Expert: Werner "Menneisyys" Ruotsalainen

I can’t say I’ve been lazy in the last few days. Thanks to the excellent feedback the XDA-Develeloper folks provided, I realized I need to check out XDA-Develeloper coder A_C’s latest, pretty nice and, if you’re a big fan of iPhone-alike interfaces, pretty much recommended, free (!) utilities.

Non-iPhone platforms (including both the operating system – see HTC’s latest Diamond* have been trying to copy the way iPhone works and is used. For example, Symbian also has a similar tool HERE.

*: As far as the, well, built-in storage- and GUI responsiveness-wise, to put it mildly, not really convincing HTC Touch Diamond (which is all the rage today in the Windows Mobile world) is concerned, before I publish a full story on it, read the comments, including mine, HERE. They’re really worth checking out to see what the tech geeks think of the Diamond’s inherent problems – as opposed to what many sites state in their HTC Diamond announcement reports. You’ll see why the “4GB of built-in memory is more than enough for everything you can think of and you certainly don’t need storage cards to extend it” approach of HTC is pretty much flawed. The Diamond should either come with 16GB flash memory at least (as is the case with later iPhone models and the Nokia N96) and/or with an additional microSD slot – even if under the battery.

Slide2Play

Let’s start with S2P (Slide2Play), a stylus-free MP3/WMA player application. It simply lets you browse and play your music files. It supports album art but, as of the current version, not much else - for example, not even playlists are supported. The interface is, as with the other apps of the same author, very easy to use with fingers. Of course, because of the lower sensitivity of traditional touchscreens versus the capacitive, glass screen of the iPhone, don’t except anything as easily controllable as on the iPhone, particularly not on devices with screens known for their being overly insensitive; most importantly, the HP iPAQ 210.

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The final version of Opera Mini 4.1, one of the best Web browsers available, has just been released; see THIS for more info. I’ll post a detailed multiplatform review in some days, after having used it for some time on all my three mobile operating systems.

Finnish computer mag Tietokone has just published a summary of their desktop browser speed test published in their (offline) papermag. Currently, I only have access to the online summary (while I'm a paying subscriber to their mag, it hasn't arrived yet). I'll let you know when there's anything else of interest in the article as soon as I receive the offline version - it's promised to be pblished tomorrow (which means subscribers living in abroad receive it shoon thereafter).

They state the current desktop Opera 9.5 b2 is considerably faster than both Internet Explorer 8 b2 and Mozilla Firefox 2. It's only Apple's Safari and Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 5 that turned out to be faster. It has also turned out to be faster with both normal- and Flash-based contents.

I've always preferred using Opera to IE on my 15" UXGA (1600*1200) Thinkpad because, even as of IE8b2, Opera 9.5 has far better zoom-in capabilities (which is essential on an UXGA or WUXGA 15" notebook), particularly when zooming into forum pages; not to mention its standards compliance (see my latest reports HERE).

I've just posted a new section to the YouTube Bible. See section UPDATE (05/12/2008) at the bottom.

Because of the huge prices of traditional (non-Internet-based) video phoning services, several Symbian users have been praising TiVi, a VoIP app / service with video phoning and, at least on Symbian, front camera support capabilities. As it also has a Windows Mobile version, I gave it a very thorough, three-platform (desktop Windows, Symbian and Windows Mobile) ride to find out what it's really capable of.

1.1 Registration, Web page

Fortunately, using the service for TiVi - TiVi connections is absolutely free (as opposed to what some people state in some Symbian forums) and works over fully (on both sides) firewalled connections. To being able to reach your buddies, you'll need to register a nickname on the central server. This is pretty easy and can be done HERE.

You'll also need to download the client software; it's available for the desktop HERE and for mobile platforms HERE. Install it; after starting it, press the left softkeys on both mobile platforms and go to Config. There, fill in your login name / password. After this, you'll become available for the others; using your nick instead of a "traditional" number will work when calling you. Note that it also has a built-in Contacts list and also has access to the system-level contacts, offering (of course, non-free - as opposed to in-network calls) dial-out capabilities for them.

Note that the page and the service themselves are pretty far away from being professional. Latvian is used on some both the Web pages (even when using English) and, which is even worse, in the answering machine. This, of course, isn't that problematic, particularly if you speak some Slavonic language because, then, you'll understand at least the last two words of the answering machine message and can deduce what takes place. And, it's only in the first occasion that this can cause any kind of confusion.

1.2 Screenshots

(a Symbian shot showing the output of the HTC Universal - that is, the Nokia itself, me trying very hard to make a screenshot on it. In the upper left corner, you can also see Nokia's own camera image (of the Universal, with 180 degrees rotated screen, in front of it). Note that the Symbian version, in addition to stopping / restarting video, also supports switching between the front/back cameras if you press 0. By default, the front camera is used, of course.)

(a Windows Mobile HTC Universal screenshot showing the image received from the Nokia N95 and its own picture in the upper left corner. As you can see, the client doesn't even display a button shortcut to switch between the front and the back cameras)

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In my last (and, now, heavily outdated) article on making Opera Mini 4 be invoked on by just clicking a URL, I’ve already elaborated on the advantages of doing this (and, actually, the advantages of Opera Mini 4 itself). Please do read it if you want to know why making use of direct invocation can be really advantageous.

Because there’s a lot of news worth reporting on (and I’ve been asked by Serola to join the Opera Mini Fan Blog as the first blogger, because of which I've decided to update this really important tutorial) and the original article didn’t elaborate on other mobile platforms like Symbian and BlackBerry, I’ve decided to devote an entirely new article to this question.

1.1 badbob101’s StartOperaMini
(the download is at the bottom of the first post; as of 05/12/2008, 09b is the latest version, which you'll want to go for.)

I recommend this solution the most because it’s really-really easy to install and maintain and it’s much more flexible than, say, superdave’s, otherwise, in some respects cleaner and faster solution.

All you need to do is, in order to set it up, downloading and installing the free MortScript (just copy the MortScript-4.1-PPC.cab file from the cab subdirectory of the ZIP file to your handset and tap it there) and, then, just copying StartOperaMini.mscr anywhere (including a storage card) on your handset and, as with MortScript, clicking it from File Explorer. It’ll automatically find the current location of Jbed, the index of Opera Mini and set up everything just fine. Unlike with the early solution, absolutely no manual setup is needed.

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In several of my articles, Bibles, W3C presentations etc., I’ve explained what HTTP User-Agents are, what they can be used for if you’re a webmaster etc. As my previous articles (see THIS, THIS and THIS, in addition to the W3C presentation and the two Web Browsing Bibles HERE and HERE) on the subject got a bit outdated with the latest browsers and firmware versions out there, I’ve re-checked the User-Agents. This time, I also provide you with all the other headers, should you want to correctly identify the mobile browser even if it’s User-Agent spoofed (that is, it’s trying to hide its identity). Note that I don’t explain what this info is used for – I’ve already done this several times in the above-linked articles, read them first if you need more info on the usage of all this info.

Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM)

WM6.0 Classic (HP iPAQ 210, official ROM):

Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
UA-OS: Windows CE (Pocket PC) - Version 5.2
UA-color: color16
UA-Voice: FALSE
UA-pixels: 480x640
UA-CPU: ARM
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.7)
Connection: Keep-Alive

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I've just added a new "UPDATE" section to the YouTube Bible introducing the brand new CorePlayer 1.2.4 and elaborating on the quality differences between the three (four) streaming formats used by YouTube. Well worth a read if you'd like to play back YouTube on your Windows Mobile / Palm OS / Symbian / BlackBerry handheld!

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As has been announced some weeks ago, I had a W3C speech a week ago devoted to Web browsing on mobile devices. You can find the (English) slides HERE. (Sorry, some of the example screenshots are in Finnish. This, however, doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the overall understandability of the material.) In order to understand the slides, I’ve also decided to comment on all of them so that the entire Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry mobile community can benefit from my speech – in written form. Finally, note that, albeit this article is over 80kchars long, it in no way can provide a FULL, absolutely thorough overview of the Web browsing scene on these platforms. That is, if you don’t understand something, don’t despair: in my referenced, previous articles, you can, in most cases, find a very thorough dissemination of the subject. Just an example: in this article, I only devote some 2kchars to the subject of downloading files while my original, devoted article, along with its (recent) updates, amount to over 100 kchars.

I also provide in-line screenshots in this article so that you know what I'm speaking about without constantly switching to PowerPoint; however, to see the original document at its full (and copy/pasteable) glory and resolution, you'll need the PPT file.

(Sorry for the comparatively bad quality – captured from the 1024*768 M-JPEG video(!) recording of my Canon 960IS camera.)

(no comments needed)

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If you love recording your calls on your Nokia handset, you definitely will want to know which the best call recorder app is. I’ve just finished testing ALON MP3 Dictaphone (which is sold at 10 euros only at mobile2day.de) and thoroughly compared it to the alternatives. It’s been posted in my yesterday’s mobile2day rebate announcements.

The app turned out to be absolutely the best call recorder (and dictaphone) app for Symbian S603rd I’ve tested so far – don’t miss the mobile2day.de rebate!

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.

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Without doubt, during its almost four-year lifespan, the HP iPAQ hx4700 has turned out to be the best "traditional" (phone-less) high-resolution (640 * 480, also known as VGA) Pocket PC ever released certainly filling in a very important market segment: that of the comparatively (but not too) large VGA screens. The reasons for this are well-known when you compare it to the alternatives:

1. Compared to the Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 718 / 720, the major advantage of the hx4700 is the sheer existence of a WM5 / WM6 / WM6.1 upgrade. On top of that, the larger screen, the quality magnesium casing and the faster CPU with a graphics co-processor greatly helping in playing back MPEG4 Part 2 (a.k.a. ASP / DivX / XviD) videos, on the long run, made it the winner (while this wasn't certain back in 2004-2005; the author of this article has also chosen, back then, the Loox 720 over the hx4700). Of course, it has had major problems compared to the Loox: the touchpad, initially, the higher price, the very low speaker volume (while the Loox has been one of the loudest ever PDA’s around), the lack of a camera (even if the one in the 720 isn’t anything to write home about, quality-wise) and the lack of USB host support. These problems, however, are easily mitigated by the really excellent WM6.1 upgrades released in the last few months. As the Loox isn’t upgradable to WM5, several current software titles (like Esmertec Jbed to run MIDlets like Opera Mini) just can’t be run on it.

2. It’s too better than the Dell Axim x50v/x51v. The Dell has vastly inferior battery life, much-much worse screen almost useless in Landscape for many users because of the major polarization issues, the plastic, thick body and the x50v WM5 upgrade having major compaction issues (as was the case with pre-WM6.1 hx4700 upgrades, though). The only real advantage, in addition to the louder buzzer, th emore gaming-friendly D-pad controller and (at least in the U.S.) lower price of the Dell is the Intel 2700G support, offering both excellent 3D hardware acceleration and great help in playing back ASP videos.

