Expert: Werner "Menneisyys" Ruotsalainen

1. Machines at War (see review of a previous version HERE), probably the best RTS (Real-Time Strategy) for Windows Mobile, has been updated to version 1.2, introducing even some new units. Well worth checking out.

2. the free and excellent (!) Doom clone, DoomGLES, has also been updated, now delivering far better GoForce performance.

3. if you still haven’t purchased Orions (the best turn-based strategy game for Windows Mobile) during the last, 40% rebate, now, you have a chance of getting it for free if you post a reply to THIS thread

4. PDAmill has released Pachinko Go!. The blurb is as follows: "What the heck is Pachinko? Gravity, Skill, and Luck! It's a unique game which is kind of a cross between a vertical pinball game and a slot machine which is extremely popular in Japan (and growing more popular worldwide every day). This simple, yet addicting game contains 3 unique Pachinko games in one package, including many unlockable extras to acquire, extending the gameplay even more!"

5. Still speaking of PDAmill, now, after a year of their completely stopping porting their games to the platform, they’ve made available all of their Palm titles for free (!). You can find them HERE.

6. SOTi’s Pocket Controller, which is without doubt the most powerful PDA remote controller solution (see THIS for more info & comparison to the alternatives), is offered for 10 euros (about $15), incl. VAT for EU residents, only till 05/11/2008. Go get it – it’s really a bargain for this price.

7. There’s a new, free platform game Greedy Penguins HERE for both Windows Mobile Pocket PC’s / Smartphones and Symbian S60 / UIQ3.

8. If you’ve read the latest updates to my iPAQ 210 review, you already know this, but it’s still worth devoting a separate bullet in here too: I’ve thoroughly benchmarked the brand new Marvell Xscale PXA310 platform and found out that, unlike even Samsung’s low-end CPU’s, it has the same (high) power consumption upon high CPU load. It’s certainly bad news. The good news is that it’s certainly faster than the PXA270, particularly at playing back AVC stuff now that CorePlayer 1.2.x has added WMMX optimizations. And, according to the CorePlayer folks, this is just the beginning – a lot more optimizations and performance enhancements will follow! (Also see my related, new chipset reports HERE and HERE)

9. The DivX folks have released a new (0.90) beta of their free (!) DivX / XviD player DivX Mobile Player for Windows Mobile and Symbian (note that while they state there’s no 0.90 for the latter, only 0.89, the internal version number does state it’s too 0.90). Note that you’ll need to register yourself in order to be able to access the app; after this, click the URL that comes in the e-mail, change your password and, then, go HERE to directly access the downloads.

Back in the pre-1.2.0 CorePlayer times, several Symbian people used to state (see for example THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS and THIS) CorePlayer was definitely inferior to this application. This is why I was extremely interested in the results of my tests. CorePlayer 1.2+ (on all the three test devices) has beaten DivX Mobile Player in every respect.

I’ve quickly tested it on several real-world (high-resolution; mostly 576- and 640-wide) DivX- and XviD-encoded videos. It delivered acceptable results on both the two Windows Mobile handsets (HP iPAQ 210 and HTC Universal running Ranyu’s 7.6 of WM6.1) and Symbian (Nokia N95 with firmware version v21) when playing back most DivX videos. There were rarely dropped frames (albeit the playback wasn’t as smooth as under CorePlayer).

Playing back my XviD-encoded test video, however, was painfully stuttering under Windows Mobile and a little stuttering under Symbian. (I REALLY recommend THIS video; pay special attention to the camera moving in the second sketch with the office dialog). The same videos played back flawlessly under the latest versions (1.2.3 for WinMo and 1.2.0 for Symbian) of CorePlayer.

It isn’t able to play back standard ASP videos created in Nero Recode (after renaming them to .AVI’s so that the player finds them); it complains about being incompatible. (The same videos, of course, play back OK under CorePlayer, as has also been explained in my H.264 Bible.) Of course it won’t play back the much more advanced AVC (H.264) videos either.

All in all, you may want to give it a try if you prefer free stuff – but don’t forget: CorePlayer is still much better, more compatible and more efficient. The only drawback of the latter is not being free.

10. New hardware-wise, there is a plethora of new information. See for example THIS (a generic overview), THIS and THIS (HTC Diamond) etc. Of course, these threads / articles will be outdated today with HTC’s official announcements, which will be reported on by many portals; see for example MoDaCo’s related thread HERE and MsMobiles’ HERE).

11. There’s a nice hands-on review of the DVB-T receiving capabilities of the Gigabyte gSmart t600 HERE at MsMobiles. Before I finally publish my Digital TV Bible, it gives you a clear picture of what you can expect of DVB-T-capable handsets, reception capabilities- and battery life-wise.

