Are you one of those Windows Mobile handset VoIP hackboys / hackgirls (wireless Skype, anyone)? How about that voice minute-less wireless VoIP on that Orange or Vodafone Nokia N95 handset? Wait, let's go back a bit -- right back to that Nokia S60 flagship handset in Europe. It appears that Vodafone and Orange in the UK have removed an important feature from carrier-branded N95s there. In what can be considered one extreme example of handset crippling, the two carriers have apparently stripped the N95 on store shelves of is VoIP capability in an attempt to preserve voice revenue. The solution -- as always with GSM carriers -- is to buy the more expensive, unlocked N95 and install your Symbian VoIP client of choice. Did we say we can't stand carrier-branded madness like this?

Orange has rolled out the SPV E650 (alias HTC S710, alias Vox) in its mobile shop in the UK, giving Brits their first taste of Orange-flavored Windows Mobile 6 love. The Vox is set to be a kickin' handset in both its CDMA and GSM flavors, though we still wish HSDPA was part of its feature set. We have been waiting for this since HTC made the announcement at 3GSM, and we're sure that many will rejoice upon seeing it in the Orange mobile shop -- only to just as quickly deflate at the label: "Coming Soon." No word on exact shipping date or cost yet, but we hope to turn that frown upside down with something a bit more concrete, real soon.

[Via Geekzone]

Apparently the Brits and other European wireless telco carriers want to drop the bomb on Yank mobile search engines like Yahoo! and Google -- so much that Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and, gasp, America's Cingular are plotting to try and supplant the mobile search services of Google and Yahoo! from their customer's handsets. You know you're performing more Google searches from your wireless 10-key than from your ultra-fast PC, right? Those Europeans are a tad more mobile-focused compared to us here across the pond, so it comes as no surprise really that the big European wireless carriers want to capture all those mobile searches using...their own search service. We're not quite sure how they'll index the mobile (and real) web for all those customers to compete with the years-ahead services from Google and Yahoo!, but we wish them well at 3GSM next week when they pitch this to, well, whoever will listen.