Last week we were told Dell had been shopping new smartphones around to the three major wireless carriers in the U.S., at least one device running Windows Mobile and at least one other running Android.  We were also told Dell had been brutally rebuffed by each of those carriers who were, shall we say, less than thrilled with what they saw.  The blogosphere consensus: no Dell smartphone for you — ever!

But, of course, this is a new week, with a new Dell smartphone rumor; now we are told to hold our collective horses, that the rumors regarding the death of the Dell smartphones at the hands of the carriers was wildly exaggerated, or simply untrue from the jump.

Digitimes is reporting that Dell will, in fact, be shipping its smartphones on time (whatever they are, and whenever “on time” may be) and that Dell CEO Michael Dell confirmed this himself while in Taiwan.  Digitimes thinks a Windows Mobile version of the Dellphone is likely to come first, with an Android version to follow.

Two questions: 1) Which version of the Dellphone story is true and 2) do you care? 

There was a time when we would have been thrilled to see Dell jump back into the handheld game, a game it played quite well until the decline of the standalone Pocket PC Windows Mobile PDAs.  But in tech, things change very quickly, and today the idea of Dell releasing just another Windows Mobile device seems less and less like a great thing and more like a ham-handed attempt at entering a market Dell has repeatedly declined to enter over years of rumors that a Dell-branded smartphone was just around the corner.

If a Dellphone is coming, we hope the computer company has the sense to truly innovate and not just follow the crowd.