TamsPPC - the PocketPC Blog

after weeks and weeks of rumors and hands-on reports, the floodgates are not open: tracy-and-matt apparently have received their Touch Pro loaner (these guys traditionally are very fast) and have posted an unboxing video to their web page.

Their first impressions are exceptionally positive; the keyboard is described as great(!!!). A full review is said to be upcoming shortly…

I personally hope that HTC somehow manages to make the Touch pro’s keyboard work well - the company has proven that it is able to make its devices keyboards worse with each iteration. The Touch Pro will be measured by its keyboard (the coolness crown has gone to the XPERIA X1)…and I hope that it can stock up!

The HTC Diamond is availble and the new phone of many users. Other users, including me, still wait for the release of the HTC Touch Pro. Both phones have a new Touch Flo version called “Touch Flo 3D” which is also the new Home screen interface. The freeware Throttle Launcher is a clone of this interface and runs on PDAs and phones which have Windows Mobile 5 and above. So I installed the recent version 0.9.3 beta on my old MDA III. Similar to the HTC Diamond, it has several tabs on the bottom: Home, Mail, SMS, Calendar, Weather, Music, Contacts, Programs, Settings, Photos, Comm Manager and Internet.

• The Home screen shows a clock, an alarm clock, missed calls and upcoming appointments.
• The Mail tab shows a preview of recent mails in their envelopes. It only supports one mail account.
• The SMS tab is similar to the mail tab.
• In the Calendar screen you see the table of a month, upcoming appointments and the number of tasks.
• The Weather tab shows either a picture of the sun, of clouds, etc. and the current temperature of your location. On a second page, it shows the weather for the next three days. Your location can only be set manually at this time (how to change location).
• The Music screen shows a song with its album cover. On my device, it shows the song which is currently played in MortPlayer.
• In the Contact screen, you can add favourite contacts to a list. Throttle Launcher shows images of these contacts.
• In the Programs screen, you can either display a full list of installed applications or a favourite list.
• The Settings screen allows you to set up Throttle Launcher and system settings.
• Unfortunately, the Photos screen did not show anything on my device.
• The Comm Manager screen is similar to HTC’s Comm Managers. On the second page, it has a keylock, a reset button and shows some stats.
• The Internet screen shows favourite internet sites.

You can change settings for all tabs, for example which mail account to use or where your fotos or music files are.

The developer metions support for Flash, Direct 3D and TrueType. There is also a plugin which can display Flash animations on the home screen. And because of its theme support, you can even change the look from HTC to iPhone, Windows Mobile 7 and others.

The application worked so far, the only problems were that the photos screen did not work and that the whole application was rather slow. The developer also warns that the application needs more power and thus, that it may decrease your battery’s power. Some of the settings also seem difficult to me: For example, you need to type in the name of your mail account. There is no list where you could choose one or even more. Other settings just have cryptic names.

Beside this, I could not find bigger problems. The other ones may be fixed in a final version. Nevertheless, I would only recommend this application on a faster machine. If it is too slow for you, it would be better to use another HTC screen or the “old” home screen. But first, go to the homepage and give it a try!

SmartphoneMag’s Nate Adcock recently posted an article called “What happened to the iPAQ”. His core point is that iPAQ’s look boring compared to devices like the HTC boxen, and that HP should spice up its graphics department to make its handhelds “cool” again.

Even though HP had some excellent consumer handhelds like my beloved rx4240, Nate IMHO still missed the point. HP is a B2B company that caters to businesses - and corporate IT departments couldn’t care less about stuff like TouchFLO. For them, every extra app is more support hassle…and the more an app looks like Windows 2000, the better.

The lack of upgrades has actually surprised me to some extent, as Compaq has traditionally had long model cycles with excellent spare/software update supplies (sometimes lasting over ten years). The reason why HP eventually stopped to offer WM upgrades IMHO was a sort of stand-still at Microsoft’s…the changes in WM 6 were not considered important enough by many to warrant the hassle of an effortful upgrade.

Thus, a generation or two went by without upgrades…and HP fell into the same mind set when Windows Mobile 6.1 hit the scene. But: WM 6.1 is completely different. Even though it looks bland from the outside, IT departments love it due to the addition of a central management server that allows WM devices to be managed remotely with ease.

And this is where the hare is buried. IT departments don’t care about design, coolness or duffergile - for them, a device must be easy to maintain. WM 6.1 gives competitors devices a real advantage here…an advantage that HP IMHO will not be able to ignore on the long run…

As for the current devices: I am sorry, but I don’t think that HP will offer upgrades for these unless huge movements happen in the market. However, I am pretty sure that the boys in blue will eventually rediscover old (IBM-American) values - it (hopefully) is a question of time…

What do you think?

P.S. In case anyone feels like asking about entertainment iPAQ’s - these probably are done for good. The competition is way to intense here…