Back in the halcyon days of, oh, eighteen months ago, the Pharos’ line of GPS-equipped Windows Mobile Handsets were the coolest thing going. Imagine a phone that knows where you are! It was like magic. Then came the iPhone and it’s ilk, all of whom were also rocking some serious GPS mojo. The Pharos’ line stopped seeming magical and started seeming like the way a bar looks when they turn the main lights on in order to scare the last few alcoholics out for the night.

No more! Pharos’ is back with the Dell powered Traveller 117 and Traveller 127. Sure, they come equipped with AGPS out of the box. That’s not what makes them special though. The Traveller series also possesses a VGA display, tri-band 7.2Mbps downstream HSPA and a 2-megapixel VGA front facing-camera.

They are for sale "covertly" at the Dell online store. Shh. Don’t tell anybody I told you.

Those of you looking forward to, um, tomorrow’s launch of the Sprint HTC Touch Pro, prepare for a bubble burst. It’s not happening. Sprint cites the reason as an inventory issue. That’s certainly better than if the reason was a bug that caused your data service to only open e-mail by purveyors of penis pills. That’d be bad.

Sprint says to look for the device, for real this time, in early November. Let’s hold them to that.

An internal AT&T e-mail discovered today suggests that RIM’s hotly anticipated gadget will be available on October 27th. The company has been purposefully vague about a release date so to hear anything with an actual month and day on it is heartening. And even in time for Halloween! Now you can set up important business meetings while dressed as a skeleton.

This is, however, subject to change and it may be hogwash being as how e-mails aren’t the most trustworthy sources in the world. Wait, does that mean spam sites don’t actually offer Viagra at competitive prices and Barack Obama is not actually a muslim? Color me confused.

The price is still TBD.

A research firm called iSuppli did a bit of snooping and found that the forthcoming BlackBerry Bold costs $169.14 to produce. The firm announced that parts and materials total up to $158.16 and testing and assembly costs $11.25. The consultation fee paid to John McCain was not mentioned in the report.

This should em’bold’en RIM as they will likely find no problem selling the unit to carriers for $350. Good thing, too. There is a rumor going around that we are in a recession. Don’t worry though. Should it worsen, RIM has already begun work on the "BlackBerry Paper Cup Telephone." It won’t have data service.

Fujitsu Siemens confirmed that the German Japanese joint venture will leave the PDA and PNA market by the end of 2007. In a statement, FSC spokesperson Amy Flécher confirmed earlier information.

Flécher said: "We made our decision due to the usual examination of the portfolios. It turned out that the traditional handheld segment (PDA) shrank for years and also many other manufacturers leave this segment. While the wireless handheld market grows fast, the PDA market moves on a very low basis with small volume. The trend is that the traditional handhelds are replaced by other devices such as PNAs or Smartphones. We will not invest into these product ranges.
Handhelds and handheld devices with push E-Mail-push will remain a niche market. In the future these services will be taken over by Smartphones – which is not our business at all. We observe that other manufacturers, that offer similar devices, have to fight with difficulties.