Note that I don’t even list for example the Asus 730(w) and the Toshiba e830, which all had major problems (for example, the laughable battery life of the Asus, the washed-out screen of the Toshi and the lack of WM5+ upgrades for both models) compared to the hx4700 and are now completely forgotten.

Over the years, because of HTC’s (the major Windows Mobile manufacturer of today) reluctance to produce anything similar to the hx4700, Windows Mobile users preferring a large (and quality) VGA screen had to stick with the hx4700. That is, if you wanted a 4" VGA screen but not significantly bigger (adding serious bulk: see the HTC Advantage / x7500/x7510 or even the even bigger and really expensive, SVGA [800*600] HTC Shift) and nothing less (4" is far better on a VGA device than 3.6", particularly when used in native VGA mode or an app not supporting large characters – for example, Opera Mini run under the MIDlet managers of Esmertec like the Jbed), your only choice has been the hx4700.

Fortunately, the (software) bugs of the hx4700 have all been fixed during these years; the author of this having been one of the most widely-known "hackers" having discovered several ways of fixing the issues with the official WM5 upgrades. The major problem of compaction slowdown has also been fixed in the WM 6.1 upgrade released some months ago. Yes, you will no longer see lengthy compactions if you upgrade to WM6.1.

The huge advantages and seamless operation of the WM6.1 upgrade(s) clearly make the HP iPAQ hx4700 one of the most recommended handsets for users opting for sufficiently, but not too large (4") VGA screens. Let’s see how its successor, the brand new HP iPAQ 210 compares to it. This comparison is of extreme importance because several ex-hx4700 users consider upgrading to the new device. The - without doubt - tempting price (around $400-$450 but, if you live in Canada or don't mind buying from there, you can get it for as low as $350) of the new model (which is almost half of the, originally, really overpriced hx4700) is also very hard to resist.

Thanks to Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine publisher Hal Goldstein, I’ve been given a HP iPAQ 210. I wouldn’t have myself bought it because I already have the hx4700 – also from Hal – and just couldn’t justify the expense for such a not-that-major upgrade (I better save money for the S-E Xperia X1, the Acer/E-TEN v900 or the Gigabyte MS808 with their goodies like WVGA screen (X1) or TV receiver (the latter two models)). I never sell my past PDA’s and phones (because I want to be able to provide first-hand info on even past models), unlike most other people. This means I don’t "upgrade" but pay full price for another toy to play with. That is, you need to thank Hal for this article (and my past articles on the hx4700)

Of course, immediately after receiving the new iPAQ, I’ve started testing it. In this article, I elaborate on my experiences with my new toy. Note that this article is in no way a full review of all features of the new device. Should you want to have a more gentle introduction to the new iPAQ, read for example Brighthand’s or Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine’s review. This article mostly targets past hx4700 users who would like to know whether it’s worth selling the old iPAQ and upgrading to the new.

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You’ll almost surely encounter problems with the Wireless tab after some (NOT all!) resets: it simply doesn’t display the Bluetooth tab:

Fixing this is fairly easy if you already have SKTools on your PDA (if you don’t, consider purchasing it – it’s really worth it!), click Category (left softkey) and select Maintenance (this isn’t needed; just helps to find the menu easier); then, select Windows Startup:

You’ll see a list of the programs started; one of them we need will be BTTrayCE.lnk:

and the other is iPAQWireless.lnk:

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Watching YouTube videos is a favorite pastime of many. With data charges constantly decreasing (or, should I say, plummeting), not-that-expensive flat 3G data rates getting common, Wi-Fi’s getting pretty ubiquitous and, of course, YouTube’s getting really-really full of videos worth checking out, you might be tempted to watch YouTube (or other) videos on your handset. After all, it's a great pastime and these handhelds have both the processing power, the necessary hardware and, in most cases, connection speed to render these videos well.

In this YouTube Bible, I show you how this all can be done on the three major non-iPhone platforms: Windows Mobile, Symbian S60 and BlackBerry. (As the iPhone, as opposed to most other solutions, already comes with a decent player, there isn’t much point in elaborating on it. You just fire up the YouTube icon and off you go at – if you have Wi-Fi connectivity – very good quality. Nothing needs to be installed and there’re no alternatives you will need to know to make an intelligent decision.)

Note that I’ve published several YouTube-related articles (a quick search for YouTube on my blog reveals these tutorials). These, however, are pretty outdated now – particularly that a lot of vastly superior solutions have been released in the meantime. I’ll, however, refer back to for example the HTC Streaming Media tutorial.

Also note that this Bible is multiplatform, as with the majority of my later Bibles. If you're a fanboy of any of the three reviewed operating systems, don't post angry messages like "Why on earth did you include operating system X? I hate it, it's sooooo inferior and lame!". Sorry, both as a gadget-loving geek and as a professional IT advisor / consultant, I MUST know all the mobile operating systems. (Particularly now that the Microsoft folks have just told me they would be interested in some of my week-long lectures on the differences on BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices. I need such kinds of work because I (more precisely, my employer) prefer getting mobility-related IT consultant contacts as opposed to non-mobility-related ones. This is also why I keep posting on other operating systems - as I need to know them, why wouldn't I post on them? Finally, I won't create a separate version of the Bible for Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices for two reasons: 1. it'd cause me a LOT of additional work not only initially but also when I post a revised, updated version: restructuring the entire Bible, taking out all references to other OS'es; 2. knowing what other operating systems are capable of won't do anyone any harm - you may even find that having read info on another OS useful if you are given a handset running a different OS.)

Also note that, Windows Mobile-wise, the discussion applies to both touchscreen-less MS Smartphones (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) and touchscreen-enabled Pocket PC’s (Windows Mobile 6 Classic / Pro) models. All the reviewed Windows Mobile solutions run on both platforms. In the compatibility lists, I've listed the earliest Windows Mobile operating system a given solution is compatible with but didn't list them all. This means if you see WM2003+, it means compatibility with WM2003 and all subsequent operating system versions (WM2003SE, WM5, WM6, WM6.1), not only with WM2003.

1.1 Browsing the desktop Web version of YouTube

This section applies to both platforms of Windows Mobile starting with WM2003+ and used with Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) and Opera Mobile; Symbian with integrated Flash Lite 3.

1.1.1 Windows Mobile

1.1.1.1 IEM / Opera Mobile + Flash 7 plug-in

If you install the Flash 7 plug-in (see the Flash Bible HERE for more info on the availability etc.) on your Pocket PC and either use the WM5+ (not earlier: due to bad JavaScript support, they won’t work) Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) or WM2003+ Opera Mobile (any version), the videos will be played back in-line, just like on the desktop.

This is, however, the worst approach you should ALWAYS avoid because it, in some cases, grinds the entire handset to halt and is very slow, even on high-end Windows Mobile devices. All in all, it’s in NO WAY recommended - there are far superior approaches.

1.1.1.2 IEM + FlashVideoBundle

This is an immensely better solution having all the advantages of the desktop version; most importantly, direct access to YouTube, Google Video & Veoh links sent in, for example, mails. Then, when IEM is invoked, you’re shown a context menu, where you can instruct IEM to show the video in TCPMP, save it into a file or, alternatively, take you right to the page so that you can see for example the comments / related videos:

If you directly enter the URL in the address bar (by, for example, pasting it to there), it’ll too present you with the same context menu; the same will happen if you just click a video link on YouTube (GV etc.) pages.

The current version is 1.4.4; CAB file available for download HERE (if you don’t want to register, I’ve mirrored it HERE); my old, now-outdated article HERE. Installing it is pretty straightforward; just follow the section "Installation instructions" in the tutorial on the homepage.

This is one of the most recommended ways of playing back online videos, particularly if you get links in e-mails / other, offline documents like Word files.

1.1.2 Symbian with Flash Lite 3

In order to play back (Flash, including YouTube) videos embedded in Web pages, you’ll need to have a device with Flash Lite 3 preinstalled. One of them, the, currently, best multimedia handset of all, the Nokia N95 received Flash Lite 3 support in firmware version v21 released some weeks ago.

If you have a compatible handset, you don’t need to install anything else (no third-party apps at all): videos will be played back right in the pages that contain them, with much-much less adverse effects than (currently) with Windows Mobile relying on the CPU-hog Flash 7.

As has already been emphasized, Flash Lite 3 on Symbian behaves much-much better than the full Flash 7 on Windows Mobile. While the latter is in no way recommended, the former – if you have a Symbian device – is. Note that you can still use the Mobile YouTube Web and the MIDlet-based interface too (see sections 1.2 and 1.3, respectively), but they only deliver 3GP videos at a much lower quality than Flash Lite 3. Alternatively, if you need high-quality (Flash / H.264) videos, you may also want to prefer Mobitubia – or the soon-to-be-released, YouTube-capable version of CorePlayer.

Note that Portrait playback will always be oversized as can be seen in THIS screenshot (source link HERE). Also, if you use the standard Nokia Web menu (Options / Rotate Screen) to switch to Landscape mode, it’ll stay oversized. The trick is clicking the Flash Lite 3 surface with the Action button – it’s then that it’ll be resized to fit into the screen as can be seen in the first screenshot.

Also note that there’s still no Flash Lite 3 on Windows Mobile but will, hopefully, be soon released; see THIS and THIS for more info.

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After having upgraded my BB 8800, I've just posted some new info on OS version 4.5(.0.9beta) HERE (at the bottom). Certainly worth checking out if you'd like to know in what ways the new OS is different from / superior to the current 4.2 / 4.3 versions.

Web browsing is one of the major application areas of portable devices – no wonder the iPhone is also Web-centric with its excellent Safari browser.

The “accelerated” scrolling mode of Safari is widely copied in the Windows Mobile world. The latest title to support this kind of screen dragging mode is Touch Browser by Makayama available for purchase and, now, trial download HERE (manual HERE).

It’s an external wrapper to Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM), just like Webby and unlike traditional IEM plug-ins like Spb Pocket Plus, PIEPlus and MultiIE. This also means it has some of the inherent problems common to all these solutions; more on this later.

OK, enough talk, let’s get straight to the facts: frankly, as of version 1.0.2, I’m not at all satisfied with this app. Currently, there are far better alternatives. Why? Let’s take a detailed look. (Note that this list is pretty much terse. If you don’t understand it, make sure you read my other Web browser reviews and Bibles; in them, I’ve thoroughly elaborated on all the issues I’ve referred to in this review.)

