Are you a high roller sitting pretty in Las Vegas right now, wondering what MID to pick up to take advantage of that fantabulous new CLEAR WiMax service all the kids are talking about? No? Well, read on anyways -- you'll probably want to hear this. Apparently the kids at PC World have had the opportunity to put that Samsung Mondi (you know, the one we were caught on video with way back in April) through its paces. The verdict? Pretty "meh," it seems: the OS, WinMo 6.1, performs pretty much as you'd expect: all sorts of sluggish. And it appears that Sammy won't be upgrading to 6.5 when that becomes available, on account of all the work they put into getting the user experience just right on this guy (and it does look pretty good, truth be told). The home screen may support widgets, but according to the reviewer the selection is rather skint: IM, email, time / date / weather, Internet / Phone, appointments -- and that's pretty much it. Sure, Opera Mobile (with Flash Lite support) did its job admirably, but for $400 unsubsidized (or $300 subsidized) you can probably do better.

[Via SlashGear]

While we caught this at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, Samsung officially launched its WiMAX / WiFi Mondi at CTIA today. Samsung's SWD-M100 MID runs Windows Mobile -- and we have to say that it looks really polished -- with the transitions between homescreen panels being particularly stunning -- check the vid to see it in action. While thin, the popout lower lip keypad is a tough thing to use, the width of the keypad itself and the positioning of the d-pad make it all seem a bit awkward to use. We do like the 4.3-inch display, though suspect it may prove to be a tad power hungry once this gets a little more real on Clear's WiMAX network. Follow on for a short vid and a handful of pics of us playing with this big glossy thing.