12. The Xperia X1 will be released in mid-September; see THIS and THIS. According to one of my sources, who received it for beta testing, it does have 3D hardware acceleration, which is certainly very good news. It, however, has a rather bad thumbboard – much worse than those of the HTC Universal or the HTC Kaiser / AT&T Tilt. Now, I only wish it had a digital TV (DVB-T and -H at least for us Europeans; MediaFLO / DVB-H for Americans, T-DMB for Koreans etc.) receiver.... Too bad S-E’s engineers didn’t bother including one or don’t plan to offer a version (even with slightly bigger size) with one.

Read more!

1. One of the best Pocket PC games of all time, Orions: Legend of Wizards (along with its expansion pack Orions: The Second Age) is sold with a 40% rebate HERE. Definitely worth purchasing it if you already haven’t done so. See my two Orions Strategy Guides for more info (Pocket PC only).

2. Astraware has released Platypus, a side scroller shooter, for both Pocket PC’s and MS Smartphones (and Palm OS devices).

You might want to check it out. While I don’t consider it a better title than SkyForce Reloaded (the, currently, best top-down scroller on all mobile platforms) or even Fire Hawk by c2matrix (another cool scroller), you might like it more than me. At least the scener music is worth noticing.

Note that, on touchscreen-enabled Pocket PC’s, your ship can only be controlled with the stylus, not the D-pad. Fortunately, it has no performance problems on HTC’s current, 2.8” devices (ALL of them except the very few, CDMA-only Xscale-based ones) exhibiting the infamous touchscreen CPU usage bug; not even on my non-overclocked HTC Wizard (running the AMP WM6.1 ROM based on OS 5.2.19199). It doesn’t have performance problems on VGA devices either (tested on the x51v with makuu’s WM 6.1 A06 privß06p).

As it’s a landscape-only game, you might want to think twice before even installing it if you have a device with screen polarization issues (like the Dell Axim x50v/x51v) and your eyes happen to be sensitive to them.

Note that the Smartphone version is told to be compatible with 176*220 devices. This doesn’t seem to be the case – it simply stated my 176*220 s310 / Oxygen to be incompatible (I’ve tried both the CAB and the EXE installer). It, of course, ran flawlessly on my QVGA (240*320) s710 / Vox.

3. There is another RPG-style game, Through Enemy Eyes by ArabellaGames, a Russian / Swedish newcomer to the Windows Mobile gaming scene. I didn’t find it particularly entertaining or even interesting; however, you might find it cool. (Of maze-type games, I’d prefer AIM Productions’ Tmax or Astraware's Mazera instead – see Gaming Bible - Part I - instead.)

4. SmartGear, the all-in-one Pocket PC & Smartphone gaming console emulator, has been further improved. In addition, the developer, Larry Bank has announced he’d add support for Pocket PC 2000 and 2002.

1. Hardware

a. HTC is going to introduce some new devices in early May – at last! While I certainly consider HTC’s models boring, unimaginative and far from multimedia- and gaming-friendly, I really hope they will, at last, come up with something more appealing for the generic users. I recommend THIS thread for more info; particularly my post posted at 04/10 15:36 CET, where I explain why I don’t consider HTC’s current lineup imaginative or even interesting and what functionalities I find the most lacking.

HowardForum's related thread is also worth checking out for other rumors / guesses. Hopefully, one of the forum members who has contacts at HTC and has always provided us with some rumors will fill us in with some insider info again

b. at CTIA Wireless 2008, there have been several new devices at Microsoft’s booth, all with the new, just (at CTIA) announced 6.1 version of Windows Mobile:

Amoi 6711: a simple Smartphone with GPS:

A newcomer to Windows Mobile, Velocity, has announced two new models:

Velocity 103: a VGA Pocket PC model
Velocity 111: a QVGA Landscape Pocket PC model

Both Velocity models come with 128M RAM / 256M ROM, GPS and HSDPA. They have no goodies like 3D hardware acceleration, FM radio or TV receiver. HowardForums has a VERY long and interesting thread on these devices.

There also was a working (at MWC, it still didn’t work) prototype of the E-Ten (now: Samsung) V900, one of the most interesting VGA handsets because of its digital TV receiving capabilities. (I only wish it had a slightly bigger screen – it’s suffering from the same problem as i-mate’s new phones.)

(See for example THIS for more info & shots.)

c. AximSite has allowed discussing the (cooked) WM6 upgrade for the Axim x50/x51 series. This is certainly very good news and may also mean I also seriously rethink my not discussing these questions at all to be on the safe side. After all, it’s time to install (and, probably, report on) the latest WM6 upgrade on my HP iPAQ hx4700, which is still probably the best bed-time e-book reader.

