TamsPPC - the PocketPC Blog

Just in case you aren’t happy with the battery lifetime of one or more of your gadgets: our sister site TamsPalm currently has a review of PPC Tech’s new mobile device charger that allows you to charge your favorite device on the go:

Please get the full scoop over at TamsPalm’s!

The Windows Mobile market seems to be full of hot air ATM - first, that iPhone guy, and now the folks at Engadget’s treating the LG KS20 like the story of the day.

Hell, the box was on display at the CeBit. Prove image below. OK?

In case anyone of you still recalls Celio’s RedFly, a prototype of the device has now made it into the hands of analysts at MobilityToday:

The folks rate the device well overall - give them a click in case you wish to read more!

A few days ago, a Motorola/Symbol executive told us about how falling prices for VGA screens motivate Symbol’s design department to eventually consider replacing its QVGA screens - not for the benefits of a higher resolution, but rather because of lower cost.

The folks at EngadgetMobile now report that users from a russian forum have found out that Asus did something similar with their P750 smartphone - while the device displays data in QVGA, it actually uses a VGA screen and uses pixel, doubling in order to achieve the desired, aka low, resolution.

Not much further information is available as of now - I have sent an inquiry to Asus’s Lars Schweden - let’s stay tuned!

As a small outtake, I proudly present you a snapshot of the Windows Mobile team’s CeBit “boothlet”. The folks did a great job with their booth – an u-shaped table formation, and loads of different devices to try out. The stand always was chock full:

Last but not least, here are a few quick shots of some the devices that were shown:

Just in case anyone of you wonders about what happened to the Meizu booth after it’s closure(irregardless of reasons):

It is still closed(as of Friday, 19:00). All announcements of a planned reopening are not true…in fact, even the bins were emptied out of all Meizu related stuff….

Prologue: Meizu is mostly known for its iPhone-lookalike powered by Windows Mobile(the M8). Their booth was raided and closed down (apparently) for some kind of MP3 codec quarrel…

P.S. The guys munching stuff weren’t from Meizu!

In case anyone of you lives in one of the time zones mentioned below, please head over to the Microsoft web site and download a small RAM patch for your Smartphone:

Arabic Standard Time
Adjusts DST start dates and end dates for the Baghdad time zone to reflect changes that have occurred since the earlier cumulative time zone update was created in August 2007.
Australia: Central Australia Standard Time, Australia Eastern Standard Time, Tasmania Standard Time
Adjusts DST start times and end times for these time zones so that DST starts and ends on the same day. This adjustment was made after the earlier cumulative time zone update was created in August 2007.

Further information on the update is available in the Microsoft Knowledge base.

Stowaway’s keyboards have been the classic accessory for (Palm OS) handhelds since the day of the Vii(click here for a photo of a prototype) - anyways, the company has recently announced to halt all keyboard sales, claiming high driver development costs as cause(that could explain why Freedom is so paranoid about its drivers):

Anyways, their current bluetooth keyboard is currently in blow-out mode on Amazon.com - in case you wish to risk your luck(and have drivers), get it for 40$ below:
http://www.amazon.com/Stowaway-Ultra-Slim-Bluetooth-Blackberry-Handhelds/dp/B0002OKCXE?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1202142985&sr=8-1

The Taiwanese company HTC(short for High Tech Computing) has been the number one producer of both Windows Mobile PocketPC’s and Windows Mobile Smartphones for the last years - in fact, many companies shipped rebranded HTC devices of their own.

Usually-reliable DigiTimes has found out that HTC’s share of the Windows Mobile Smartphone market is now at approximately 30%, with Motorola and Samsung in front by a small margin. For comparison reasons, HTC’s market share was over 50% last year.

However, HTC still is #1 when sales of touchscreened devices are concerned(over 50%) - interestingly, the number 2 in this market is Palm(with a meager 10%).

Get the full scoop here:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080129PD208.html

This could be very important for all of you using Verizon phones:

Effective sometime in March; each SMS costs you 20 cents! The 15cent pricing is no longer valid. Once again: 1 SMS=20 cents!

RCRWireless, the news service that broke the news about this price hike, claims that Verizon is doing this in order to encourage customers to switch to their dedicated message plans.

As a sidenote: most Austrian carriers charge 20 euro cents(approx 30 US cents) per SMS…

Most of you have probably seen them in phone shops - functionless phones used to “demo” the physical form factor of phones without sacrificing/risking an expensive mobile phone.

Anyways, TamsPalm author Oliver W Leibenguth managed to get a Treo 750v dummy and tore it apart - a few images(and a lot of German text) are at his personal blog:
http://blog.compuseum.de/?p=127#more-127

CNET’s Bonnie Cha(legendary for crashing an early Palm OS NVFS device in the demo video…and being too lazy to retake it) has posted a “top-5″ list of GPS units to CNET’s American web site.

The second place went to HP’s rx5900; the bigger brother of our ever-strong rx4240. The machine is described as following:

For the movers and shakers, the HP iPaq rx5900 Travel Companion delivers a sleek, all-in-one solution that can not only keep you on track during your travels but also with your schedule. This PDA-GPS combo is one of the sleekest we’ve seen to date.

CNET’s merchant system is no longer able to locate any stock of the device as of this writing - apparently, HP’s catastrophic 3xx box has caused a little run on remaining rx59xx inventory. People wanting to navigate with their Pocket PC’s can now use either an external GPS unit(I do this) or choose from a variety of other manufacturers who each have their individual issues(e.g. Acer’s horrible customer service).

P.S. If anyone of you knows about a store where the rx59xx still is for sale, PLEASE leave a comment!

I found out about a self diagnostic mode, which checks if some functions of the Axim are working properly. This mode is a little bit hidden, to access it, do the following:

Press Record + Power + Reset at the same time, then release only reset and keep the others pressed. Wait until the Self Diagnostic Screen appears.

Here is a little video at YouTube showing the Self Diagnostic mode. Feel free to leave some comments!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=a9G6ofn-y7M

Dear Readers,
in Austria, Santa Claus-o-mania has hit the masses(Austrians celebrate Santa Claus on the 6th). While most Austrians are running around stuffing one another full of chocolate, the TamsShop team is hard at work to bring you the following opportunity to get your favorite app or game for cheap:

Use the discount code HOHOHO! in the TamsShop to get 20% off the list price of any and all applications that are available

Which app will you use to keep yourself busy as the masses go running by?

A thread on PocketNow.com comparing the home screen of various versions of the Windows Mobile UI have made me think about what really disturbs me about Windows Mobile. After quite a bit of thinking,. I think that I have found my culprit…it’s the annoying top and bottom toolbars which IMHO are way to wide(especially in landscape mode):

If the image above wouldn’t be so sad, one could laugh about it for hours. A spreadsheet cell is tinner than the bottom toolbar, and the same is valid for the bottom one.

My personal request to the Windows Mobile team can be expressed easily - but the toolbar size by half. They are still tappable(case frames aid inaccurate users) - and we could get a nice extra bit of information on-screen!