TamsPPC - the PocketPC Blog

HTC’s Advantage x7510 has been discussed at TamsPPC’s before - its “touch” keyboard wasn’t received too well by some of you!

Anyways, the fine folks at Tracy-and-Matt’s have managed to get their claws on a boxed Advantage x7510, and bring along an unboxing video(with a lovely typo - the video says that it is about the x7501). The 10min video provides an overview of the accessory bundle and the mechanic behavior…people wanting pictures of the box in action unfortunately won’t get happy here.

PocketPCThoughts claims that a Chinese web site called Mobile01 got access to a preproduction version of the device and reported that it has automatic screen rotation and USB 2.0 - unfortunately, the folks at Mobile01’s don’t have any reference to the box on their front page.

In the end, the Achilles heel of the HTC x7510(the touch keyboard) still hasn’t had a longer stand-off with a reviewer’s hands. Until this has happened, I recommend all of you to hold back(as a bad keyboard can be really frustrating)…

Recently, a leak at HTC spat out a few photos of new devices - and when a company has one leak, more will follow. Here’s the latest HTC gossip fresh off the rumor mills:

Device names leaked
First of all, here are the supposed “product names” for the upcoming devices:

HTC Diamond = HTC Touch Diamond
HTC Raphael = HTC Touch Pro
HTC Titanium = HTC Touch Dual Pro

Full specs up
The folks at PDADB.net have proven their skill at gathering data yet again - and proudly present preliminary datasheets of the Diamond and Raphael. Amusingly, the battery capacity of the devices has been lowered to just 900mAH - with all negative consequences :-(.

Revenue expected to rise 20%
Last but not least, the usually-reliable DigiTimes has posted the following revenue expectations:

High Tech Computer (HTC) expects its revenues to grow over 20% on year, to reach NT$34 billion (US$1.12 billion) in the second quarter of this year, according to company CFO Hui-ming Cheng.

However, second-quarter revenues are to grow only 4% sequentially from the previous quarter due to a delay in the launch of new products, Cheng noted.

In other news, HTC plans to deal out a dividend of NT$37 for 2007, including NT$34 in cash and NT$3 in shares, the company said after a board meeting last week.

In addition, the company also plans to distribute a total of NT$1.21 billion in cash plus NT$10.32 million shares to its employees as bonuses for last year. The distribution of bonus shares will dilute its capital by 1.37%, the company said.

As always - if you know anything, please let us know immediately!

AllTel(a rather small US carrier) has managed to beat both Sprint and Verizon when deploying EVDO Rev.A to HTC’s ever-popular touch is concerned.

According to the Boy Genius Report, ROM version 3.04.671.2 allows Alltel-branded Touch’s to work at EVDO Rev.A speeds. Additionally, the patch fixes a few bluetooth quirks and adds video messaging support…

In case anyone of you has an Alltel-branded HTC Touch, please let us know if it all worked out well!

P.S. No information is currently available on updates for Sprint and Verizon!

A Dubai-based web site called kaz911 repair service has posted a few unboxing photos of their i-mate Ultimate 9502 - here are two especially interesting ones:

The reviewer is not particularly happy with the device - he is dissatisfied with the “cheap” keys, crappy speaker(sic) and smallish screen. In the end, he nevertheless states that the device is “a great device” - and asks readers if they want to purchase it as he apparently wants to return to his Nokia E90 ;).

An anonymous tipster has sent Engadget information about upcoming devices from HTC - here’s what we know as of now:

HTC Diamond

The HTC Diamond is said to be the next HTC Touch, offering “enhanced TouchFLO technology”. Other than that, little is currently known about that critter.

HTC Raphael

The HTC Raphael seems to be HTC’s answer to the SE XPERIA X1 we handled at the CeBit. Anyways, the Sprint datasheet claims that the device will have a 2.5(or 2.8)” VGA screen(with TouchFLO) - a definite step up from QVGA. HTC included EVDO Rev. A, Bluetooth 2.0 and WiFi. The Raphael is intended to drop in Q4 2008 and will replace the HTC Mogul…

The folks at PDAdb.net have undug a picture and a preliminary datasheet of Mitac’s upcoming device named LoveBird:

Anyways, we are looking at a WM 6.1 smartphone powered by Samsung’s 400MhZ SC2xxx processor(used on the rx4240). Like most other Mitac devices, a GPS system is integrated.

