TamsPPC – the Windows Phone Blog

Don’t ask me what the mobile FireFox team is doing – but it most certainly isn’t helping their market share in mobile. Vendors like Opera have made a killing off Windows Mobile and Symbian…and the folks at Mozilla’s have just released their first final FireFox mobile version.

Believe it or not – it is targeted at Maemo:

…

Firefox is currently supported on Nokia’s Maemo5 platform and is available for download on the Nokia N900. Users can download and learn more by visiting Firefox.com/mobile. Visit the FAQ for more information.

…

Even though I don’t want top be accused of mindless ranting, one question comes to mind: WTF. Why does the Mozilla Foundation release its first-ever browser on a platform which essentially has 5 users world-wide? And why not on a platform like WM?

Ideas, anyone?

Upgrade whac-a-mole is not new to the wireless industry – however, it traditionally was limited to times when manufacturers wanted to persuade customers to upgrade to a next-generation device as fast as possible. When looking at the HD2, this reason is not too plausible – after all, there is no ‘other’ device.

Either way: HTC has just taken the third stab at an SMS hotfix for the HD2:

For now, further information can be procured at the URL below:
http://www.htc.com/europe/SupportDownload.aspx?p_id=297&cat=0&dl_id=812

Big acquisitions do happen in mobile – but they usually take place between hardware manufacturers. Don’t ask me why and how the folks at HandMark’s managed to buy up Astraware two years ago – but the company is now solo again.

A press release has just gone out. It states the following:

KANSAS CITY, MO and LONDON, UK – January 27, 2010 – Handmark®, the world’s leading developer and distributor of mobile applications and services, today announced it has spun off its mobile games studio, Astraware, as the company streamlines its business to focus on other strategic areas of mobile development and support.

Astraware returns to the management of Howard Tomlinson and David Oakley, two of the original founders, and will remain a Handmark preferred partner. Handmark will continue to support Astraware on a variety of distribution and promotional opportunities.

“We saw a great opportunity to join forces with Astraware to help create and extend a collection of fun, well-designed mobile games titles to a new audience, and we did just that,” said Paul Reddick, Handmark CEO. “I still see a great opportunity for their team to continue proving their leadership as a major player in mobile games and we will continue to work alongside them.”

…

The financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

P.S. I asked them about specifics of the deal at a tradeshow two years ago – and got a really really pissed off HandMark manager on my back…

Apple’s App Store is unique in two aspects: it is, first of all, insanely successful – and does not allow time-limited trial versions. These two aspects have led quite a few to question the value of free trials – unfortunately, getting data out of developers has been all but easy.

Todd A. Sherman from Smart Box Design (a games company) now shares the following – according to him, trial versions don’t really pay out in the “nice new world”:

I did an analysis of the best selling Word games and compared their numbers and ratings against their free version. For the Word category it did not seem to make a huge difference if you had a free version or not. We got a huge bump in downloads from our Free version, thousands and thousands of downloads, but only saw a modest change in sales. However, getting on people’s mind space was worth it for us.

We are, of course, looking at an individual opinion here. However, the information I have received from other parties sounded similar…

The last few days brought us loads of rumors about upcoming announcements from Microsoft. They have just spoken up on a few of the topics – here goes.

First of all, Electronista claims the following:

Microsoft during the conference call it used to discuss its latest results has confirmed that it will show a new version of Windows Mobile at Mobile World Congress. Without going into detail, CFO Peter Klein said the next version of the mobile OS would be shown at the Barcelona event “in a few weeks.”

…

The second part comes to us via NeoWin, and points us at something we all should have been able to figure out on our own much sooner. Windows Mobile 7 may sync with the Zune software, and no Zune box is upcoming:

As the MWC will take place in the middle of February, there’s not much to worry about as we’ll find all out soon – stay tuned!

Our friend pictured on the left can rejoice: it looks like his frantic efforts at Toshiba’s MWC booth last year paid off.

A device called Toshiba TG-02 has just passed through the FCC tests. As of this writing, no picture or anything else has been made available – but it’s always good to know that the folks at Toshiba’s are working on some kind of new TG-series gadget…

I’d file this in the “really strange” folder – some folks at xda-developer’s have just figured out that a simple ROM patch enables an extra 128MB of memory on the HD2.

User levin07 reports the following:

The screenshot I show you guys is a consequence of 2.02 driver+2.06 radio.
I wonder our hd2 has 576M ram actually but not actived yet.
Can anyone tell me the “truth”?
If our hd2 has 576m ram,how can we active it?

The boys have even gone as far as to perform basic testing, and were able to allocate the full memory. Of course, this doesn’t mean much – as long as no integrity checks are performed on the memory, I’d be more than weary. HTC likely disabled it for a reason after all.

Either way, stay tuned…

Resco has traditionally had two products: Explorer and Photo Viewer. Customers have long wished that the two would be merged – and Resco has just fulfilled this wish.

Version 2010 of the product adds the following new features:

New features in Explorer 2010
* Image Upload to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Picasa, MySpace and Photobucket — the program is now able to upload image files to the most popular social networks including the largest web image database — Flickr.
* Thumbnails View Mode — The new view mode displays previews of images. It becomes handy (improves the navigation) while seeking in folders with many image files.
* Interaction with Resco Photo Manager — The new Explorer can utilize tools and strengths of Resco Photo Manager. If users have both of these programs installed on a device, they will sense that the thumbnail loading is faster as well as the fact that it supports all the photo manager image types.
* Totally Customizable Today Plug-in — Today plug-in gets new shape and becomes totally customizable — add or remove phone tools, applications or documents. The eventual size of the plug-in, therefore, depends only on your choices.

