Snapdragon HTCs may well be here in a months time.

Congratulations. You've realised WM6.5.1 exists!

I was on the phone to Orange UK yesterday, wondering when they'd be getting the Touch Pro2, and they mentioned the Hero, and the HTC Click as potential alternatives, both of which would be "coming soon".

WM Standard says nothing about processor requirements. It just doesn't utilise touch screens. e.g. older WM6.1 Professional devices are less powerful than the new WM6.1 standard devices

All the roadmaps I've seen do have "Topaz C", so probably! :)

Unlocked? Seriously?

It has a new ROM image on it, with at least some changes (as in, it has a skin...) so they've spent at least some time with photoshop!

It's a pocket PC ("Professional") as it has a touch screen. Smartphones ("Standard") don't have touch screens.

Haven't Intel already done smartphone processors?

PXA270 for example (what's in the HTC universal among other things).

Hangon... You're telling manufactures to innovate. Anything is innovation compared to the iPhone. Oh wow, it has icons on a screen. So innovative.

These devices don't compete with the iPhone, because the iPhone has already lost. It's the asmatic kid at the back of the lineup, with the Rhodium and Topaz being professional sprinters.

At least it allows for differentiation between different hardware, rather than them all being called "Touch Pro" when it has CDMA rather than GSM (handy if you're playing with Radio ROM updates).

The iPhone has only one version, so why would they call it anything else?

The AT&T Raphael does have some different hardware (might have a different keyboard layout, has a different set of buttons, no forward facing camera - same as Tilt variants of the Kaiser).

Also, since operator branded devices tend to have different software on them, (T-Mo with My Faves, AT&T with internet apps etc) it allows differentiation between the software builds.