• The keyboard is either vowels on top or numbers – there’s no QWERTY layout, unlike on the iPhone or with, say, Spb Full Screen Keyboard. This itself makes URL input very hard – iPhone’s QWERTY inputting is just far better and, if you’re (as most people) used to QWERTY, faster. Screenshots showing this: Landscape 1 2, Portrait 1 2. System-level auto-completion works in URL input mode (see THIS), but there’s no address completion (based on the history / the favorites) the like in Opera Mini 4.1 or all versions of Opera Mobile. Also note that it’s impossible to enter symbols like ~, ? and & - this is a MAJOR problem too! All you can do is assigning a hardware button to <Input Panel> and use it to quickly bring up the keyboard and enter anything on it, unrestricted.
• It’s in no way possible to access the standard menu. Fortunately, it’s possible to access favorites via the context menu and the usual PIE / IEM context menu items, including for example Save Image for images, are all accessible. The lack of menu access results in, say, the inability to switch between low and hi-res modes on VGA Pocket PC’s on the fly. What is worse, it’s not possible to access the three (One Column / Fit to Screen / Desktop) different rendering modes in View, should you want to switch between them on-the-fly. Yeah, sure, TB does have an entire button for one-column view, so, the problem is mitigated to some degree. Nevertheless, the default mode seems to be the desktop (!!!) view, which is, in most cases, completely useless and to-be-avoided. That is, you’ll end up having to switch to the one-column view, which, with some kinds of content (for example, charts) results in a huge decrease in readability (in general, the “Fit to screen” mode, which isn’t supported by Touch Browser, is the best of the three modes).
• Speaking of the (W)VGA hi-res mode switch introduced in WM5 AKU 3.5, independent of its state, documents will ALWAYS be rendered in low-res. This is not what you may want to prefer if you have a hi-res device and want to take advantage of the resolution to fit as much data into the screen as possible.
• The Settings menu has been hastily designed for Portrait devices and needs scrolling in Landscape – (this is, of course, a minor issue, compared to the major problems of the app)
• No tabs or other enhancements; the only enhancement is the one-column mode, which doesn’t add much to WM2003SE+ devices (it was in WM2003SE that One Column mode was introduced). Compare this to the tab support of Spb Pocket Plus
• No way to switch to text copy/paste mode – VERY bad!
• No hotkey support at all – all you have is the D-pad (and, of course, the on-screen menu) for shortcuts
• Dynamic scrolling is just far less spectacular and far slower than with Spb– mostly because of the slow CF-based engine
• The D-pad can’t be used for scrolling and the Action button to select links – it’s strictly for bringing up / hiding the menu (up/down), navigating to the previous/next page (left/right) and showing the actual position of the viewport in the page (Action). The latter (displaying the actual position with scrollbar-alikes) doesn’t let for scrollbar-based scrolling and is far-far inferior to, say, Opera Mini 4’s or NetFront’s minimap / page overview solution. That is, there’s absolutely NO way of scrolling the page without using the touchscreen, only via the buttons. This is a REAL disadvantage compared to ALL other browsers or PIE plug-ins, where you can not only use the D-pad for scrolling, but you can also configure how scrolling should be done (link / line / page-based scrolling) or, in cases, can even use other hardware buttons for scrolling. Touch Browser doesn’t allow for the latter (that is, assigning scroll or page down functionality to hardware buttons as is explained in the Button Enhancer Bible.) It isn’t compliant with SmartSKey either, configured to page scrolling using the volume slider – unlike with most other Web browsers (or plug-ins).
• Sometimes it just crashes – for example, when just entering http://www..com or the random URL given in the system input panel tip above. The latter can only be helped with the phone buttons. Also, upon exiting the app with the X icon, it always throws exceptions (like THIS and THIS). This certainly shows it needs some HEAVY, additional debugging.
• Absolutely no feedback on the state of loading pages – unlike with the underlying IEM.

Verdict

While I pretty much liked Makayama’s past Windows Mobile-related software titles, all I can say is you’d better stay away from this title for the time being – that is, before it undergoes a real facelift and enhancement. It’s just worse than the alternatives. If you do need iPhone-like accelerated (!) scrolling, go for any of the newer browsers: Opera Mobile 9.x, NetFront 3.5 or, if you plan to stick with IEM, Spb Pocket Plus 4. If all you want to have is screen-based dragging (without the nice “acceleration”), then, other, even older browsers will do: NetFront 3.3/3.4, Opera Mobile 8.6x, Thunderhawk, Opera Mini (all versions) or the two traditional IEM plug-ins: PIEPlus and MultiIE. Technically, these browsers are ALL far superior – far more reliable, far more feature-packed, easier-to-use (buttons, fast scrolling, minimap etc.) and, with some of them (Opera Mini, for example) even free.

Also, this browser (as with Webby) certainly shows Compact Framework is just unsuitable for writing fast-scrolling apps. Use native C++ for implementing applications that rely on quick (!) graphics.

Knowing the Makayama folks are pretty adept and knowledgeable people, I really hope they do improve this browser and that, once, Touch Browser will become a decent alternative to screen-dragging solutions. For the time being, I don’t recommend it, however.

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.

Some days ago, I promised I would benchmark the brand new Adisasta WinMobile Download Accelerator (wmDA), version 1.x of which I’ve thoroughly benchmarked in The definitive guide to downloading files, images and saving Web pages with Pocket PC-based Web Browsers. As I’ll keep a W3C session in a week, I found it necessary to test it – along with all the other, current (!) Windows Mobile-compatible Web browsers like the current NetFront 3.5 TP, Opera Mobile 9.33 beta, Opera Mini 4.1 beta. I also took the chance to compare it to the, so far best downloader tool, HandyGet.

I’ve tested everything on a Dell Axim x51v running makuu’s makuu A06 privß06p WM6.1, using exactly the same card and Internet connection so that there aren’t any differences. Please consult the above-mentioned Definitive guide to downloading files, images and saving Web pages with Pocket PC-based Web Browsers for the meaning of the results. For the card, I used a very fast (as far as file creation and random block writing is concerned) Ridata 256M CF card.

To summarize:

- Opera Mobile 9.33 (and, therefore, the forthcoming 9.5) is much better than 8.65 in both speed (there is a certainly visible download speed increase) and in that it no longer stops when the internal memory fills up when you download files to cards that are too big to be stored in the internal storage (which is used for temporary cache).

- Opera Mini 4.1 beta is tolerably fast – pretty good results for a Java program. Note that you may still want to prefer downloading in the external, native browser - at least under Windows Mobile – because, as can clearly be seen, even Internet Explorer Mobile is far faster.

- HandyGet 1.6 is VERY fast when downloading to cards (but not when doing the same to the internal memory) – with the default settings. Note that, by default, it doesn’t monitor IE; this must be separately configured in File / Setting / General / IE Monitor.

- NetFront 3.5 is pretty fast – about the same speed as IEM when downloading to cards and much faster when downloading to internal memory

- Finally, wmDA has indeed been HUGELY optimized. Now, it’s FAR faster than the 1.x series when downloading to cards – and no longer needs to relocate the cache to the card when there’s little internal memory. Actually, it’s equally fast than HandyGet 1.6 when downloading to a card and much faster than anything else. Even Opera Mobile 9.33 (the fastest standalone browser) is almost two times slower than wmDA.

Read more!

Now that I’m working on my 45-minute speech & demo for my (international) W3C speech next week, I’ve re-tested the latest version of all browsers with the just-published, new W3C test suite specifically targeted at mobile devices. The greener, the better; red denotes a failed test.

Let’s start with Windows Mobile.

Windows Mobile

As you can rightfully guess, the built-in Internet Explorer Mobile (even as of WM6.1) is pretty bad:

… which is the same as on WM6 Standard 6.0 (MS Smartphone):

…and is only a bit better as in the 5-year-old WM2003:

Finally, here’s the Pocket PC 2002 screenshot so that you can see the difference between it and WM2003:

Opera Mobile:

Version 9.33 beta (the one presented at WMC this February):

Read more!

As promised in my previous article, I’ve taken a deep look at the latest Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrades for the Dell Axim x51v, HP iPAQ hx4700, HTC Universal and HTC Wizard. All the reviewed ROM versions are based on Windows Mobile 5.2.19209 (Build 19209.1.0.2). I run some VERY thorough SDHC conformance tests because, unfortunately, most (as far as the reviewed models are concerned, all – note that, in this regard, I haven’t tested the Universal) plain WM5 / WM6 devices can NOT be easily made SDHC-compliant. This means you MUST upgrade these devices to some of the newer ROMs (including the ones I’ve reviewed) in order to gain SDHC support. Note that I’ve devoted a separate section (at the end) to my test results showing the results of my trying to “hack” the non-WM6.1 ROM-based devices to accept SDHC cards with the latest hacks available.

Read more!

TCPMP is a very nice, multiplatform (Palm OS, WinCE, Pocket PC and MS Smartphone) multimedia player with some, even by the current, latest CorePlayer, unmatched features like HE-AACv2 playback or subtitle support.

XDA-Devs forum member milesmowbray has released a TCPMP source compatible with VS2008 to fuel further, independent development. In addition to this, he has turned on all compiler optimizations in VS2008 and, now, he states FLV (for example YouTube) playback is 5...10% faster than that of the original build on his Kaiser. See THIS for more info.

There is also a new subtitle plug-in for TCPMP, TCPMP SUBS Subtitle Plugin, HERE. It’s, as opposed to the previous, SMI-only subtitle plug-in, is stated to be compatible with the following formats:

Advanced Sub Station Alpha (*.ass)
Sub Station Alpha (*.ssa)
Sami (*.smi,*.sami)
Subripper (*.srt)

It’s also stated to be faster on 2700G-based models like the Dell Axim x50v/x51v in the native 2700G decoder mode than the SMI subtitle plug-in.

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!

I don’t need to introduce Opera Mini for any serious mobile device user – it’s been one of the best browsers ever since the release of version 4.0 with all its goodies like favorite synchronization and full layout mode, the latter being excellent on (W)VGA Pocket PC’s and high-resolution Symbian devices like the Nokia E90. Note that I’ve written a review & full comparison to other browsers HERE – please DO read it if you don’t know what Opera Mini is or how it compares to other browsers, in which cases you might want to prefer it to native, fully-fledged browsers like Opera Mobile. Also, make sure you read my two Web Browsing Bibles, linked from the OM4 article, for additional info & comparisons. Finally, note that the linked article only discusses version 4.0; 4.1 is even better and more featureful.

The just-released 4.1 beta takes things even further and implements a lot of long asked-for functionalities. It’s REALLY worth upgrading; note that it can coexist with older versions (including 4.0) on the same handset. That is, if you, for some reason, find it useless, you can easily switch back to the older version without having to reinstall / reconfigure anything.

1.1 Availability; which version to go for?

Navigate to http://mini.opera.com/beta either with your phone’s WAP browser or, if you have Opera on your desktop, with it:

(mobile browser)

Read more!

