuit by the Free Press over it's WiFi-only restriction. Saved SlingPlayer as well, though you'll still be forced to buy a new SlingBox if you want to use it...

We were happy to see that the Treo Pro landed on the Vivo Network in Brazil and would be just as happy to find out it's hitting Telus in Canada too. Naturally, being Treo fans, we kept a close eye on the Classic emulator story and, as always, kept an eye on the Treo's growing television stardom!

Last week over at WMExperts.com can be summed up with two four letter words; CTIA and Snap.  The biggest buzz of the show was all about HTC's newest phone, the QWERTY-based Snap. The 2009 CTIA electronics conference was held last week in Las Vegas and was mostly a Windows Mobile recap from the 2009 Mobile World Congress.  We did run across new Bluetooth accessories from Jabra as well as software updates for Bolt and Iris web browsers.  Celio announced a Beta version of Redfly Mobile Viewer that duplicates your smartphone on your PC.  Combined with the news generated from the 2009 Mobile World Congress, the 2009 CTIA served as a pleasant reminder that 2009 is shaping up to be a very good Windows Mobile year.