Further information can be had via the URL below – expect a review in the near future:
http://www.resco.net/pocketpc/explorer/

Don’t ask me why, but driver and firmware updates tend to be especially hairy areas when it comes to leaking new products – more than one unannounced gadget was initially “outed” this way.

istartedsomething now spotted the following sequence in an USB driver:

[Microsoft.NTx86]
%Zune.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\MS_COMP_MTPZ
%Zune.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\VID_045E&PID_0710
%Zune.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\VID_045E&PID_063E
%Phone.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\VID_045E&PID_0640
%Phone.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\VID_045E&PID_0641
%Phone.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\VID_045E&PID_0642
%ZuneIp.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZIP, umb\urn:microsoft-com:device:mtpz:1

; Localizable strings
Msft = “Microsoft”
Zune.DeviceDesc = “Zune”
…
Phone.DeviceDesc = “Phone”

As I have already stated my opinion regarding this in the past clearly (here), we can but stay tuned and hope that it turns out to be a new SideKick dumbphone…

This one could be useful for (former) AT&T customers – there’s a class action lawsuit against AT&T’s ETF provisions which could also provide a benefit to people who never paid an ETF.

The web site explains it as follows:

This Settlement will provide the benefits discussed below to qualifying former customers of AT&T Mobility or its predecessors who were charged a flat-rate ETF between and including January 1, 1998 and November 4, 2009, and qualifying current customers of AT&T Mobility who had a flat-rate ETF provision in their subscriber agreement(s) as of November 4, 2009. YOU MAY BE ELIGIBLE FOR BENEFITS WHETHER OR NOT YOU PAID A FLAT-RATE ETF. Three categories of benefits are available. Submit your claim under the category that describes your situation. Even if you have multiple claims, you may choose only ONE of the categories and ONE of the benefits under that category. The benefit amounts shown are the highest possible amounts. In the event that the claims for cash exceed the available settlement funds, the cash benefit amounts will be reduced pro rata in order to allow the maximum number of claims. In the event that the value of claims for non-cash benefits (other than the prorated ETF benefit) exceeds $2,000,000, the non-cash benefit amounts (other than the prorated ETF benefit) will be reduced pro rata in order to allow the maximum number of claims.

The Court has not decided whether the claims in the lawsuit have any merit. However, if you are a member of the Settlement Class, you have a choice to make now.
…

Further information can be had below – if you were or are an AT&T customer and have a few minutes to spare, why not give it a click:
http://www.attmetfsettlement.com/

Just in case anyone of you has still been living under a rock: the Apple tablet has just been released, and it will be called iPad (not iSlate). Those of you needing a bit of technical information can find it below – the rest of this piece will look at the reasoning behind the box.

Hands-on with the iPad
Price information

First of all: the folks at Palm’s will likely jump over their house door backwards three times. The iPad is no danger whatsoever to their new devices – no multitasking and no keyboard mean that the device is almost unusable for business. Other manufacturers don’t have to worry either…

Apple’s iPad also doesn’t target the existing tablet PC crowd: these devices also cater to a completely different audience. Business folks and note takers are not the target here…

When it comes to mobile usage, the box also can’t achieve much: it is too big to be truly portable, and offers too little to replace a notebook. So no cheese here, either.

Instead, the iPad is a passive media consumption box. It is a large personal media player more than anything else – users are expected to take the critter to bed or to the couch and look at TV, do some casual web surfing or listen to music. Active input will take place someplace else.

The device thus ties in perfectly into Apple’s existing ecosystem, and will likely sell like the AppleTV did. But it IMHO won’t have much of a lasting impact on the mobile world as whole…

What do you think?

Even though I have to openly admit that I never ran into any memory issues on my XPERIA X1 so far, it is always nice to see other manufacturers upping the specs of their devices a bit.

HTC has just done that, increasing the RAM and ROM of T-Mobile’s version of the HD2:

Additionally, a 16GB memory card will be included – which makes this a nice step upwards from the 2GB card which ships with most other boxen.

Tradeshows are struggling for some time: most manufacturers think that the money spent on a booth is better invested into direct advertising. After all, journalists can be reached significantly faster by just sending them a press release – and a free sample goes quite a long way, too.

Keeping an event successful thus requires not only smart management, but also an effective way to attract the media. Unfortunately, the folks at MiLiberty’s seem to have issues understanding this basic rule of thumb.

Their response to an accreditation request by the yours truly looked like this:

From: Sam Tring [string@miliberty.com]

Your message

To: press@mobileworldcongress.com
Cc: pressregistration@mobileworldcongress.com
Subject: Press accreditation
Sent: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:38:50 -0000

was deleted without being read on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:18:19 -0000

Well, well – it’s a bit difficult to say much here. I should have no issue covering the event due to exhibitor passes from partners – but it nevertheless serves as an excellent example for how to kill events!

The folks at Nokia’s have already ditched the GSMA – I can understand them well. After all, the purpose of such an event is to get press exposure – and if you keep the press out, well, you get the idea…

I currently envy nobody who works in Microsoft’s mobile department – licensees are jumping ship all over the place.

Palm is gone for some time, and it looks like SE is next. Mobile Business now claims the following:

At some stage this year it is believed the company will also announce it is to drop support for one of its many operating system partners (most likely, Windows Mobile).

Given the relative success of the XPERIA X1 in Europe, I don’t really understand the reasoning behind the move – let’s see what really happens…

HTC’s recent, massive leakages have raised quite a few heads – according to the usually well-informed Eldar Murtazin, they were not unintentional.

He has just posted the following to his Twitter account:

As hardware manufacturers have done this frequently in the past, there is not much reason to distrust Murtazin on this one…