This Week in Smartphone Schadenfreude, June 21st Edition

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

In this week's edition: Blackberry iClone's visual voice mail -- but don't make them angry! Windows Mobile 6.0 ready to crash already frozen Treo 800wx's, and can Centro has future?

Apple Reinvents the Phone. RIM Regurgitates the iPhone.

RIM loves them the iPhone. They love it's glossy black facade. They love its silvered bezel. They love its rounded rectangular slab-like form factor. They love its iTunes connectivity. And despite we-think-they-doth-protest-to-much comments to the contrary, boy do they love its touchscreen. They love it so much, they've done nothing but spend the last year iCloning it. They're latest, according to Crackberry.com?

Visual Voice Mail.

Yup.

Way to go, Lazaridis. A year and a half later, and you're finally copying something Steve Jobs showed off six months prior to the iPhone launch...

Good news for Crackberrians, though! At this rate, you'll get a MobileSafari class browser by 2011!

You Won't Like Crackberry Kevin When He's Angry!

Okay, we totally take back that last story. It wasn't us, and it certainly wasn't RIM. In fact, it was probably those troublemakers over at AndroidCentral saying the iPhone was copying the Bold again. Totally. Just don't get Crackberry Kevin angry. We don't like him when he's angry. We mean, did you see what he did to Rogers' data rates when he got angry? We don't have the healing factor to take that kind of pain!

We'll just stick to making fun of WindowsMobile for the rest of this edition, okay?

Please?

Obsolete Hardware, Meet Outdated OS!

Speaking of making fun of Windows Mobile, looks like the Treo 800wx will finally be getting an upgrade to version 6.0. No, that's not a typo. They're actually taking the oldest WinMob Treo (actually, the "fixed" rev of the oldest WinMob Treo, but why split petrified hairs?), and cramming the previous (not current) version of Windows Mobile on it.

And they're not even doing that yet, so some poor battered-consumer syndrome hax0rs have stepped in and actually made the monstrous little FrankenTreos themselves. Think getting XP up on your 486. Sorta.

WMExperts.com has the gory details. Or it could just be another spy shot of the 800w. Either way...

Centro: Can Has Future?

TreoCentral.com bravely asks: "Can Palm's Centro Still Roll With The Big Dogs at AT&T?"

In a sentence: About well as Motorola has post-RAZR.

In a word: No.

But if they play the chihuahua card low and long enough, they might sneak by until their next handset can go... er... Nova.

And in No Other News...

Samsung announced, and Sprint spat up $100,000,000 to advertise, the Instinct to compete with the old iPhone about 5 minutes before Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone 3G, officially making the Instinct a year too late and a (next) generation too short (not to mention quite a bit too expensive when faced with a $199 price tag for the Real Thing). So, the big bosses at Samsung and Sprint bit the bullet and dropped their prices... But not enough to impress Uncle Walt, much less our own big boss, who summed up the whole thing thusly:

Honestly - is anybody out there seriously considering an Instinct over an iPhone? We’ll grant that there are some people who prefer to pick their carrier first, phone second — but still, is it possible to even pick up the clean end of a piece of …Instinct?