TamsPPC – the PocketPC Blog

Living in the United Kingdom makes covering the mobile computing market a lot easier – SlashGear has shared the picture below:

As of now, there is no further info available – stay tuned!

Microsoft Austria has just sent word that Austria’s governmental carrier A1 will come out ahead of the pack once again when it comes to Windows Mobile: according to them, the Samsung Omnia II will be available from A1 at the end of September 2009:

Unfortunately, the carrier has refused to state prices as of this writing – I dare to bet that the device will debut in the 300E price range in a fashion similar to thew XPERIA X1…

In case you don’t trust us – the German release is below:
http://www.microsoft.com/austria/presse/pressemeldung1825.mspx?ID=4afbb4b9-9bb2-4c03-9726-c4ef569ef6e5

Krusell is a huge Swedish manufacturer of protective cases. Their top list tends to be somehwhat representative for “average users” – and saw some severe changes this month.

RIM fell out, Palm didn’t get in (no wonder due to European focus)….and Sony Ericsson has gone amiss too:

1. (3) Nokia 6300
2. (-) Apple iPhone 3G
3. (-) HTC Touch Diamond 2
4. (2) Nokia 3109
5. (-) Nokia E51
6. (1) Nokia 5800
7. (5) Nokia E71
8. (6) HTC Touch HD
9. (-) HTC Magic
10. (-)HTC Touch Pro2

11. (4) Samsung SGH-i900/i910 Omnia

() = Last month’s position.

Last month Nokia took a Grand Slam by taking all Top 3 positions at Krusell’s best seller list for May. The list in June also gives an impression something is happening in the market. Nokia takes 5 out of 10 positions, HTC takes 4 and Apple one. Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are all out of the list.

To me it is surprising even the previous best seller Omnia had to leave the list this month, says Ulf Sandberg MD at Krusell. Yet another surprise is that everybody in the industry always talks about how short the lifecycles of mobile phones have become. This month’s No 1, Nokia 6300, was introduced in February 2007 in Krusell’s assortment and is now back on the No 1 position 28 months later, he ends.

Microsoft’s C# programming language sometimes reminds me of a pinata – it is full of surprises. The latest one comes in the form of the two delegate definitons below:

//DELEGATES
public delegate void doneSearchingDlg();
public delegate void newResultDumbDlg();

doneSearchingDlg doneSearching;
newResultDumbDlg newResultDumb;


In case anybody is new to C#: a delegate is a function pointer which can accumulate multiple functions, which are then all called at once with a single call. But this is not the reason for this little rant – instead, I am pissed about why the declarations cannot look like this:

//DELEGATES - CAN NOT COMPILE AS OF VS2005
public delegate void doneSearchingDlg() doneSearching;
public delegate void newResultDumbDlg() newResultDumb;


In plain-old vanilla C, almost every language primitive can be animated while it is being declared – why this feature was omitted from Delegates is a mystery to me.

Ideas, anyone?

People who own more than one handset can tell a tale of the charger eekers – every manufacturer has at least one (usually two or more) incompatible charger types.

This is not only annoying (extra weight), but also bad for the environment. As such things tend to attract EU regulators attention, manufacturers had to act – Yahoo Tech reports the following:

…

The agreement by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other industry majors will mean phones compatible with standard charging devices are available in Europe from next year, said the EU executive, which has pushed for such a deal.

…

The Commission said the agreement would involve the creation of an EU norm, and that the new generation of mobile phones would use a standard micro-USB socket to ensure compatibility.

…

According to them, the situation will go even further: chargers and handsets will be unbundled one day (which would lead to even lower handset prices).

Even though I personally prefer MiniUSB as I feel it handles better, MicroUSB nevertheless seems to be a pretty robust solution. My Nokia XPressMusic 5800 is still alive and kicking, and Nokia’s large-scale roll-out has started with the Nokia N85 (review here)…

P.S. HP’s Data Messenger is also based on MicroUSB…and has no problems with it AFAIK…

Mio has produced quite a few successful handsets in the past – their latest device could be dubbed Amber. The image below hits us via ai.rs:

They claim the following specs:

* CPU: Qualcomm MSM 7201A Turbo (528MHz)
* Memory: 256/512MB RAM/ROM
* Display: 3.61″ WVGA
* Network: GPRS/EDGE + WCDMA/HSPA
* Camera: 5MP AF + secondary VGA
* Battery: 1500mAh minimum
* OS: WM 6.5
* MicroSD, GPS, AGPS, BT 2.0, USB 2.0, M sensor, G sensor
* Noise Cancellation
* FM Transmitter

As of now, no official information is available – stay tuned!