The new 4.1 beta of Opera Mini has just been released with TONS of new features. Get it at http://www.operamini.com/beta/ . Features include:

* Download and upload files directly in Opera Mini (wowz! UPLOAD!)
* Save pages for offline browsing (another WOWZ!)
* Autocompletion when entering addresses directly
* Find in page (WOOOOOOWZ!)
* Increased server speed during the last months
* Signed versions of Opera Mini (good news too)

Don't forget to download the latest, 3.1 version of Jbed (reviewed & linked to HERE at the bottom.)

(BTW, some of you have asked what I've been working on because I've been quite quiet. I'm

1. working on my Digital TV Bible, after having read dozens of related books and tons of online documents (I'll post a detailed review of them too)
2. I need to do some real work too
3. I'll make another W3C conference speech this month (on multiplatform mobile browsers) and need to update my related Windows Mobile / Symbian / BlackBerry stuff

All in all, I've been pretty busy

I’ve published several articles on Sony Ericsson’s forthcoming Windows Mobile device, the XPERIA X1. Up until now, little had been known of the capabilities of the phone. Now, the S-E folks have just published a white paper, which answers several (but not all!) questions.

It is available HERE for download as a PDF document. (Just enter the anti-denial of service four characters in the input field for access.) The best news is that, according to InfoSyncWorld, it’s coming in August 2008 – that is, earlier than most have thought.

Some of the most interesting stuff the old, MWC / CEBIT leaflets / presentations didn’t provide an answer to and/or could have been improved upon the first prototypes:

- it has a TFT LCD, NOT an OLED screen (some people stated it’d have OLED)

- it seems to have a traditional D-pad in addition to the touchpad if and only if "Four way key - to navigate menus" (see page 7) is what this means. Very good news for most people (see my generic remarks on the issue in my i780 article on touchpads.)

- the camera has both auto-focus and touch focus touch focus. The latter allows for quick focusing on the object you press on the touchscreen - clearly a clever way of focusing to out-of-focus subjects as quickly as possible. However, it seems it won’t have lens protection, unlike the Nokia N95 / N82 (the current top-end Smartphone camera model) and, generally, seems to be weaker.

- as far as the video recording capabilities are concerned, the video size (resolution) and frame rate are VGA and 30 fps, respectively for the non-US model; for the US model, this is QVGA and 24 fps only. Frankly, I just don’t get the point in so severely a dumbed down US model... Did the Sony people go crazy?! Not that I would except Nokia quality shots from the camera (no lens protector and the lens itself seems to be pretty weak), but 30 fps VGA is, today, a MUST in any decent smartphone; therefore, I just don’t understand why they plan to release a device for the US market with such specs. (Nevertheless, I’m absolutely sure some hackers / ROM cookers will be able to enable the American model to operate in VGA mode – if nothing else works, by flashing an European ROM on it.)

- it supports ("Media sharing is compatible with DLNA." on page 6) DLNA (see THIS), which is the first on Windows Mobile (unless you use a DLNA-compatible client). See my UPnP Bible for more info on it.

- it, in addition to the worldwide 3G bands, also supports most (but not all, as it's only tri-band) of the US 3G bands (but, of course, not the forthcoming, absolutely incompatible T-Mobile one); that is, most people in the US will get HSDPA coverage with either bands. This is definitely good news.

- according to page 27, the US version doesn’t support H.264 playback either. (See the H.264 Bible for more info.) Interestingly, the non-US version supports the H.264 Baseline profile.

- according to Page 26, the built-in music player supports eAAC+; that is, HE-AACv2. (I REALLY hope Sony didn’t mess up with the different versions in here.) This means the music player will be something much better than the built-in WMP in Windows Mobile 6 Professional, which doesn’t support this format. (See THIS for more info on this question.) At last some good news for us HE-AACv2 fans using Windows Mobile devices – I may even stop using my N95 as a HE-AACv2 player? ;-)

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1. I have some very good news for you all tech geeks. You may have heard (for example, from me) that the latest, double-OS HTC model, the Shift, has a severely crippled and almost useless Windows Mobile OS. This was one of the reasons I haven’t really recommended it either

The excellent MoDaCo guys, authors of several other, similar "liberator packs", did not leave it at this and have published a tool that unlocks the full Windows Mobile operating system on the Shift. It can be found HERE. Now, the Shift seems to be a much better choice – much as I’d still go for, say, a Fujitsu Lifebook U-series U1010 UMPC if I didn’t need a dual operating system.

2. I really recommend the newly-started MoDaCo weekly podcasts – well worth listening to. The latest, eighth part is HERE.

3. Finally, last time I wrote about the current mobile2day.de rebates, I spoke about FlexMail 2007 Rev 2’s being offered at a much lower price there. MoDaCo Plus has turned out to be offering the title for free - among a LOT of other things.

(Note that this, as was the case with, say, my mobile2day.de, PocketGear, Handango etc. posts, this isn’t an ad for the site’s store. I always post quick announcements when I run into nice rebates worth telling other users, regardless of the reseller.

BTW, speaking of mobile2day.de, their most interesting rebates for this week are SBSH PocketBreeze 5.4, Spb Diary 2.5.7 and pocketMax phoneAlarm 1.65.1; all go for 10 euros instead of the original 18.50...20. Finally, a really tempting BlackBerry offer: IM+ for Skype 3.1.2 for 10 euros only – a 59% rebate.)

I’ve long been promising a review of a multiplatform (Java-based) RDP client, TSMobiles (as of version 2.3.14) for quite a long time. Now that I’ve tested its brother, Remote Desktop for Mobiles (RDM+), I’ve decided to give a try to this app as well.

Note that this is a terse, technical, comparative quick review requiring you to understand the contents of my Windows Mobile Remote Desktop Controller Bible. Therefore, I won’t elaborate on, say, the RDP protocol itself, its advantages and disadvantages when compared to other protocols etc.

I’ve tested it on both QVGA and VGA Pocket PC’s and MS Smartphones. It should, essentially, work on Symbian S60 devices exactly like on the MS Smartphone platform; therefore, I didn’t separately test it on my Nokia N95. I haven’t run tests on my Blackberry either – essentially, the BB client must be far less different from its generic (non-BB-specific) Java brother than in the case with RDM+.

As it’s strictly Java-based, you’ll need a MIDlet manager to run it. See my MIDlet Bible for more info. I’ve tested it under the latest, most recommended Jbed version, JRebeiro_EsmertecJbed_20071119.3.1, reviewed HERE.

First, some benchmarks.

Benchmarks

As opposed to the official TSC (pre-WM6) RDM (WM6) client developed by Microsoft, it’s quite sensitive to smooth scrolling and other types of animations. Benchmark results:

Smooth scrolling (1sec): 2.8k/5.6M (!!!)
No smooth scroll (0.5 sec): 2.8k/1.1M

It’s still way better than NetOp Remote Control 9.0 by Danware and the RDP4-only Mocha Remote Client 1.2 by MochaSoft in this respect, though.

As opposed to RDM+:

Read more!

I’ve long been promising a full comparison, benchmark and (compared to alternative solutions) pros/cons list of SHAPE Services’ RDM+, a really decent, multiplatform remote desktop controlling / accessor solution. Now that they have a MASSIVE rebate, I dedicated some time for some thorough testing on no less than four different mobile platforms: Windows Mobile Pocket PC (with touch screens), Windows Mobile Smartphone (without touch screens), Symbian S60 (Nokia N95) and BlackBerry (BB 8800). Sorry for being four-platform again: a geek like me just loves toys and wants to play with all the major gadgets and major mobile operating systems available (not only Windows Mobile).

Note that SHAPE Services have another, purely Java-based (meaning there's NO native Windows Mobile client and you must use a MIDlet manager) remote access client, TSMobiles. I'll review it VERY soon.

Please note that this isn’t a full review, just a “list” of the pros and cons and my benchmark results and a complete comparison of the (in some respects, pretty different) implementations on the different platforms. You’ll want to read my previous Windows Mobile Remote Desktop Controller Bible to get more information on what for example the benchmark results stand for, what the different features really mean etc. Again, I will NOT explain anything in here already explained in the Bible. Read it to get a picture of what I’m referring to in the current article.

Note that the current, tested versions are as follows: 3.6.6 (Windows Mobile); 3.6.8 (Symbian / Java; BlackBerry). By the time you read this review (probably months or even years later), it may be heavily outdated. Of course, I’ll try to keep it up-to-date by constantly posting “UPDATE” sections at the bottom. Make sure you check them out. Also make sure you check out the links in this article: they link to a lot of screenshots.

1. Bandwidth usage benchmarks

Using exactly the same method as with the old benchmarks, with exactly the same set-up so that the bandwidth usage results can be directly compared:

(On Windows Mobile [on Blackberries, it's 24 bit], default) 8 bit color depth; measured twice

8k/970k (up/down)
6k/966k (up/down) (both quite good)

(exactly the same results with smooth scrolling – this is excellent)

1 bit color depth (that is, monochrome): 5k/556k (that is, almost half of the bandwidth required in the default, 8-bit mode)
24 bit color depth: 6k/1MB

Idling (without anything happening: no visible animations, cursor etc): 3k/10k a minute (excellent result – compare it to the very bad results of, say, GoToMyPC or, even worse, PPC Tablet)

Cursor blink test: 2k/11k a minute (again, excellent – compare this to the very bad results of I’m InTouch)

The transfer speed is excellent on Pocket PC’s via a Wi-Fi connection; I had no screen refresh problems even with 0.5s waiting between the page down events on a VGA (!) device, in Landscape mode, using 800*600 desktop resolution. The Java client running on the Nokia N95 was pretty fast, too. It’s only on (current) BlackBerries that you might encounter somewhat slower screen updates, it seems.

Read more!

The mobile2day.de folks have a (really decent!) tendency of offering some killer apps for around 40% rebate. This time (until 03/16), they also have some nice apps at a substantive rebate. Note that you only have slightly more than two days to purchase these titles – hurry up if you need them.

FlexMail 2007 Rev 2: 15,95 € instead of 24,95 € - while a bit on the memory-hungry and slow-to-boot side, THE most powerful mailer client for Windows Mobile (both Pocket PC's and Smartphones); for example, it’s the only client to support flawless IMAP IDLE. Also, it’s WAAAAAAAAY better than the built-in MS Smartphone Messaging client. (Click the links to access the product page directly; then, just press “In den Warenkorb” to start the purchasing process.)

ProfiMail (Windows Mobile) 2.88: 14,95 € instead of 21,99 € - a definitely less recommended mailer client for WinMo (both Pocket PC's and MS Smartphones). However, if you REALLY want to purchase it, now, this can be a great occasion. Also note that the Symbian S60 version is also offered at the same price.

