TamsPPC – the PocketPC Blog

Palm’s Tungsten T was one of the first handhelds which could be reset with the stylus tip (without needing a needle or having to remove the battery cover). Unfortunately, this highly useful technology seems to have been forgotten by most manufacturers nowadays…HTC’s Touch HD is said to be particularly annoying in this aspect.

Fortunately, the folks at xda-developers figured out a smarter way – it involves drilling a hole into the battery cover as shown in the picture below:

As a battery cover can be replaced easily, I think that there should be no warranty issues with this mod (as long as you have a spare back panel). However, we recommend to remove the panel from the device before drilling…explaining drill holes in the back to a HTC rep could be somewhat difficult…

Experienced industry watchers see a Samsung i780 and think of the magic four-letter word Treo (usually followed by the number 600, classic IDEO design. As the i780 is a “Treo killer”, we need to look at its size – can it stack up?

Our first contender is a group of business smartphones. When put next to a Treo 680/750/755), one sees that the Samsung device is physically bigger, a lot slimmer and but has smaller keys (bugger):

The Treo 650 is similar in size and has bigger keys. However, it also is a lot thicker:

Next up is the BlackBerry Curve 8300:

Finally, here’s a bunch of shots showing the device next to a Nokia E63:

Our next group consists of a few PDAs, with the huge hp ipaq 3700 being the first:

Apple’s iPod is smaller and quite a bit sleeker:

The rx4240 is smaller in all aspects:

Finally, it’s time to pitch the device against three ordinary phones (Nokia N71,. Nokia N96 and QTek 8500):

Cutting a long story short: the Samsung i780 is not proportioned well. While being one of the bigger handsets in our test, it also gets the unhonourable award of having the smallest keys of the entire batch. But what does that mean in day-to-day use?

Tune in soon – part three is coming up shortly!

Microsoft originally intended to give away a new beta of Windows 7 to the attendants of its PDC conference – unfortunately, the file is said to have leaked out into BitTorrent networks according to DownloadSquad.

ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has taken the beta for a spin, and was pretty happy overall. His main point of grief was the newly-arranged Task bar, which he considers overloaded and difficult to use.

He generally was happy with the performance and stability of this early beta (!!!) – hit the link above for a few images!

The folks at Engadget’s are known to be extremely good when it comes to all things rumor: unfortunately, their analyst team sometimes gets carried away by bad or humorous feelings.

Their latest stunt is a gift list “for your biggest enemy” – while the idea sounds funny, some of their selections are nothing short of bone-headed:

• Celio REDFLY
• Meizu M8
• Treo 800w

P.S. I could recommend a gift for your enemy: an Asus product of your choice. Its crap cheap due to bad design…and when it breaks down, things get really really funny…

Canadian readers will be well aware of Rogers, one of the biggest carriers of the nation. Fortunately for us, one of their employees recently released a presentation covering the upcoming smartphones – here is what he had to say about Windows Mobile phones:

P.S. In case anyone wonders – the Omnia really wasn’t mentioned…

A recent Wall Street Journal report states that the US Christmas sale season didn’t go too well, with average losses of about 20% across all categories.

The electronics/appliances market was among the ones hit the worst; having to net a -27% loss on a year-to-year perspective. Online sales were the only sector which remained somewhat constant, with a Y2Y loss of about 2%:

Few retailers were counting on the holidays being robust when they placed conservative orders for merchandise last summer … By October, retail sales were declining faster than expected amid the steady drumbeat of bad economic news.

… Among the biggest losers were electronics and appliances, which fell a combined 26.7% versus a 2.7% gain last year. … E-commerce showed the most resilience, with online sales falling just 2%. …

Image: US Government: Dorothea Lange, via Wikimedia Commons

Even though I personally consider Windows Mobile devices superior to iPhones in almost every aspect except design, the huge reach of the latter has led to a huge plethora of peripherals being developed for the iPhone connector.

The folks at WebNetta’s have figured out a way to connect a T-Mobile G1 device to iPhone chargers and audio peripherals – while I am not sure if the ExtUSB pinout of the G1 is 100% similar to the one found on our Windows Mobile boxen, I am pretty sure that there should be no differences.

If anyone of you has spare iPhone/iPod stuff laying around and isn’t afraid of a bit of soldering, hit the link above for the full scoop!

Most books on design patterns and/or application architecture are insanely expensive and not particularly well-suited to the demands of mobile application developers.

Fortunately for us, Microsoft’s patterns & practices group has just released a freely-downloadable ebook called “Rich Client Architecture Pocket Guide”. The 1MB PDF file looks at all things mobile – if you feel like giving it a spin, hit the URL below!

Rich Client Architecture Pocket Guide

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Andyindia

As I recently was on the verge of hardresetting my rx4240 as it refused to connect to my PC, I think that sharing the following bit of info could save a lot of grief!

Cutting a long story short: Microsoft’s firewall is the one to blame. If all exceptions are blocked via the “no exceptions” checkbox, ActiveSync will recognize devices but will not be able to connect/sync.

The workaround is simple but dangerous – allow exceptions in the firewall settings.

.NET developers are blessed by not having to care about the joys of character representation on Win32-based platforms – while most other OSses (e.g. Palm OS) are limited to single-byte chars, our friends at M$’s have cooked up a variety of different types including Unicode.