Other than that, the device’s specs are rather unimpressive: a 2MP camera; QVGA, MicroSD. Nothing more to see here…

SPB Software House, the makers of the famous Spb Pocket Plus, recently released a free screenshot tool, Spb Screenshot. It saves the pictures as BMP or PNG, and it is triggered automatically after a time delay or if a hardware button is pressed.

Personally I prefer this one, because it just works! It can be found at the SPB Club or on freewareppc.com

The heavily-delayed ipaq 910 has just cleared the FCC; theoretically allowing HP to release the box in the United States. HP appears to have changed the device’s looks significantly(see images below); and has also changed the specs as listed below:

Unfortunately, the processor speed was reduced to 420 MhZ(I think it’s 416, rather) from the originally-planned 500-sth - making the 910 significantly slower than HP’s classic tablet PDA’s(with 614MhZ CPU’s).

As always, the FCC web site has juicy pictures of planars, the device - and; last but not least, the manual…

Platypus is the new side-scrolling shooter game from the developers at Astraware. It’s available for PalmOS and Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs.

This game is not like other side-scrolling shoot-’em-ups: it’s based on the Platypus game for PC and Mac, so the visuals are created with clay, which gives the game its uniqueness. In fact, the game has nice graphics and animations, which makes it even more fun to play. But more on that later.

see the explosion? it’s photographed, recolored clay

After starting the game, you are in the main menu. It’s possible to start a new game from there, view the high scores, go to the settings menu, exit the program or continue a game which you’ve paused before.

Platypus main menu

The Settings menu

The typical settings for a game are located here: switching between landscape for left-handed people and landscape for right-handed people is possible, as well as enabling/disabling auto-fire, adjusting the sound- and music volume and last but not least toggling between stylus and button controls.

The gameplay

You start with an aircraft with one simple weapon which just shoots straight forward. The enemy aircraft are coming from the right, and you have to shoot them - at first, they’re quite easy to defeat, but as the time goes on, it’s getting more difficult to extinguish them without being killed. The number of bullets you need to destroy an enemy is always different, there are easy ones which can be killed with only one bullet, or more difficult ones which need 5 shots to be defeated.

stage selection screen

The aircraft is controlled with the d-pad or with the stylus by touching the screen. If you press the center key, the aircraft starts shooting and won’t stop until you press the key again.

Every action is accentuated with a fitting sound, for example if an enemy aircraft explodes, or just the buzzing sound of a weapon.

one of the more advanced weapons

After a while. there are some obstacles in the game which should be avoided. For example, don’t collide with the power lines - otherwise the aircraft will explode immediately. There are some turret guns which are trying to shoot you - better destroy them ASAP! After defeating some enemys, earn extra points by collecting the fruits.

left: exploding enemy, losing a banana. Collect it to get extra points:
right: see the wires of the power line in the right part of the image?

You start with four lives, but have chances to earn more in the game and at the end of each level. When there are no lives left and you’re killed, the score counter is set to zero, but the game continues where you died.

compatibility

I succesfully tested the game on a VGA Dell x51V, so it will run on VGA and QVGA devices. Screens with a resolution of 240×240 are supported as well. Even when I clocked the device down from 624 MHZ to 208 MHz, the game was quite smooth and playable. Supported WM operating systems are 2003 SE, 5.0, 6 Classic and Professional.

Finally, the game is highly recommended for some gaming sessions while you are in a bus/train etc. It’s fun to play thanks to the nice graphics, so be sure to try it out!

Platypus for Windows Mobile 5/6.0 (free trial available!)

Platypus for pre-Windows Mobile 5.0 (free trial available!)

(screenshots by Astraware)

A HTC insider apparently shared the picture below with the press:

The amusing thing about the picture is that some of the devices are not released as of now. The top row is made up of two TyTN IIs, a Touch and a Touch Dual. Engadget claims that the second from left device at the bottom is a P3470…leaving us with three new devices(bottom row, #1, #3, #4).

The folks at Microsoft’s have always been known for their excellent developer support - in fact, MSDN is so excellent that it sometimes is hard to find just what you need amidst all the other useful information.

Anyways, a Microsoft Employee called Jason Langridge has posted a note to his blog announcing that free spaces are left in the so-called “Developer Mobility Events”. People interested in one or more of the topics in the list below(and who live in the US or can fly there cheaply) are invited to pop over to his web page and register at a city close to them:

• All About Windows Mobile
• Windows Mobile for Line of Business
• The Tools
• Managed Development
• Data Management Strategies
• Performance and Optimization
• A Whole New Level

Get the full scoop here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonlan/archive/2008/04/15/free-developer-mobility-events-in-the-us.aspx

P.S. In case anyone of you manages to get there: PLEASE send videos or at least pictures and a short report to Tamog@gmx.at!

