TamsPPC – the PocketPC Blog

I have to admit that I never liked HTC’s TouchFLO too much – I am, however, perfectly aware that I am very alone with this sentiment.

The list below hits us via xda-developers; a user dubbed shadowline claims that it’s the “change log” for the upcoming version 2.5 of the UI:

Home screen:
New look
new shortcut icons on up swipe, along with 3 on the main screen.
Tapping on an appointment brings up a new appointment info screen.
Tapping on date lets you change the date.
Tapping on the alarm info lets you change alarms.
Tapping on time lets you view the world clock.

People Tab:
New layout, grid style like Manila 2D.
New Messaging screen (see messaging below)
– All people:
Nothing new in the main screen, but under “Updates and Events” tapping on “me” brings you to a list of your facebook notifications.

Messaging Tab:
Nothing new on the main screen
– All Messages:
Brand new all messages screen. Listed by conversation/contact, and includes contact icons.
– In a conversation:
Brand new screen, scrolling has changed, icons included in each message along with the contact icon at the top.

Mail Tab:
Nothing new.

Internet tab:
New bookmarks view, includes thumbnails of your favorite sites (can be used on home screen too)

Calendar tab:
Nothing new

Stocks tab:
Nothing new

Photos and videos tab:
Nothing new

Music Tab:
Totally new page
Album thumbnails now “flow” in from the top
new controls
– Menu:
Update album art from the web on selected track, or on all of now playing.

Weather Tab:
Nothing new
– Add City:
New search by typing name.

Footprints Tab:
Brand new tab, works much like its Manila 2D cousin.
Not able to test more on this as it is not currently working for me.

Settings tab:
So much to list!
All of the windows mobile settings menu has been placed into this tab.
If you could get to it from start > settings, then it is now here too.

None of this is final, and there are a LOT of features that at either not working, temporarily broken (requiring a restart), or tf3d itself crashes a lot.

As of now, no further information is available – stay tuned!

The Mozilla Foundation has just unleashed the second beta of its mobile FireFox (dubbed Fennec):

The following things have been added or changed:

New for Alpa 2:

* Improved panning performance
* Newly designed theme
* JavaScript error console is now built in
* Improved add-on support
* Numerous bug fixes
* Improved UI polish

As of now, the Mozilla Foundation has stated nothing about hardware requirements – all they state is that Windows Mobile 6 is required. This means that the program will likely work on all supported screen resolutions – further information can be had here:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/fennec/1.0a2-wm/releasenotes/

HTC’s recently-announced Android handset (dubbed HTC Hero) contains an UI stack of its own – it is dubbed Sense, and is radically different from the current TouchFLO implementations which sit on the Today screen of various WM handsets.

WMPowerUser asked the folks at HTC’s whether TouchFLO is here to stay – and got the following response:

The Hero UI has been created specifically for HTC’s Android-based phones but also represents that three core pillars of HTC Sense. HTC’s future Windows Mobile phones will also be based on HTC Sense, but will enhance Windows Mobile in a way that is as appropriate and valuable to people.

I personally think that their choice makes perfect sense: people think about brands first, and about operating systems only after that. Nokia is as successful as it is as its S40 and S60 handsets share a largely common UI stack, thereby simplifying switching.

HTC gains a lot from unifying their UX: I personally would not be surprised to hear that HTC got thousands of calls from people switching to the G1 and who ended up looking for the Start menu…

Unfortunately, developers will likely end up paying the bill. HTC TouchFLO has already made loads of Today plugins obsolete – the more it does out of the box, the less there is to do for developers.

What do you think?

Microsoft Austria has just gotten in touch with us for some further information about the WIndows 7 upgrade program. First of all, it starts on the 26th of this month.

From that time onward, Austrians who buy their PC at a participating retailer will be able to obtain an equivalent version of Windows 7 after its release. In particular, the following transformations will be possible:

• Vista Home Premium
• Vista Business
• Vista Ultimate

to corresponding version of Windows 7. System Builder licenses will get the same treatment – so people who get their PC with an SBC license (decoupled OEM licenses, are very popular in Austria) will also get their upgrade free of charge.