Note that the above two applications have been thoroughly discussed & compared in my Mailer Bible.

RDM+: Remote Desktop for Windows Pocket PC 3.6.6: 23,95 € instead of 39,30 € - a remote desktop controller for WM (Pocket PC's and Smartphones; official product page HERE). A pretty new one; this is why it’s missing from my Remote Desktop Controller Bible. I’ll soon publish a review of it; preferably before the end of the (massive) rebate.

Note that RDM+ is a multi-platform product; the BlackBerry version costs 25,95 € instead of 40,45 € (I think I'll review this app REALLY quick so that I can decide whether I purchase it or not because I use my BlackBerry as my main communication device and it has no other (decent) remote desktop controller apps) and the Symbian S60 version costs 18,95 € instead of 29,95 €. Note that, while RDM+ has an iPhone version as well, mobile2day.de doesn't have an iPhone section - that is, you can't get RDM+ for the iPhone from the German folks.

BTW, still speaking of Symbian S60, MobiSystems OfficeSuite 4 (S60 3rd) 4.50 is offered for 23,95 € instead of 39,99 € - a pretty good deal, I'd say! And, if you have a Palm OS device (Treo 680 etc.), you will definitely want to check out the list of the rebates because you can get the following apps at a 40% rebate: Agendus Professional Edition 12.06, Documents To Go 10.00, PocketMirror Professional 4.3 and MobiSystems OfficeSuite Professional 7 7.50. Pretty cool rebates, eh?

The full list of the Windows Mobile apps offered for ~40% rebate is HERE (the other titles are definitely less interesting). The same for Symbian S60 is HERE, the Palm OS HERE and BlackBerry HERE.

Note that, according to PocketPlayers Reloaded, SOTI’s Pocket Controller, the best (and also the most expensive) Windows Mobile handset / PDA controller, should also be offered at a significant (20e instead of 32) rebate. However, the product page doesn’t reflect this. Hope this is only a temporary problem and it will indeed be offered for that cheap. (Should you not know the title, check out THIS for a thorough comparison to all the alternatives.)

Finally, if you don’t know German and Google Translator / any of the Babelfish services don’t help either, I’ve published a tutorial on using it HERE.

UPDATE (an hour later): thanks for the PocketPlayers Reloaded folks writing in, my attention was drawn to Pocket Controller again. It seems I didn’t see it having a rebate because my default WinMo device was set to the HTC s710 touchscreen-less MS Smartphone. After switching to Pocket PC’s (to HTC Universal – but the rebate should be shown with all PPC models; direct link HERE), I was indeed presented the lower price (19,95 € instead of 31,95 €) of Pocket Controller. It’s really a very good buy for such a low price, particularly for us Europeans – particularly if you have a (W)VGA device and/or need a controller with a registry editor and other goodies built-in.

In addition to thoroughly re-testing the WM2003(SE) compliance of the latest, just-released 4PDA.ru Jbed version (see the UPDATE section in my yesterday's post), I've continued testing the new MIDlet managers.

I’ve also tested some of the versions linked from the 4PDA.ru thread on my HTC Vox (s710) to find out whether they’re any good compared to the old MIDlet managers; particularly Cloudyfa’s version - the version that, so far, I’ve recommended to all MIDlet users (unless in need for M3G (3D) support.). These two are both “fixed heap” versions; some of the less simple games (for example, DoomRPG) and benchmark apps with large memory requirements are stated to run much better / more reliably in the fixed heap versions than in the regular ones (for example, that of Cloudyfa) because of the much bigger available memory. I haven’t tested the effects of this myself.

1. JBed3dMod_HeapSizeFix (that is, 3D-capable Jbed version, based on 20070524.2.1, with fixed heap)

I was really interested in how this (and an additional, hacked file available for download HERE - just overwrite JBed.exe of the original, already-installed version with JBed3d_SreenFix.exe after renaming) worked because, at 4PDA.ru, there’s a version that promises flawless, screen problem-free functionality on MS Smartphones also compatible with the excellent Gmail client MIDlet.

(Also see THIS (original HERE) for more info; see freesunny's post at 10.01.08 10:56:06.)

So far, it seemed impossible to make the latter (the Gmail MIDlet) flawlessly work on MS Smartphones under any version of Jbed. An example of the display problems the non-hacked version (or any Jbed version) can be seen in the following screenshot:

Unfortunately, the hacked version (after overwriting the EXE file with the separately downloaded JBed3d_SreenFix.exe) doesn’t really work with Gmail: while indeed the entire screen estate is used, the three lowermost menu items (Search, Compose New, Exit) aren’t visible, just like with the non-hacked case:

Note that essentially the same results from the 4pda.ru folks can be HERE. The same problem also exists in Portrait mode, not only in Landscape.

Read more!

See the bottom-most, new section(s) of my yesterday’s article.

There are two pieces of news for everyone interested in running Java MIDlets. The first will be having a pre-WM5 device and wanting to run Java MIDlets (for example, Opera Mini) on it. Yes, at last, some Russian hackers made Jbed, the industry-leading MIDlet manager work under WM2003(SE)! The second (and, for most people, not that important) piece of news concerns a brand new MIDlet manager port for Windows Mobile.

1. Some Russian hackers, including the 4pda.ru folks, have, at last, managed to make Jbed, the best MIDlet manager, work under WM2003 and WM2003SE. The importance of this just can’t be stressed enough: so far, you only had the really inferior IBM J9 and the 10-series TAO MIDlet Manager to run MIDlets on pre-WM5 operating systems. Now, this has dramatically changed. Now, nothing will stop you from using Opera Mini on your pre-WM5 Pocket PC.

The direct link to these WM2003(SE) MIDlet Managers are as follows. There are three versions: a modded one, a non-3D one and a 3D one; all with a heap size fix.

JBed3dMod_HeapSizeFix
Esmertec Jbed heapfix
Esmertec Jbed3d heapfix

They have also made a MAJOR update to their 4PDA.ru MIDlet article, linking to all the contemporary Esmertec, TAO etc. versions (including ones with heap fixes, with and without 3D support etc.); the above links can also be found in their article. You can see the translation of the new page HERE (Google) and HERE (Babelfish). Note that I’ve kept the original page HERE (Google) and HERE (Babelfish) for historical reasons for people interested in the pre-Esmertec times.

2. Now, the other piece of news, which, again, won’t be of that much interest to non-WM2003 / non-Java hackers.

Java is a really viable programming platform. Not only several high-quality games make it worthwhile, but also probably the best and, if you’re lucky enough with your geographical location, fastest and most bandwidth usage-friendly mobile browser available for mobile phones (including Windows Mobile), Opera Mini 4.

I’ve already devoted an entire all-in-one Bible to running Java on Windows Mobile (and Symbian). Now, let me introduce the latest Windows Mobile KVM: PhoneME.

PhoneME is another "let’s bring Java to various platforms” projects (official homepage HERE), which has recently received Windows Mobile support.

Read more!

Now that I’ve published my quick tutorial on mass-deleting / marking (un)read mail items in all mobile operating systems I’ve just been asked by my blog reader natestera on how the same can be done under WM5+ to PIM ("Personal Information Manager") data like calendar (appointment) info, contacts and tasks.

I’ve already elaborated on this subject in some forum posts and articles some two or three years ago. As, in the meantime,

1. WM5 has changed the way contacts can be mass-deleted in its built-in Contacts client (read: it no longer offers mass-selection/deletion capabilities; note that it didn’t change the way tasks and appointments are handled, though. That is, it didn’t introduce mass-selection / deletion capabilities to appointments and it didn’t take away the mass (incl. Ctl + A) /block selection capabilities of Tasks);
2. SKTools, the, in my opinion, best all-in-one system tool, received mass deletion capabilities; so did the brand new and, what is more, free PIM Backup;
3. some third-party PIM handler applications also received (some) mass-deletion capabilities and
4. my previous tutorials didn’t elaborate on the touchscreen-less MS Smartphone platform, only Pocket PC’s,

I found it necessary to publish a brand new, all-in-one tutorial on all these questions.

Note that this tutorial both elaborates on Pocket PC’s (with a touchscreen) and touchscreen-less MS Smartphones. Section 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 all apply to both operating systems. It’s only Chapter 2 (see Section 2.1 and 2.2) that separately discusses third-party PIM replacement applications for the two platforms.

1.1 Built-in Windows Mobile PIM apps

First, let's take a look at how the built-in Windows Mobile applications show PIM data and whether they allow for mass selection:

1.1.1 Pocket PC’s

Appointments:

(Tools / Options doesn’t have anything like this either: 1 2)

Read more!

I, being the author of the Windows Mobile Mailer Bible, probably the best source of everything mailing-related, always receive several mailing-related questions. One of the most often asked one concerns mass selection operations to be able to quickly delete or mark (un)read several (or all) messages. The main reason for this is, for example, resetting the “new / unread mail” counter on your main home (on Pocket PC’s, “Today”) screen by quickly deleting or making read mail you know you won’t ever need – without the need to open and/or delete them one by one.

First, let’s take a look at how this is to be done in the two major flavors of Windows Mobile:

1.1 Pocket PC (WM6 Professional / Classic; devices with touch screens)

It’s very easy to mass-select your mails in Pocket PC’s. All you need to do is either:

1. mass-select the mails you want to mark / delete with the stylus and/or
2. if you have a built-in thumbboard, press Shift and the up/down arrow keys (its effect is the same as that of the stylus when mass selecting messages) and/or
3. if you want to mass-select all messages (not just some of them), bring up the on-screen keyboard and press Ctl and, then, A

After this, all mass operations will work as supposed to.

1.2 MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard; devices without touch screens)

Unfortunately, the touchscreen-less MS Smartphone platform works in a pretty much different way. First, let’s start with the built-in messaging:

1.2.1 Messaging

As with the “big brother”, the Pocket PC, there aren’t any menu-based mass selection capabilities built-in in the MS Smartphone version of Messaging either. This can be seen in the following menu shot:

As there’s no touch screen and/or on-screen keyboards either, you couldn’t use Ctrl-A without third party tools (more on them later).

1.2.1.1 A quick tip for easier one-by-one deletion

If you want to quickly delete messages (with a single press of the left softkey – warning, the left softkey is only assigned the “Delete” functionality in WM6 and above, NOT in WM5!), do the following: go to Tools / Options / Other / uncheck Warn when deleting messages in the message list:

This makes it far easier to delete mails. This, however, doesn’t help in making a mail read. The latter will always require two button presses per mail (as opposed to – again, only under WM6+ - one, when you delete mail) (Menu / Mark as read).

1.2.2 FlexMail

With the alternative, excellent mailer client, FlexMail, the situation is better as of the current version (FlexMail 4 beta; 03/11/2008).

