Sling Media snuck out today via a blog post on their community site a new update to their SlingPlayer for Windows Mobile devices.

The main reason for the release is new found support for higher resolution screens. These new formats coming along in the form of display levels at 800 x 480, 640 x 480, 400 x 240 and 320 x 320.

All of which mean a new range of handsets can now have SlingPlayer rolled out on them, totalling 15 new mobiles altogether and just before Christmas too.

The new models are as follows, with their regions too: Palm Treo 800w (US), Sony Ericsson X1 (US & UK), Palm Treo Pro (US & UK), HTC Touch Diamond (US), HTC Touch Pro (US), Samsung Saga (US), Samsung Omnia (US), LG Incite (US & UK), Samsung Epix (US & UK), HP iPAQ 910 (US & UK), Pantech Duo (US) and the Samsung ACE (US).

The HTC Touch HD should also work with this release, as it shares the same resolution but nothing is guaranteed.

SlingPlayer is gratis on a months trial, with a subsequent nominal fee of £19.99 then afterwards. It has support for 3G and WIFI, with an unofficial compatibility for EDGE handsets.

Sling Media have also updated the software for portrait and landscape mode switching, roaming notifications, better digital channel support numbers and TV logos too.

Download the software if you wish to swing from the following links –

US: http://downloads.slingmedia.com/go/slingbox-mobile-us

UK: http://downloads.slingmedia.com/go/slingbox-mobile-uk

Canada: http://downloads.slingmedia.com/go/slingbox-mobile-ca

We wonder if the X1 could have panel integration with SlingPlayer?

News has come to use from the website Mobile Today that Orange’s exclusive HTC Touch HD has hit an issue over customer demand for the handset.

Only a week has passed since the mobile phone arrived in the Orange stores, but already they’ve hit a ceiling over supply and demand.

The site has reported that many of the shops have only been able to offer two or three phones a week to their customers, as the deliveries they’ve taken have only just matched that figure.

Orange has come clean on realising they did not coordinate the launch very well, with stocking the shops to meet the demand.

Staff are now running a waiting list for the mobile on a first come, first served basis. Although an Orange spokesperson has passed on reassurance they’ll have ample supplies for the Christmas rush.

Once again, no need to find that petrol station at 2 in the morning on Christmas day and who really appreciates windscreen wipers anyway.

If you can get the HTC Touch HD, it’s around at the cost of £50 on an 18 month contract with a monthly fee of £45. It’s also available on a £40 contract with the phone running in at £80.

Coincidently, we’ve been one of the lucky lucky ones and have been using a Touch HD for a week or so now. We’re just putting our thoughts together and will soon be publishing a piece on how we’ve found it to date, so keep your eyes peeled on the site.

Read more on Mobile Today’s story here

According to the specifications listed on the site, the phone carries a 2.8″ QVGA touchscreen that does a decent 320 x 240 pixel resolution. It comes with HSDPA, Quad band radio, A-GPS and GPS. There’s also a 3.2 Megapixel camera that is packed along the phone that apparently will be available in 4 colors, according to the pictures. At the core, the phone will be powered by the now common Windows Mobile version 6.1 and is supposed to have the same TouchFLO interface that its little brother carries.

I’m not sure what HTC is trying to do here. It seems that the company is either following a completely different strategy to soft-launch their phones into the public, or simply, I suspect the site’s webmaster is going to be fired soon.

In any case, the official word will be out sooner than we think.

Dubbed as the Touch HD, the phone has some really interesting features. It carries a 3.8-inch WVGA screen with 480 x 800 pixel resolution. And yes, apart from the ones we already mentioned before, it also carries Wi-Fi.

I’d have still preferred if I had a choice of an OS other than WinMo 6.1 though.

[Product page via @shadez]

The site, MoDaCo.com, claims that the phone, which apparently is set to be launched Christmas, is the HTC Touch HD and features a WVGA screen almost as big as the iPhone, but does 480 x 800 px resolution. The phone is powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 and is backed by a Qualcomm 7201A processor clocking 528Mhz. 

The phone also boasts GPS and HSDPA with a 5 Megapixel camera and a MicroSD expansion slot. Oh, it comes with a 1350mAH battery and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top.

Uhh? Do I hear someone ask, “Where’s Wi-Fi ?” ? Well, it’s not known, and it may be a while before we know for certain, so I’m going off to drool over the following pictures and try to get in touch with someone over at HTC. 

[There's even more gold here]

I’m already sold, if only for the cutesy sensor capabilities that Nokia’s built in (although I’d rather see a UI that silences the phone alarm by sensing you’ve chucked the device across the room). But a stylus? Really? Didn’t we kill those off a while back?

The device runs on Windows Mobile 6.1, as you’d expect, but there’s one notable difference on this HTC phone: the Diamond’s browser is based on Opera, not Internet Explorer – a bit of a coup for the Opera folks. It looks like HTC has done some cool stuff with the touchscreen, with an iPhone alike ability to rotate the view to either landscape or portrait depending on how you hold the device, pan and zoom with one hand and autofocus the camera just by pressing the screen. Can’t wait to see all this in action.

InvenSense, whose applications include image stabilisation and navigation, will put the funding towards “company growth and evolv[ing] both the company business and product strategy”. The company reckons motion sensing will take off in mobile gaming and in smart user interfaces.

Motion sensing is a fascinating area, but applications are still in niche and more gimmicky than useful. Still, it’s a chicken and egg problem: phones need to have the appropriate tech inside them to make use of motion-sensitive applications, and without the apps, why put the necessary tech into the handsets? Hopefully, with some funding and some R&D, the motion-sensing people out there can come up with some must-have apps.

It’s obviously still too early to see what if any affect the decision to split off the handset division from the rest of the company will have, but it looks like it’s going to be a hard slog if Motorola is going to recapture the glory days. Despite its repeated promises of sleek new handsets due out soon to help fill the gap left by the decline of the Razr, this quarter’s device highlights – the Z9, the Q 9c and some W series phones – suggest that Motorola is still not on top of consumers current tastes in mobile phones.

And while Moto has promised to tackle touch interfaces and messaging mobiles according to according to Xchangemag, which shows at least some enthusiasm for bring its handsets up to date, it’s still going to be years before these devices turn up – by which time, like their predecessors, they could already be outdated.

For BBC junkies, that means a chance to switch off the goggle box and watch TV on the iPhone instead. Insterestingly, this is the first time the Beeb has customised the iPlayer for a mobile device. Apparently, the Beeb said it started off the iPlayer’s mobile odyssey with the iPhone because it’s the “device most optimised for high quality video currently available”, according to the BBC blog.

I can see what they mean about optimised, but the same blog also says: “You’ll need to be online via a wi-fi broadband connection (the iPhone’s EDGE connectivity is too slow for streaming video).” That doesn’t sound too promising – why bring out a media playing app for a mobile phone that you can’t use on the go? It’s great to hear that the Beeb is taking mobile seriously but it’s a shame the first attempt can’t be used over mobile networks.