The offer will be free except for processing fees, which are said to be different from manufacturer to manufacturer. The Offer will run to the 31st January of 2010.

Windows Mobile always boasted some kind of Flash support – while not native as in other platforms, a downloadable Flash plug-in allows our boxen to access quite a few pages. Unfortunately, the emphasis is on few…as applets which require advanced functionality tend to break the plug-in.

Our handsets might just be in luck – the slide below is from an Adobe keynote:

As of now, nobody knows which devices will be affected – but things nevertheless could get very interesting soon…

The full slide deck can be had here:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/09q2analyst/

Content agregators like AvantGo date back to a time when mobile data traffic was unaffordable – back then, the only way to read newspapers on your handheld in an affordable way was to download them via your desktop PC and sync them over. Fortunately, data has become a lot cheaper…and this trend has now claimed its first victim.

AvantGo’s mother company has just posted the image below to the official AvantGo web site – the intentions should be clear:

While this move will hit users without a data plan hard, most of us should IMHO switch over to RSS feeds. RSS feeds are available from most news services (including this one), and tend to offer the same thing which AvantGo has offered. A variety of such programs are available – hit the TamsShop to find free and paid ones…and don’t forget to use the discount code CRAZYSUNDAY to get 20% off your paid app of choice…

GamePro, one of Germany’s largest video game magazines, reports the following (translated by yours truly):

Germany plans to introduce a law which prohibits the production, manufacturing and/or sale of games which are based on detailed simulation of killing of humans or humanoids.

Even though the law has not yet been ratified, its ratification is somewhat likely given the current political climate in Germany: the recent Paintball law failed due to intense lobbying, and left the government in a void and forced to act.

Obviously, raising a public stink is a very good idea – the articles below should give you food for thought:
In defence of first person shooters
We’re all paintballers now…

Although I don’t trust the customer care team of carriers too much, the quote below struck my interest:

…
Currently, we are working to launch the Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade for HTC Touch Pro.

Although, no official release date has been declared for the upgrade.

However, as soon as the upgrade is launched, we will inform our customers with high profile promotions.
…

If this really turns out to be true, the folks at xda-developers will have a lot less effort when it comes to getting WM 6.5 onto other Touch Pro-like devices. However, I dare to bet that they will be done by the time Sprint moves…

via PocketNow

Vista haters will be happy to read the lines below, which hit us via Xinhuanet:

… confirmed that Windows 7, the next version of its operating system, will hit stores on Oct. 22, in time for the holiday shopping season,
…
Microsoft said it plans to offer a guarantee program that would offer a free upgrade to Windows 7 for people who purchase computers installed with Windows Vista close to the launching date of Oct. 22, The Seattle Times newspaper reported on its website.
…

Even though I haven’t had any hands-on time with Windows 7 as of this writing, other Tamoggemon employees have had this pleasure and have described the operating system as “amazingly fast compared to Vista, and more featurerich than XP”…

We have seen our fair share of Twitter hoaxes recently, but I am pretty sure that this tweet is authentic:

BTW: the message hits us via the Twitter account of the Windows Mobile team – it can be accessed here:
http://twitter.com/wmdev/status/1797927736

MicroSoft Austria has just informed me that the release candidate of Windows 7 has just been uploaded to MSDN/TechNet. This means that all who are subscribed to either of the two services can now download it.