1.2.2.1 (Un)read flag toggling

In the top-level Folder view, if you just press Action on the folder, you can quickly toggle the read flag of all mail inside:

You can also do the same in the folder itself (Menu / Mark):

Read more!

1. The latest, 1.2.1 version of CorePlayer has JUST been released, with the long-promised Mobile YouTube support. It also has Configurable YouTube quality control; let me cite their post on this: “But the BIGGEST reason why YouTube is better in CorePlayer then on YouTube.com or any other third party application? CorePlayer is the first media player to feature Configurable YouTube quality control.... You control the bandwidth and quality that your platform can handle. From Low, Medium, to High quality (H.264) streams. Once you start to play with the YT interface in CP and play with the quality settings you will see what we mean by 'Great'!!!”

Also see THIS and THIS for user reports

Note that, should you have a Symbian device, you will be interested in their 1.2.0 preview (the official version is 2-3 weeks away). There’s still no sign of the Palm OS version - other than their announcement of working on it. Finally, as far as the iPhone version is concerned, it’ll be released in about three months.

2. Conduits Pocket Player, another, excellent, albeit a bit sluggish and less CPU-friendly all-in-one player, has just been updated to 3.6 with a better thought-out interface and other goodies.

See for example THIS for more user feedback.

3. The same Conduits has just cut the price of their two flagship applications:

1. Pocket Slides, the only app to be able to not only display, but also edit PowerPoint presentations and
2. Pocket Artist, feature-wise, without doubt the best image viewer for Windows Mobile (not taking into account the order of magnitude more expensive solutions) – albeit it isn’t the fastest. See THIS for the Image Viewer Bible; note that the review of the new Resco Image Viewer is HERE and both Spb Imageer and XnView have also been updated in the meantime, fixing the bugs mentioned in the article and adding new features. Also, there’s a brand new, 4.0 version of PQV, THE fastest (but not particularly featureful) image viewer out there. Finally, Glass Lantern's PocketLoupe has been entirely discontinued in the meantime, unfortunately.

NOTE: this isn't strictly a Windows Mobile news item (albeit it also contains Windows Mobile references; see for example the Sun MIDlet Manager on some new HP’s). However, now that I've spoken to the Sun reps at MWC (I'm a Java guru and have also worked for Sun as a lecturer for their Java programming courses) and also spotted their own MIDlet manager on the HP iPAQ 610 series, I found it necessary to report on this.

Finnish mag Tietokone has just reported on Sun's wanting to develop a JVM for iPhone so that it can run the vast number of MIDlets out there (including, for example, Opera Mini and thousands of games, some of them - like Simcity Societies - of very high quality).

Interestingly, Steve Jobs (of Apple), who still haven't commented on Sun's announcement, earlier stated in NYT "noone uses Java any more". Sour grapes? (It was, so far, impossible to run third-party apps on iPhone - except for some, just-released titles like CorePlayer.) I pretty much think he quickly changes his opinion - after all, a decent MIDlet Manager would be more than welcome on iPhone, which still lacks third-party apps / games.

It's nice to see Sun indeed plans to port their stuff to iPhone. While their Windows Mobile implementation, according to some Opera Mini users, has a lot to be desired (I haven't personally checked the validity of their claims so I may be entirely wrong), I really hope Sun starts to take mobile platforms more seriously.

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!

There is a lot of hardware news. As they’re pretty much interdependent, I devote a single article to all of them.

a. First, let’s start with the, in my opinion, most important news item: as you may have heard (see related PPCT thread HERE), Sony may only release the XPERIA X1, without doubt the most revolutionary Windows Mobile phone to be released this year, only next year in February. This, in the meantime, has been refined: the device is officially stated to be released H2 this year. The reason for the 2009 release date given in the official product page is as follows: “The only reason for the mysterious “10th of February release” is the fact that Sony Ericsson (or should I say Microsoft) has yet to decide on when to publicly announce the operating system and technical specifications of the X1, and thereby also a precise release date”

Indeed it’d be pretty much suicidal for Sony-Ericsson to wait almost a year with the release. It’s NOW that there aren’t any decent high-resolution (W)VGA devices on the market, not a year later, when

1. there would be at least E-TEN (now: Acer) to offer the V900 and Gigabyte the MS808, which both have a digital TV tuner compatible with both handheld and standard terrestrial broadcasts and also have really decent specs. Also, BlackBerry and the Symbian / feature phone folks should not be underestimated either: S60 Touch is promised for this year (the just-announced Nokia N96 may pale in comparison to it if it's true what Nokia predicts - that is, at least something like that of Nvidia's really-really excellent GUI) and there are rumors of a touchscreen BlackBerry too. Other manufacturers may also come up with Android and LiMo-based, “killer” devices and, speaking of Linux, there’re rumors of a new Nokia Internet Tablet, this time incorporating WiMax support (one of the biggest and most frequently uttered buzzwords of this year’s MWC).
2. the current hardware (particularly the Qualcomm MSM7200A chipset), assuming it isn’t changed / updated, becomes outdated in a year. Not only because of the Samsung S3C6410, which MAY be shipping then or the also way better and more powerful TI OMAP 3, which is available even now, but also because of Qualcomm’s own, new announcements (most importantly, the QST1105), which may also become available (and even shipped with some new models!) this year for industry-wide deployment.

b. Let’s go on with the HP iPAQ 210. I have some good news for you.

Read more!

After my thorough and, for example, PPCT frontpaged elaboration on the current i-mate lineup, let me speak about my experiences with the new, highly anticipated models either announced or showcased at MWC (or just recently released): the Samsung SGH-i780, the HP iPAQ 21x, the new Toshiba models, the E-Ten V900, The Gigabyte MS808 etc. (And, I’ll quickly mention the T-Mobile-only (!), high-end, VGA MDA Compact IV too.)

Samsung SGH-i780

First, I REALLY recommend Mobile-Review’s two-part review of this VERY nice device. In here, I generally don’t repeat what has already been explained there (except for a quick summary); I only elaborate on what I don’t agree with in the review and deem it necessary to add.

This is a pretty promising and high-spec’ed, still, very light (120g – somewhat more than the 112g, original [and, capability-wise, much-much inferior] HTC Touch, the same as the Nokia N95 and the T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus (HTC Nike 200); somewhat less than the HTC Touch Cruise P3650 (HTC Polaris 100) and MUCH less than the Kaiser) Pocket PC with a BlackBerry-alike thumbboard, a square 320*320 (yes, you've read it right: NOT those awful, incompatible-with-most-titles 240*240 screens!) screen, the latest-and-(almost the) greatest Marvel Xscale PXA310 CPU (as opposed to the old Intel Xscale PXA270 series still used in most current and forthcoming, Xscale-based devices – see for example the i-mate 6150 / 8150) and an optical touchpad (as opposed to traditional D-pads).

(From top left to right: the HTC Universal (i-mate JasJar), HTC s310 / Oxygen (SPV C100), the SGH-i780 (from bottom left to right): T-Mobile Shadow (HTC Kii 100), Samsung SGH-i640, BlackBerry 8800 and Nokia N95)

(From left to right: the HTC Universal (i-mate JasJar) with an extended battery, HTC s310 / Oxygen (SPV C100), T-Mobile Shadow, Samsung SGH-i640, BlackBerry 8800, Nokia N95 and the the SGH-i780)

(The same as before at the bottom; on the top, the new Benq, the HP iPAQ 610 (more on it later) and the HTC s730)

I've played a lot with the latter (the touchpad) at Barcelona and, frankly, didn’t quite like it. Of course, I need to admit I’ve already been spoiled by the touchpad of the HP iPAQ hx4700, which I hated. Frankly, I’ve found the “optical touchpad” of the Samsung a bit worse:

1. it’s definitely smaller than that of the iPAQ. It should have been made much bigger, even on the expense of the neighboring, huge buttons.
2. I’ve found it harder to operate. With the hx4700, you can both just touch the touchpad and press it hard: both will work. With the Samsung, only light touching works.

The fact that, unlike with the iPAQ, it can be pressed down (“Action”), is a plus, however, when compared to the hx4700.

All in all, if I REALLY need to use something being able to position quicker, I would still prefer to see something like the trackball in recent BlackBerry models (everything newer than the 8700). It has its own problems (for example, it needs to be cleaned now and then – fortunately, it’s comparatively easy on the BlackBerry), but is a FAR faster, FAR more precise and FAR more gaming / e-book reading-friendly pointing method than such a small touchpad. I know this as I’m also a BlackBerry 8800 user (as has also been mentioned HERE). Windows Mobile manufacturers, are you listening? It’s better to forget this touchpad thing altogether (again, remember the hx4700’s fate!) and use trackballs instead.

Read more!

The underlying chipset in a handheld device or phone has probably the biggest impact on major properties of the device like battery life, the (in)ability to use 3G and overall performance, particularly when it comes to graphics. Even users that don’t know much of of the hardware of these devices know that, for example, at least in the Windows Mobile world (as opposed to Symbian devices), TI OMAP almost exclusively means very good battery life but reduced performance and lack of hardware acceleration of, for example, 3D or video decoding. In this installment of my MWC series, I explain and evaluate most of the remaining, announced new chipsets.

In Part I of my CPU/chipset-related MWC series, I’ve elaborated on the brand new and really-really cool MWC announcement of Samsung. I’ve also introduced the latest technology from Imagination Technologies and have also touched on Qualcomm. Let’s start with the latter.

Qualcomm

In the previous article, I’ve promised I would fill you in on their latest chipset, the QST1x0x (QST1000, QST1100 and QST1105). I’ve already linked to the official announcement in a later, generic article. Now, let me elaborate on the new chipsets a bit more thoroughly.

The new chipset, as you can check it online too, has three submodels: the cheapest and non-connected QST1000, which promises some additional niceties compared to the current MSM7200(A) chipset many Windows Mobile devices are currently based on; for example,

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).

Should you not follow MoDaCo (related thread HERE) or the Vox forum of XDA-Devs, you may have missed the Vox upgrade released exactly a month ago.

My fellow Vox users have compiled the following (not necessarily full) list of advantages / updates of the new firmware version:

1. New version of Windows Live
2. Office Mobile 6.1
3. Smaller text in sms editor.
4. Connection Setup wizard.
5. Possibility to edit the "my texts" in sms.
6. It's now possible to manually add words to the xT9 dictionary.
7. Some new icons in the phonebook. (I guess it comes with the updated Live Messenger).
8. It feels like the battery life have improved (I'm not completely sure though...).
9. I have the overclocking setup FINALLY working with the Tornado program and I've been screaming at 264mhz for about a week without issue.

Upgrading my Vox (from firmware version 1.15.405.2 / 4.1.13.37_02.83.90, purchased back in May) went flawlessly.