The Mozilla Foundation has just unleashed the second beta of its mobile FireFox (dubbed Fennec):

The following things have been added or changed:

New for Alpa 2:

* Improved panning performance
* Newly designed theme
* JavaScript error console is now built in
* Improved add-on support
* Numerous bug fixes
* Improved UI polish

As of now, the Mozilla Foundation has stated nothing about hardware requirements – all they state is that Windows Mobile 6 is required. This means that the program will likely work on all supported screen resolutions – further information can be had here:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/fennec/1.0a2-wm/releasenotes/

HTC’s recently-announced Android handset (dubbed HTC Hero) contains an UI stack of its own – it is dubbed Sense, and is radically different from the current TouchFLO implementations which sit on the Today screen of various WM handsets.

WMPowerUser asked the folks at HTC’s whether TouchFLO is here to stay – and got the following response:

The Hero UI has been created specifically for HTC’s Android-based phones but also represents that three core pillars of HTC Sense. HTC’s future Windows Mobile phones will also be based on HTC Sense, but will enhance Windows Mobile in a way that is as appropriate and valuable to people.

I personally think that their choice makes perfect sense: people think about brands first, and about operating systems only after that. Nokia is as successful as it is as its S40 and S60 handsets share a largely common UI stack, thereby simplifying switching.

HTC gains a lot from unifying their UX: I personally would not be surprised to hear that HTC got thousands of calls from people switching to the G1 and who ended up looking for the Start menu…

Unfortunately, developers will likely end up paying the bill. HTC TouchFLO has already made loads of Today plugins obsolete – the more it does out of the box, the less there is to do for developers.

What do you think?

Don’t ask me where the boys from handy-faq.de got the video below from – but it nevertheless makes for a very interesting watch especially for HTC heads:

Looks like the time of Windows Mobile is over for good…it now is but a kernel to run HTC’s custom skin…

Microsoft France’s product manager for all things mobile has made a very interesting quote in a recent MobiFrance interview:

Audrey Zolghadr: 20,000 applications are now available for Windows Mobile. For the launch of MarketPlace, 600 applications will be available. It will be possible to retrieve the software from the search engine. Only software compatible with the screen resolution, touch or not touch will be visible to the user.

600 applications is might not be too much – but is nevertheless impressive especially of compared to what other manufacturers have unleashed upon their customers (Palm: less than 50 apps, Nokia Ovi: full of crap)…

Use the discount code CHEAPSPBTV to get 20% off the program’s retail price in the TamsShop!

3G connections, faster CPUs and falling data have opened doors for various applications which used to be impossible in the past. Mobile TV is one of these areas: what once required clumsy reception gadgetry, is now offered for free by many carriers.

Unfortunately, carrier TV solutions are usually limited to a few “broad appeal” channels, and omit high-quality news and finance channels. SPB TV wants to fill the void – but can it stack up?

The home screen of the program contains a scrollable list of channels along with a preview of the currently-running program:

Some programs stream a TV program, which is displayed by SPB TV:

Reminders can be created easily – and are actually written into your device’s calendar discreetly:

Channels stream in very high quality, but can neither be recorded nor be kept playing while in the background. In fact, even screenshots turn out all black:

SPB TV allows you to hide channels which you do not want:

As already said before, SPB TV offers many channels which are not offered by any carrier solution. I am currently pursuing a list of channels, and will post it here as soon as I can get it from the company.

This review looked at version 1.0.0 b461 of SPB TV on an XPERIA X1 running its stock distribution of Windows Mobile 6.1. Three-G coverage was provided by Hutchison Austria. BTW: SPB TV needs 4850KB of RAM and can be installed onto an external memory card.

People who are happy with the channels offered by their carrier won’t need SPB TV. Everybody else should rush and pay the 15 dollars – the money is well invested if you need one of the TV channels on the go (think N-TV or BloomBerg) and are on an unlimited data plan…

A big thank-you goes to Hutchison Austria for providing us with a loaner of their version HTC Touch 3G!