According to Microsoft, this release candidate has already reached a stability level where companies can start evaluating it – whatever that may mean…

P.S. Just in case anyone cares: Release Candidate is Microsoft-Speak for feature complete and decently stable…

The picture on the left shows Google Maps for S60…but the product also has a huge followership among Windows Mobile heads. The latest version of the program brings a variety of new features and fixes:

Major

* Background location updates: Google Latitude background location updating has been fixed and allows you to continue updating your location automatically in the background even when Maps for mobile is closed.
o To enable this, choose to exit Maps from its main menu and when prompted, select ‘Yes’ to continue background location updates.
o When in background location update mode, Latitude will default to cell ID (cell tower) location detection to preserve battery life. WiFi or GPS detection will not be available in background mode.
o Note: you may receive a limited number of installation reminders.
* Auto-restart location updates: If you turn off your phone or it ran out of battery with automatic Latitude location updates enabled either in the background (see above) or with Maps left open, Latitude will respect this choice and automatically restart location updates in background mode when you next turn on your phone.
* Force location updates: Manually refreshing your Latitude friends list also forces the update of your own location if automatic detection is enabled.
* Login errors: Several fixes completed to address multiple causes of login errors for Latitude, such as invalid certificates.
* Backlight behavior: Your device backlight should turn off according to your system settings when Maps or Latitude is left open in the background. Previously, Latitude may have kept your backlight on when in the background.
* Internal error: Selecting a friend in Latitude to see more info and options will no longer cause internal errors on some devices.

Minor
* Many minor interface and layout issues have been fixed or changed.
* Cell ID (cell tower) location detection near two cell towers has been improved so that your location bounces less if you’re between two towers.
* Map centering when GPS is active has been fixed on some phones. Previously Maps may have defaulted to your location instead of a friend’s after you choose ‘Show on map’ for the friend in Latitude.
* Friend photo icons have been fixed to properly indicate if a friend’s location is recent (blue outline) or old (gray outline). Previously, some friend photo icons remained blue even if the location was old.
* Photo uploading for your Latitude picture is enabled for .png files.

Further information can be had at Google’s web site:
http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=144115

The screenshot gallery below hits us via istartedsomething – they claim that it shows the new themes which will be found in Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional:

If their information is correct, Microsoft has employed the help of various designers in order to improve the visual appeal of Windows Mobile 6.5. This is big news for one reason: while we (aka the folks who read tech sites) have had access to thousands of themes for some time, average users never heard about the opportunity of using downloaded themes.

P.S. Windows Mobile Standard 6.5 will likely get similar themes…

The folks at Opera’s have just released a flurry of information on the next version of Opera Mobile:

The Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta will include the following great features:

Improved rendering engine
Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta uses the Presto 2.2 rendering engine, which will also be used in the Opera 10 desktop browser. Presto 2.2 offers faster page loading, and we’re excited to use this state-of-the-art rendering engine and be at the forefront of standards support with 100/100 on Acid 3.

Opera Turbo
Finally we can show you Opera Turbo on mobile! Opera Turbo accelerates the browsing experience by reducing bandwidth consumption up to 80%. Many of you will be familiar with Opera’s compression technology from using Opera Mini, and with Opera Mobile 9.7 you’ll get the best of both worlds – a full-fledged browser with extra Turbo capabilities. It’s not the full version of Opera Turbo yet (yes, that’s a Beta feature in a Beta release), but we couldn’t wait to show you this cool feature.

Improved Widget Manager
Opera Widgets are small, handy Web applications that run locally on your mobile phone. Our new Widget Manager has improved usability and design, and runs independently from the browser.

Gears
Gears is a Google open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser. Read more about Gears on Opera Labs.

OpenGL ES
Hardware acceleration with OpenGL ES support, ensuring smoother scrolling, panning and a more fluid user interface.

Also, we’ve tried to iron out some of the major issues with the 9.51 Beta, among other things:

• Installation on storage card is now possible, and the Beta happily coexists with preinstalled versions of Opera Mobile.
• Better IME support (although a lot of non-standard 3rd party IME applications still make this a difficult task).
• Better performance and feedback when clicking links.

Finally, a small video was posted showing the speed advantages of Opera(30 seconds) and Opera Turbo(10 seconds) over IE(2.5 minutes)

The images below hit us via WMPowerUser, who post them without further commentary:

As I currently have no further information myself, I have to pass. Comments always requested though…
Image dump 1
Image dump 2