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When last I left Palm they had but the Centro and some HTC Windows Mobile device to offer, now webOS and the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi's inform Week 6 of the 2009 Smartphone Round Robin. Talk about night and day. Lucky I have the daywalker himself, our illustrious editor-in-chief and PreCentral.net's own Dieter Bohn to show me how the brand new generation of Palm devices work. And works well.

Remember, every day you post on my PreCentral.net Forums thread, you're entered for a chance to win a webOS device of your very own. (And there's a total of 6 smartphones up for grabs -- one per SPE site -- so check them all out!)

This week also brings mobile powerhouse Matt Miller of Nokia Experts to TiPb's own iPhone. He's on the TiPb iPhone Forums and needs your help! Give him a hand and get a chance to win an iPhone 3GS for your troubles!

Video hands-on with Palm Pre and Palm Pixi, after the break!

Windows Phone is only slightly better off in this year's Smartphone Round Robin than Palm was last year -- like we substituted in the WinMo Treo Pro for the aging PalmOS in 2008, we're using two heavily HTC-skinned devices as WMExperts entries in 2009 -- the HTC Touch Pro2 and massive HTC HD2.

And I'm melancholy about that, because I kind of liked the unabashedly Windows Mobile tweaky, geeky Treo Pro last year, and was hoping to see a pure Microsoft Windows Mobile 7 device this year. Scrappy, underfunded Palm was able to deliver webOS after all, Google went Android 2.0, and Apple went iPhone 3.0. Instead we got Windows Mobile 6.5, which was decidedly bashed, and the aforementioned HTC Sense UI/TouchFlo shellacked over it -- a UI so opaque I think users might have trouble distinguishing HTC's Windows Phone devices from their Android ones going forward.

But those are the WinPhos we were dealt, and they're certainly tremendous in their own rights. To help me make sense of them (no pun intended), Phil Nickinson went over the finer points for me and the WMExperts Forum members really helped me out.

(And just a reminder, every day you post on that WMExperts thread, or any of the official Round Robin threads, is another day you're entered to win one of six (6!) new smartphones!)

Okay, enough preamble, it's time for the review... after the break!

Week 4 of the 2009 Smartphone Round Robin brings me face-to-big-glass-face with our most ancient nemesis -- Microsoft's Windows Mobile Phone, this year spawning the killer keyboard of the HTC Touch Pro 2, and the monstrous hardware of the HTC HD2. Yes, that's 2 times HTC version 2 devices and to help me out, I've got the dark lord of WMExperts himself, the one and only WMExperts Phil Nickinson to show me the ropes -- and quite honestly to help me lift that ginormous HD2 onto the table!

Remember, every day you post on my WMExperts Forums thread, you're entered for a chance to win the Windows Phone of your choice. (And there's a total of 6 smartphones up for grabs -- one per SPE site -- so check them all out!)

This week also brings the yin to my yang, the productivity to my play, my best frenemy forever, CrackBerry Kevin back to TiPb and the iPhone he claims never to use. Head on over to the TiPb forums and help him out, would you? (i.e. show him some neat new games). And get a chance to win an iPhone 3GS for your troubles.

Video hands-on with the Touch Pro 2 and HD2 after the break!

A long time ago on a blog far, far away, Casey Chan wrote about the iPhone. Then there was a great disturbance in the 'sphere and he ended up editing Android Central and embracing the dark side of the G1. Easily, seductively, his powers grew with the Hero and now the insidious DROID itself. But a new hope emerged in the form of the 2009 Smartphone Round Robin, which forced him to put down the evil red eye of Google and pick up the brightly sided iPhone 3GS. Did he restore balance to his mellow?