Note that, while the upgrade is solely meant for HTC-branded devices, there are a lot of tutorials around the Web on how non-HTC-branded phones can be upgraded. While the above MoDaCo thread explains the basics of this, should you need a definite tutorial on, for example, upgrading the Orange SPV e650 with, check out THIS. Don’t forget, however, that you can upgrade ANY kind of a device if you (also) thoroughly read the thread HERE.

Now, let’s see what new i-mate devices there are.

First and foremost: much as you may already have read it in my first MWC report, but it’s still worth repeating: i-mate is NOT returning to HTC but keeps on bringing out their own handsets, as opposed to the previous rumors. This is, in my opinion, VERY good news, considering that HTC’s current product lineup is pretty much unimaginative and straight boring (read: no VGA, no multimedia, no gaming).

(i-mate’s booth at MWC)

Now, let’s take a closer look at the four new devices they’ve brought out: the Xscale-based, high-end 8150 and the 6150 (the latter, having a VGA screen, also being high-end) and the Qualcomm-based, high-end 9502 and the lower-spec’ed (QVGA) 8502.

Dale Coffing and the VGA output demo

Windows Mobile (Pocket PC / WindowsCE) longtimers surely remember Dale Coffing and his PocketPCPassion, which, back in 2000...2002, was one of the most lively Pocket PC discussion board. During MWC, he mostly ran a demo of the built-in digital (as opposed to analogue) XGA (1024*768) output capabilities of the i-mate 8150 / 6150, thanks to the GoForce 5500 graphics chip inside. Dale has indeed been really energetic – he kept attracting a lot of people to watch his show.

(in his demo, he presented logging into a Vista laptop via the, in the 6150/8150, built-in Remote Desktop Client [see the Remote Desktop Control Bible for more info on it], displaying the remote desktop on an external screen and controlling it via a Bluetooth (ThinkOutside) keyboard and mouse)

He has emphasized these two models are the first phones with a built-in XGA output. He’s right – for example, HTC (unlike i-mate) didn’t really bother enabling the (analogue, VGA) TV output on the Kaiser (aka AT&T Tilt), even though the Qualcomm chipset does support it (more on the (vast) differences of the analogue VGA and the digital XGA output later). The two other phones with the GoForce 5500 built-in, the O2 XDA Flame and the Toshiba Portégé G900, didn’t have XGA output either. (The Flame only supports VGA-resolution, analogue TV output but not XGA digital. In this respect, it’s way worse than i-mate’s new 6150 and 8150).

Of course, you can still make other models display their contents on an external screen - for example, via Spectec’s new SDV-842 microSD card, which will also be elaborated on in Dale Daniels' article Can a Smartphone Replace a Laptop? in the forthcoming (April 2008) Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine article (also see THIS for a generic overview of all similar solutions). But that’s an external, additional solution, with all its problems:

1. the SDV-842 isn’t particularly cheap (albeit still much cheaper than the old and no longer supported iGo Pitch Duo -Presentation Device): at Expansys-USA, it costs some $125
2. it doesn’t contain built-in memory, which may become a major pain in the back, particularly if you only have a device with 128M ROM.
3. it can’t be used with the (now, very few and low-end) phones that have their memory card under the battery (for example, the HTC Oxygen / s310).
4. storage card-based solutions are inherently more fragile than solutions based on built-in sockets

Read more!

Nanobotz (see related info HERE; I particularly recommend Ben's review) is offered at half the price at ClickGamer. Go get it - this game is certainly worth it for such a low price!

You can get it HERE (Pocket PC's with touchscreen only - no touchscreen-less Smartphones, sorry.)

(Source: PocketPlayers Reloaded - the links takes you to a German language review if interested.)

UPDATE (02/27/2009): MoDaCo frontpage

1. App news / rebates:

a. (still a preview, but still much more advanced than version 1.1.3 released a month ago) CorePlayer 1.2, finally, released for Windows Mobile. See THIS for more info. The Symbian version, as opposed to what was announced a month ago (then, the CoreCodec folks only promised a Windows Mobile release for February), seems to hit the shelves very soon too - see THIS thread. It, among other things, promises hardware acceleration. I'm really looking forward to the dramatic speed / efficiency increase this could mean on current high-end Nokias like the N95 using the latest TI OMAP & PowerVR-based chipsets.

b. ALL of VITO Technology's products are available for $7 (!!) only: go purchase them while the offer lasts! (I'm pretty unlucky, it seems: it was just before MWC that I purchased their AudioNotes for Symbian S60v3 for some $25... should I have known this GREAT rebate beforehand... )

2. Gaming & emulation news:

a. Creatonia made free!

Insenic, who, in the past, have already made two of their previously commercial titles free, decided to do the same to their pretty nice RPG title Creatonia. While the biggest problems (for example, the lack of in-game music, the dull graphics etc.) are still present, it's really worth getting for free. See THIS for a review (frontpaged on several sites).

b. a new version of Commodore 64 emulator for both the MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard) and Pocket PC (WM6 Pro / Classic) platform, PocketHobbit, is released, with a lot of niceties like native QVGA support (remember? It was me who wrote an extended, QVGA-enabled Smartphone version of the original) and frame rate settings. See THIS for a generic overview of emulating the Commodore 64 under Windows Mobile. It's available HERE (NOT on the old links).

c. Astraware has released a fully-fledged, very interesting strategy game Westward, which is certainly worth checking out. There is a great Just Another Mobile Moday review HERE. It runs on both Pocket PC's and Smartphones (and even Palm OS devices).

d. Beijing Huike Technology, the developers of Dark Street reviewed HERE, have released four additional games for both the Pocket PC and MS Smartphone:

Read more!

This is the promised continuation of my previous MWC article, "MWC: Web browsing: WebKit, Thunderhawk news; a dedicated Web browser handheld"

Iris - another WebKit port from Torch Mobile

In the previous Web browsing-related MWC article, I’ve elaborated on Wake3’s WebKit port, which is, as opposed to what some say, is in no way waporware.

The developer, Torch Mobile, already has a more or less working and testable, albeit VERY (as of version 1.0.4) unstable, public version of the browser. It’s available for download HERE. Note that it’s WM6 and Pocket PC only – pre-WM6 and/or touchscreen-less MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard) devices won’t work.

(VGA Pocket PC; note that, just like with Wake3’s (current) version, it requires extensive horizontal scrolling with most pages on QVGA devices as it has no “Fit to screen” or “One column” mode)

It’s VERY slow and some links just aren’t clickable. (For example, I was unable to execute the Acid2 test because the link was just not clickable on the homepage; it was only the pre-rendered reference shot that I could click).

Other (menu) screenshots:
Navigate menu
Page / Tools
Page / Zoom
Page / Tabs

All in all, the current version is pretty much useless. Let’s hope future versions will be better, though.

Access’ Netfront 3.5 (current Technical Preview)

I’ve also very thoroughly spoken to the Access folks on the fate of version 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5. Most importantly, I asked them what happened to 3.4; how come they haven’t ever released 3.4 for the masses as a purchasable product, and how come they have already released a Technical Preview of 3.5, even without 3.4 having been released.

After some serious communication problems (the Access guy I spoke to at first didn’t seem to really understand English; after my having repeated the question at least ten times and he’s still not answering it but starting to speak about something completely different (it was a very technical question, which I couldn’t have explained straight in Japanese)), fortunately, we received help.

Read more!

Samsung

Architecture-wise, it’s without doubt Samsung’s MWC announcement of a brand new, high-end chipset (also having a CPU), the S3C6410 (and its budget version, the S3C6430), that may be the most interesting to Windows Mobile users.

As you may already know, Samsung’s SC3244x (for example, the SC32442 used in the HTC P6300 (HTC Panda), E-Ten’s late 2007/early 2008 models like the X650 and the M800 etc – see the complete list HERE and HERE for the SC32442 and the SC32440, respectively), the chipset used in several current(!) Windows Mobile devices, is REALLY outdated. I’ve shown numerous examples and proofs of this (see for example THIS) - for example, the very bad CPU usage of A2DP (about 50% at 400 MHz) and the complete lack of advanced multimedia (MP3 / AAC) en/decoding support (this is why you can’t, for example, use the high-quality Resco audio codec pack with (old) Samsung CPU’s, as has also been pointed out HERE). These two tasks are all far better handled by any other, current CPU’s like Intel XScales (even the “old” PXA-2XX ones) and TI OMAP’s (again, even the oldest ones used in Windows Mobile 5+ devices). The only real advantage of the SC3244x is the CPU usage-independent power consumption – the other two, above-mentioned architectures can’t boast with this. (See the bottom section of THIS article for a proof.)

Before MWC, as far as their newer chipsets are concerned, only the S3C6400 was known. For example, E-Ten’s brand new, high-end, feature-packed V900 (to be released in April) will have this chipset. (Currently, there’re no other existing/announced devices (see THIS) with this CPU.)

This chipset is the base (the direct predecessor, parent) of the new S3C6410/ S3C6430 models. In this respect, it’s pretty much comparable to the Marvell XScale PXA270 as opposed to the PXA310, let alone the even more feature-rich PXA320.

The just-announced S3C6410, which is an even more advanced version of the S3C6400 , is even better; for example, it supports hardware 3D acceleration. Again, it’s like the PXA310 or the PXA320 compared to the PXA270. Unfortunately, currently, no future devices are known to have it.

(the 3D performance demo of the brand new S3C6410; you can see the S3C6410 flier I’ve also made some shots of here)

(multimedia demo on the older S3C6400)

(HD AX audio decoding demo on the older S3C6400)

(this is how an imaginary device could house the S3C6400)

Note that, currently, the only available online information is the above-linked one. While it does explain the advantages of the new S3C6410 platform over the “old” S3C6400 one, it’s definitely worth checking out their offline brochure I’ve taken a shot of (with my Nokia N95 – man, it DOES have a very nice camera. Hear that, Windows Mobile ODM’s? We want something similar on WM too!) Also note that Samsung’s portal doesn’t have any information on the S3C6430 at all. Finally, note that none of the other portals reporting on MWC have anything else on the new CPU than the above-linked press release (see for example MobileBurn, electronista.com, techon - these are the sites mentioning S3C6410 I could find via Google). That is, it’s in by me that you get a full rundown of the differences between the new CPU’s and the “old” S3C6400.

(again, click the pictures to get a full-resolution, readable one!)

As can clearly be seen, the S3C6410 is a much more advanced version of the S3C6400: it uses 65 nm technology instead of the 90 nm one (most probably resulting in major power and size savings), it has advanced 2D capabilities (for example, H.264 hardware decoding – as is also explained in the online version) and even 3D hardware acceleration. The “budget” S3C6430 seems to be exactly the same as the S3C6410; the only difference seems to be the complete lack of 3D hardware acceleration. Hope we’ll still see the latter (that is, the S3C6410) with proper (!) 3D drivers.