For example, the cooked version of Windows Mobile 6.1 has just been released for the Dell Axim x51v, sporting a lot of niceties. See the related thread HERE and HERE for the WinMo Professional / Classic versions, respectively. (Yes, the former is a PPC Phone Edition version so that you can run by default PPC PE-only software like Esmertec Jbed without additional hacking - that is, copying the "placeholder" SMS.dll and phone.dll files to \Windows, as is explained in the MIDlet Bible.) I'll soon test and report on it.

You can only hope that the current (!) HP iPAQ lineup also receives cooked 6.1 (and, in the future, later) OS ROM versions - HP has just announced they won't release any WM6.1 updates for their current devices. I don't want to comment on HP's decision because I don't want them to make angry with me - you surely know what I think . Currently, there're no HP 6.1 ROM cooking-related threads at the, say, iPAQ 210 forums of BrightHand or AximSite. THIS and THIS threads may be of interest.

d. There is a brand new article on the S-E Xperia X1 HERE.

e. i-mate's new models, the 8502 and the 9502 (see my review & remarks HERE) have started shipping and are available in Europe as well (through Clove). The related HoFo thread, packed with shots of the new models (on, for example, page 15), is worth checking out, along with a brand new review of the 8502 HERE. The reviewer, generally, likes it very much, except for the lack of microSDHC support. The latter is quite a letdown if it can't be fixed...

2. Software

a. CorePlayer 1.2.2 has been released for Windows Mobile; see THIS for more info (and also my multimedia-related articles / Bibles). (For Symbian, after the already-released 1.2.0, 1.2.1 is promised in the near future)

Read more!

1. PDAmill has released Wild Gears, a Micro Machines clone

Famous game developer company PDAmill has just released Wild Gears, a pretty decent top-down racing game certainly worth a try. Features include:

• Gorgeous Cartoon Art
• Four different cars
• Intuitive controls that make full use of Windows Mobile touch screen
• 15 awesome tracks to race on
• Rockin' Soundtrack with over 20 minutes of music
• Four different Cups to compete in!
• Records Menu keeps track of all your best track and lap times
• Auto-save

Your first question will surely be (if you’re into gaming, that is): How does it compare to K-Rally, the King of all top-down racing games on all mobile platforms, including Windows Mobile (see review HERE)? Well, it has both cons and pros.

Compared to K-Rally...

It’s worth pointing out that the PDAMill folks pay special attention to their titles’ flawless running on low-end Pocket PC’s plagued with the infamous touchscreen bug I’ve elaborated on, for example, HERE. I’ve thoroughly tested the game on my non-overclocked HTC Wizard and found it extremely well done and the graphics not stuttering at all even with the stylus resting on the screen. This certainly wasn’t the case with K-Rally. On the other hand, I’ve found the game slightly slower on my VGA Dell Axim x51v than on my (even low-end!) QVGA devices. In this regard, K-Rally might (still) be a better choice.

Pros:
- runs definitely better on low-end Pocket PC’s with touchscreen CPU usage issues
- the control scheme may turn out be better for many (see below)

Read more!

You most probably will want to quickly grab Mobisation’s pretty nice game Think In Lines for your Pocket PC. It’s available at the German software reseller mobile2day.de, which is pretty much famous for free giveaways and heavy rebates like this (see the previous ones HERE).

The following titles are offered for free (only TODAY, 02/29, Central European time – that is, you have exactly 12 hours to grab the title(s)):

Think In Lines; code: TIL100. This is ONLY for Windows Mobile Pocket PC, NOT touchscreen-less MS Smartphones, as opposed to what the mobile2day.de state: “Exzellentes Denk- und Strategiespiel für PDA und Smartphone”.

There are two Java MIDlets too; mostly targeted at Symbian users but you may also want to give a try if you “only” have a Windows Mobile device. (See my MIDlet Bible for more info on executing MIDlets under Windows Mobile.)

Mobile4Shopping (Java MIDlet; seems to run OK under Esmertec Jeodek 1.1; I don’t know whether it accepts the phone IMEI on Windows Mobile) ; code: M4S100

Map.IQ_Namer (Java MIDlet; seems to crash (throw a BASIC error) under Esmertec Jeodek 1.1; haven’t tested under other MIDlet managers to see whether it's compatible with them); code: MAP100. Note that, despite what the mobile2day.de people state, there’s no BlackBerry-specific version of this title, should you (also) have a BB.

As before, use for example THIS tutorial if you don’t know German on how to proceed with "purchasing" and downloading the title(s).