One resource I personally found extremely useful was Michael Dunn’s two-part tutorial. It starts by looking at the memory representation of “advanced” strings, and ends at string conversions – find it at CodeProject’s:
The Complete Guide to C++ Strings, Part I – Win32 Character Encodings
The Complete Guide to C++ Strings, Part II – String Wrapper Classes

Microsoft’s MSDN unfortunately is very confusing when it comes to strings. Nevertheless, the Win32’s String Chapter contains a few useful articles (hidden under UI…as if anyone would look there) – hit the URL below for the full scoop:
Unicode in the Windows API

Palm’s now-classic Treo 600 defined a new smartphone form factor: the touchscreened QWERTY candybar. So far, very few manufacturers have tried to venture into Palm’s home turf – the Samsung i780 is one of the few WM devices with this form factor (and a highly impressive 320×320 screen).

TamsPPC is one of the few news services who have managed to get their hands onto such a box – here’s the first part of our review!

One thing in advance: the i780 is a fascinatingly weird device. The weirdness starts with the box – it has a flip lid revealing exactly nothing:

The box is of the classic variety, containing a tray with the device on top:

As usual, a wall wart and a charger are included. The charger lacks international tips and is based on a custom connector – Samsung apparently seems to dislike MiniUSB for some reason (upward compatibility with old phones):

A really unique thing is the charger with a spare battery – if you connect the device’s wall wart to it, the battery inside gets charged. Unfortunately, no extra wall wart is included…:

Samsung threw in a headset for posterity:

Small quick-start guides in various languages, a software CD (no Outlook inside), a warranty card and a disposal guide (!!!) fill up the box:

In the end, I have to say that I slowly but surely start to loathe manufacturers who forget to include international tips (a must-have for business devices). The rest of the bundle is ok – the spare charger is an unique add-on of questionable value due to its dependence on the stock wall wart…

PocketPCThoughts Jason Dunn just came back from Microsoft’s latest Mobius conference, and posted a rather detailed 5page wrap-up of the topics covered.

He has a nice summary of all presentations, whose topics ranged from mundane things like Windows 7 to more interesting stuff like HTC’s view of the future and a variety of interesting stats.

As usual, the full scoop can be had here:
http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/news/show/91879/mobius-2008-winter-edition.html

Resco’s recent Christmas party provided me with the opportunity to handle a few devices I didn’t get my hands on before. Here’s a short “description” of each:

Touch HD
First up: a Touch HD, courtesy of an unnamed Microsoft Slovakia employee. The device is rather big compared to a Treo 680:

An N96 looks tiny in comparison:

BTW: the box really has no fiveway navigator. The four buttons pictured are “soft buttons”, too – the power button is the only real one on the entire device:

When handling the device, I was immediately impressed by the huge screen. It makes stylus-less usage of WM fun…but can’t compensate the lack of a QWERTY keyboard for me… Nevertheless, its an impressive device for sure!

Touch Diamond
The Diamond was in my hands for just a few seconds…and I didn’t particularly like it due to the “small” screen and the weird fiveway navigator (can’t manufacturers finally get back to traditional ones).

The machine is insanely small, though:

XPERIA X1
I also had the opportunity to handle the X1 (courtesy of a guy from Lieber Lieber who regularly comments on TamsPPC and who I met by chance):

While the devices keyboard is good enough for my taste, I start to dislike the screen as I feel it is too small. Nevertheless, its the best tradeoff of the three for me..so if my carrier (Three Austria) manages to track one down for me, I’ll probably take it…

In the end, I have to say that none of the three devices reaches the level of excellency found in an old HP iPaq or Palm Tungsten handheld. The boxen definitely are small, handy and fast…but the lack of a keyboard and/or a fiveway nav is a major turndown for me…

So far, the folks at Mobinnova’s ha toiled secretly as OEM for a variety of companies including the heavily-struck i-mate – they have just left the shadowy areas of OEMness and dropped the box pictured below:

The phone is dubbed ICE (caution – flash-heavy page) and is tri-band capable. It is said to have custom UI running on its WQVGA touchscreen and is powered by an unspecified CPU.

Furthermore, the usually well-informed DigiTimes claims that Sony Ericsson will switch its WM OEM from HTC to these boys. As of now, nothing is known about why this happens – I personally think that this is due to the insane delays seen in producing the X1…

SPB recently sent me a flurry of releases relating to a product called SPB OnLine. As I never quite got the idea behind it, I decided to sit down with an SPB official and figure out what its all about.

Even though I didn’t manage to whip out 10 questions like I usually do, the answers below should answer most(all) open questions:

Please tell us more about yourself?
A bit official here: Spb is the global leader in the design of Windows Mobile applications. An international company, with offices in Hong Kong, Russia and Thailand, Spb combines a unique line of popular consumer products and cooperation with the world’s leading OEMs and carriers.

The popularity of Spb’s products is founded on their relevance to real customer needs and smartphone use cases, supported by superior technical implementation, stability, and quality graphic design.

Spb has recently launched a mobile entertainment division, targeted at helping mobile network operators reinvigorate subscriber enthusiasm for mobile entertainment and data, through delivering improved mobile content experiences on handsets.

SPB OnLine has been a bit of a mystery to me. Could you give me an elevator pitch describing what it does?
In short, the main goal of Spb Online is to do the same thing with online services, as what Safari did with mobile web. Popularize, make it usable!

As the product clearly is targeted at operators, why sell it to end customers? After all, it essentially is a glorified app store…
Working directly with end users was always the strategy of Spb, and even when we go to OEMs and MOs, one of the main reasons they work with us – is because we know how to make software and services that end users love. So all of our products always go to the consumers

I would also disagree that Spb Online is an app store. The store is only one of the 6 services in the package: mobile TV, radio, news, weather, online games, all of when have nothing to do with the store.

For sure, we are working on getting more channels in, and on organizing sms payment for content in the store, and many other things, to make the online suite irresistible for end-users.

Do you plan to sell third-party programs via the portal?
We already do.