Apple’s iPod touch debuted a new kind of thumb keyboard - whenever a key was tapped, a bigger picture of it appeared on the screen above. Vito Technologies now went one step further - their program not only displays the key, but also the surrounding area.

In case you wonder about how this looks - the image below shows the program working in default mode. Whenever you press one of the keys, the bubble containing the magnification is popped up:

The product includes a variety of layouts that can be chosen with th key on the left - the images below show English, numeric and German modes:

A menu can be opened to configure various aspects of the program:

Last but not least, ZoomBoard has a variety of different zoom modes:

This review looked at version 2.0 of the program on a hp ipaq rx4240 running Windows Mobile 5. The program automatically installs itself into the RAM when the cab is launched - no information about the file size is given(and the program cannot be installed onto an external memory card).

In the end, ZoomBoard succeeds in taking Apple’s thumb keyboard system one step further - here, the zoom view really helps when it comes to hitting characters. In case the concept outlined above sounds attractive to you, try out the free trial and purchase this 15$ app in the TamsShop if you like it…

P.S. The text in the screenshots is a short story written by Dr. Kohrs of abc texte. A big thank you goes out to her for permitting us to use it as sample!

Dear Readers,
we are proud to announce that TamsPPC now has a forum(shared with its sister sites). Even though we haven’t yet decided about the final design yet, we feel that the time is ripe to let you all loose on it.

Please visit the forum at http://forum.tamoggemon.com/; and get yourself an account(can take up to 30secs)! Then, hit the forum hard - please send bug reports and suggestions to Tamog@gmx.at or leave them as a comment here!

Best regards
The TamsForum team!

VITO EyePhoto is a fingerfriendly photo viewer and part of the VITO iWindowsMobile collection.

launch screen of EyePhoto

When the program starts up the first time, it suggests updating the photo library. Press the update button on the upper left of the screen and wait until the program found all images. Then, the list of the photos appears on the screen. EyePhoto searches on storage cards and in the internal storage.

When finished, you can start browsing throug your photos!

left screenshot: list of the folders
right screenshot: content of a folder

EyePhoto lists all folders wich contain pictures with a preview image - tap on a folder to see the content, then tap on an image to switch to fullscreen mode. It might take some time to load an image; this depends on its size. After a few seconds in fullscreen mode, the upper menu disappears. The upper menu shows the number of the current image, a button to switch back to the folder view, and a button to rotate the screen 90° CW. To show this menu after it disappeared, just tap once on the screen. When in fullscreen mode, zooming in is possible by tapping twice on the image or by clicking the zoom button in the lower left corner. To jump to the next image, just swipe the finger from the right to the left.

left screen: image in fullscreen mode
right image: same picture, but 90°CW rotated

A main feature is the kinetic scrolling function in the folder list. It works very simple and can be controlled easily with your fingers, just swipe your finger from the bottom of the screen to the top to scroll. Have a look at this video to see how it’s working:

EyePhoto demonstration on YouTube

In the settings menu, you can change the language: the program supports English, French and German. There are no other settings available than changing the language.

settings menu of EyePhoto

There is a thing which should be improve IMHO: I’m storing my music with album art on my CF card, so there are ~20 album covers, all in different folders. EyePhoto handles them like every other picture and adds them to it’s library, which makes the list very unclear. It would be better if the user could set exceptions, which folders shouldn’t be scanned for images.

I think EyePhoto is a great addition to the iWindowsMobile collection and it’s main objective, the usability without a stylus, is achieved.

So far, the hp ipaq 614 business navigator has presented itself as a well-done and innovative device with a lot of similarities to the rx4240. Unfortunately, HP did not include a VGA screen…can the QVGA display stack up?

Our first test partner was Palm’s Treo 680 - the 614 managed to come out a bit ahead:

Comparisons between it and a rx4240 ended in a tie - as the screens seem similarly big, it looks like HP used the same LCM module in both devices. This explains the excellent contrast…but also leads to potential issues in very bright sunlight:

In the end, it looks like HP recycled the rx4240’s excellent screen here. Insanely high color saturation and bright enough for most outdoor use(I never had any problems using my rx4240 outdoors in Austria) - this definitely is a great display. However, navigators tend to be used outdoors a lot - a device with a reflective display may be better suited for people living in countries with loads of sun..