Although frankly the benefits they'll see are marginal -- especially if they've already upgraded their handsets to AKU 3 -- many Sprint PPC-6700 / Verizon XV6700 devotees will nevertheless be delighted to learn that xda-developers forum member helmi_c is promising an Apache-compatible build of Windows Mobile 6 to be released this Friday, and he's got the screenshots that claim to prove it. As tipster Joey put it, "many of us [6700] owners have been kinda left out in the cold with no WM6 love for the 6700," but where manufacturers and carriers fail to act, you can usually count on the tireless community over at xda-developers to provide a solution -- and from the looks of things, helmi_c's build even trumps the standard upgrade by cooking the HTC Touch interface right in. Good stuff if it does indeed pan out, so we'll keep you posted.

Update: Helmi_c wrote in to let us know that he is actually based out of the ppcgeeks community, and the links in this post were quickly adjusted accordingly. Because seriously, would you want to step in between factions of highly motivated geeks and developers? No thanks.

[Thanks, Joey S.]

If we had a car, we'd be all over Pioneer's new DEH-P810 Bluetooth-enabled head unit, which allows you to stream audio from your BT-enabled musicphone or the odd BT-sporting MP3 player directly to your sound system. This will be an especially attractive model to Windows Mobile 5.0 device owners, who have recently been able to cut the headphone cord thanks to the folks over at xda-developers, but still need a cassette adapter or FM transmitter dongle for listening in their cars. Little else is known about the specs on this unit, but the "phone" button would indicate that it can also route calls through your speakers, so it may include an embedded mic as well. We saw the DEH-P810 online for about $660, but the price was in yen, so we're pretty sure you're gonna need to import for now.