HTC’s Touch 3G can be considered the successor to the original (and insanely successful) HTC Touch: while devices like the Touch Diamond used the Touch brand, they had very little in common with the original model. But can the 3G stack up?

Hutchison has traditionally been very discreet when it came to branding their high-end smartphones. This rule has also been observed with the very small box of the Touch 3G – it is free of any visible branding:

Opening the box unveils a single crate containing all the stuff:

The device itself comes packed up in a small plastic bag, and can not be accessed from the top:

Charging is accomplished via a wallwart, which has a standard USB port. The data cable then is plugged into the wallwart:

Some versions seem to ship with a headset:

Finally, a few shots of the accompanying paperwork:

In the end, there is nothing to dislike about the Touch 3G’s packaging (except maybe for the lack of wallwarts – but what do you expect for this amount of $$$).

Stay tuned for further info – this review continues soon!

Handango has just sent word about its top sellers for the second quarter of 2009 – the list is now dominated by RIM’s BlackBerries and touchscreened Windows Mobile boxen:

1. Samsung Omnia i900
2. HTC Touch HD
3. BlackBerry Bold 9000
4. Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1
5. HTC Touch Pro
6. BlackBerry Storm 9500
7. BlackBerry 8830
8. BlackBerry Curve 8330
9. HTC Touch Diamond
10. BlackBerry Storm 9530

Don’t ask me where the touchscreenless boxen are though…

If your Windows Mobile-phone is web-enabled, then this program is a must-have. Depending on your mobile-phone carrier and contract, browsing can be very expensive – all the more if you have no idea, how many data has been transferred.
An example: with my phone carrier, 1 MB costs 0,24€. Now if you’re a Youtube enthusiast and watch ~10 videos (one around 10 MB) in a week, you would have to pay 24€ only for internet!
Spb Wireless Monitor helps to keep your expenses low by counting the internet traffic and notifying when you reached a previous set limit. Let’s take a closer look:

After starting up the program, you will see this screen with the most important functions. Open up the first function and you will see statistics about the internet usage. The program differentiates between the different types of internet connections: USB, WiFi, the data plan of your mobile carrier or other connections available. After choosing the type of connection, Spb Wireless Monitor displays which program used how much web traffic over this particular connection. These statistics can be displayed as a detailed list or as a diagram – a very clear way to present them.

In addition, you can limit the time range of the data which should be displayed, for example the program can display only the transferred data volume of the last month. This is very useful, if you’ve a one-month volume flat. If you’ve previously entered the rate, Spb Wireless Monitor even shows how much you had to pay for your web trip.
Another nice feature are the notifications. The user can create as many notifications as he wishes. Spb Wireless Monitor can notify the user, if a determined volume or a determined cost-limit was reached. An example for a possible notification:

Notify me, if the daily volume exceeds 20 MB over the connection 3G Internet

If this notification is active, the program displays a pop up message, if you used your mobile 3G internet connection and downloaded 20 MB of data, or watched some videos on Youtube which were 20 MB big in total, or if you just browsed web pages…

For those who like to have an overview over their expenses on the desktop computer, the export function might be a handy feature. The user can chose the connection, and the time range of the data which should be exported, then with a tap on the ‘Export’-button, the chosen data will be saved to a file. Supported output file formats are HTML and comma seperated values (CSV).

The last option in the main menu calls up the configuration dialog of the Spb Wireless Monitor today screen plugin. By default, data of all available connections are shown on the today screen. In this configuration dialog, the different connections can be hidden or shown.

Conclusion

If you use your phone for mobile surfing, you should use this program – only then you have a clean and precise overview over your expenses and which program caused them.

HTC’s dominance of the Windows Mobile market has forced both Verizon and Sprint (who happen to be extremely hard competitors) to put up with one manufacturer: delays and long negotiations followed.

Samsung’s recent release of Windows Mobile devices which seem to be serious about business will now add a new hardware manufacturer to the mix – and it looks like Verizon (who usually found itself on the receiving end of all kinds of possibly Sprint-helping delay) will take the plunge.

PhoneArena claims the following:

…
Now, thanks to a tipster of ours who claims to have contacted Verizon Wireless, we know the carrier intends to make the smartphone available sometime in July
…

As of now, no further information is available. Let’s see how it all plays out…