Read more!

OK, let’s see what novelties and new announcements MWC had for us, music / radio streaming buffs. You may already know I’m pretty much into audio encoding; see for example my HE-AAC v2-related remarks in my Radio Stream Transcoding Bible.

Fraunhofer Society

The, for the MP3 format, well-known Fraunhofer Society demoed HD-AAC, their latest-and-greatest losless format, which is compatible with any AAC-LC players; that is, even old(er) iPod’s (and, of course, Pocket PC’s with an AAC-LC-compliant player). The new format has been announced (and, first, was demoed) this year at CES.

While some people predict (see for example THIS) the new format will quickly die or won’t be implemented by anyone (like the fate of MP3 Pro), I think the new format has a lot of potential. After all,

1. a LOT of Windows Mobile (or, for that matter, generic mobile - for example, Symbian or iPhone) users listen to other kinds of losless music (most importantly, FLAC). That is, a full implementation for Windows Mobile (Symbian, mobile incarnations of Linux, Blackberry etc.) can make a lot of people switch to the new format from, say, using FLAC.

2. it is fully (!!!) backwards compatible with 128 kbps AAC-LC – that is, the native format of iPods, iTunes etc. This means a HD-AAC tune can be played back on any AAC-LC player – without the quality enhancements, of course. But, at least, you won’t encounter any quality problem. Unlike with, say, only HE-AAC- but not HE-AAC v2-compliant players playing back HE-AAC v2 contents, resulting in severely reduced audio quality and mono sound. The only problem you’ll face with playing back HD-AAC clips on a mobile device are the (in cases, far) bigger storage requirements. However, the fact that you can use exactly the same sound file on your desktop and (even simple, old) mobiles for playback can be a lifesaver in many cases. That is, you don’t need to create a separate FLAC and a separate AAC-LC version of your CD if you prefer having the original in as good quality as possible, without using any lossy codec. Again, it’s only the differece in the file size that may cause you problems on a memory-constrained mobile device (and, probably, the higher CPU / power usage – I’m not sure about this.)

The new format is based on the MPEG-4 SLS (Scalable to Lossless) standard.

Also see for example THIS (in addition to the above-linked Wiki pages) for more info.

SRS (Sound Retrieval System)

The SRS Labs folks also demoed their SRS.

Read more!

The 3D hardware accelerated Heretic port, HereticGLES, has just been released by the author of DoomGLES / PPC, a finalist (!) in last year's Best Software Awards, in the Games / First Person Shooter category.

See the homepage of the game HERE. As the developer also has an O2 XDA Flame and has gained access to nvidia SDK, DoomGLES & HereticGLES will be compatible with GoForce 5500 soon! Definitely good news for the owners of the Flame.

Finally, please PLEASE donate to the developer if you like his games and want to see further support / ports!

UPDATE (02/19/2008): PG frontpage

THIS article, along with the comments, is definitely worth checking out. It emphasizes the device will have WM 6.1 (unlike what Mobile-Review stated some days ago) and will be based on the Qualcomm MSM7200A chipset running at 528 MHz. The latter means I was right at guessing it must be Qualcomm-based after Tuesday's press Q&A session, when the S-E guys explained the device doesn't have a separate GPS chip (that is, the chipset itself contains GPS support), which pretty much rules out all the alternative chipsets.

The original (referenced, but not directly linked) article is HERE. The textual contents of the article don't contain much information; it's still worth checking out because it contains way more shots.)

(BTW, I just don't know how these guys were able to get the prototype - and use it. Not even the Moebius folks were allowed to switch it on. In addition, judging from the quality of the pictures - meaning they have spent quite much time on making them - they haven't been taken at MWC.)

In this part of my MWC report series, I show most of the (advanced – that is, I don’t show plain, “boring” Bluetooth headsets) advanced Bluetooth goodies I’ve seen in Barcelona. First, some A2DP news, together with a quick review & comparison of the Plantronics’ new Voyager 855.

A2DP (Stereo Bluetooth audio) news

There were tons of, in cases, brand new and/or forthcoming stereo (A2DP) Bluetooth headphones and/or speakers. Just to name a few:

Cresyn

Cresyn’s new headphones (I haven’t tested them); among others, the CS-BT713 and KS-Kleer (direct homepage of the BT800 is HERE; note that it’s Korean only and there aren’t pages on the two listed headphones at all, their being so new):

Gear4

The Gear4 folks showcased their BluPhones (official product page HERE):

Read more!

(Note that you'll find the Opera Mobile 9.5-related report HERE; in this article, I only report on some other stuff. Also note that I'll still publish some other MWC articles on Web browsing; for example, on the Russian InfoGrin.)

WebKit

WebKit (Wiki page HERE) is a well-known framework two major mobile browsers (that of Nokia’s s60v3 and Applet’s iPhone) are based on. It’s hugely successful and, by many, generally considered one of the best mobile browsers. You may already have head that it’s being ported to Windows Mobile.

(The WinMo port of WebKit rendering our blogs; as usual, click the images for a much bigger version)

I was pretty lucky with the Wake3 folks (the people behind the Windows Mobile port of WebKit) because we’ve run into each other right on Sunday morning (one day before the MWC officially started) on the bus heading to Espanja Square. As they didn’t have a booth, I would have, otherwise, missed this great chance to quickly test the current version of their port and also ask them about their plans for future.

First, don’t expect a full review in here – it would just be unfair because the port, currently, doesn’t even have a menu (only an address bar) or, on a low-resolution handheld device, pretty much important "fit into screen" or "one column" modes. Therefore, I just played a bit with it to see how, for example, our blogs are rendered. I haven’t run the Acid2 / my standard Ajax tests either to find out more about web standards compliance. According to the developers, I already supports full JavaScript, HTML and CSS(2). They have also stated that, speed-wise, it should be comparable to Nokia’s S60v3 FP1+ Web browser – or, even better, iPhone. Finally, I haven’t made any speed tests or checked the memory usage / optimization either (a major stumbling block with, for example version 0.2 of Minimo); they stated the WebKit blog has (and will have) some related announcements.

A public pre-beta phase follows some months later. They will (at least try to) implement hardware button quick access / controllability (one of the greatest things in Opera Mini, Mobile and Internet Explorer Mobile with the right plug-in supporting this; for example, PIEPlus or MultiIE).

As far as the above-mentioned lack of an one-column or "fit to screen" mode is concerned, they plan to do something like Safari on the iPhone, with the same nice scrolling and zooming in/out – that is, something that needs to be scrolled / zoomed in exactly the same way. It’s only later (if at all) that they might implement any fit-to-screen modes. I, however, REALLY hope that they do implement a text rendering mode like that if Opera Mini / Mobile – that is, the text, repaginate when necessary, dynamically reflows so that it first nicely in the screen, without any need to scroll horizontally.

Read more!

I’ve also thoroughly checked out the booths of the two major competitors of Windows Mobile, RIM (Research in Motion; a.k.a. the BlackBerry folks) and Nokia.

BlackBerry

Before visiting the RIM booth, I had hoped for at least a glimpse of the forthcoming 4.5 version of the BlackBerry operating system delivering some long-awaited niceties like A2DP (stereo Bluetooth) support and HTML e-mail (the latter meaning no more need for BBSmart, the well-known additional HTML rendering program for the operating system). Unfortunately, there haven’t been any sign or any information on the new OS at all. Actually, as far as A2DP is concerned, they have only released an external device, the Remote Stereo Gateway, providing similar functionality. As it’s just an external dongle, I didn’t even bother to thoroughly test it. (Assuming it’s available at MWC at all – at least I haven’t seen it in person.)

(Also see THIS CrackBerry article if interested.)

Moving from the question of the new OS to other subjects, there isn’t much to report on new hard- or software either. Most of their new (press) releases / announcements are “only” mobile operator-related; for example, deepening their strategic relationship with Vodafone. Probably the only real announcement they’ve made, which might be of interest to BB users, is the launch of Blackberry Unite, which is a free download and is supposed to have for example remote access to desktop files and communicating with other Blackberry Unite users. I don’t know whether it allows for talking to non- Blackberry Unite users (read: MSN / Google Talk etc.); it seems it doesn’t. No problem, though – I’m pretty much happy with IM+ on my BB 8800. (Albeit, it was surely pretty expensive.)

There has also been another announcement customers of BB may be interested in much more than just plain relationship deepening reports: that of nuTsie. It’s a music transcoding / streaming service like the highly recommended (see my related articles) ORB on Windows Mobile – but, it seems, without the capabilities of transcoding streaming audio/video (I may be wrong though). (Also see THIS CrackBerry article / post if interested.)

There have been several third-party BlackBerry developers in the BB booth. Of them, I’ve paid a visit to Gameloft, the well-known Java MIDlet game developer for all MIDlet-compatible platforms, to see what (BB-compatible) games they have and how they run on BB hardware. After having realized they didn’t have the famous jump'n'run RayMan on the test BB Pearl, I’ve asked for a quick test of Nitro Street Racing (a well-known and famous title on other platforms - a pleasure to play on particularly the 3D hardware accelerated Nokia high-end N-series phones).

To tell the truth, I didn’t enjoy the game at all. The graphics / animation was pretty slow, even on the (comparatively) low-resolution screen of the Pearl (which means the higher-resolution 8800 / Curve series may be even more sluggish). It’s indeed pretty much certain that the BB platform isn’t the best suited for computing power-intensive applications like games – or, for that matter, even for running Opera Mini if you absolutely need the best performance. (For example, bringing up the long list of my Opera Mini favorites is done much faster on the Nokia N95 or any of my Windows Mobile devices running Jbed than on my BB 8800). I don’t know whether it’s just because the MIDlet manager of the device (which runs all these third-party apps) is just unoptimized or the hardware itself is plain slow, but it really doesn’t matter when the net result is concerned – the entire thing is slow.

Nokia

There is more to report on Nokia – but not so much as I had previously hoped for.

First, the new hardware. Unfortunately, there aren’t really any revolutional devices from them – just the N96 and the N78. They’re slightly better than their predecessors (except for the lack of the camera protection and the 3D hardware acceleration on the former; it also lacks the Xenon flash of the N82 but this is pretty much understandable, given that you need a comparatively large capacitor for flash) but in no way revolutionary – except for the native support for DVB-H if you’re into watching TV (and your country already has DVB-H TV broadcasts.)

=> Read more!

The, for leaking information on forthcoming mobile operating system versions (remember Windows Mobile 6? WM5 AKU3?) pretty much (in)famous Mobile-Review has just published their roundup of Sony-Ericsson phones (note that the article is in Russian; if you don't know the language, use Google Translator or Babelfish. Links to "translations" HERE and HERE, respectively). In there, they elaborate on the phone a bit (along with other, non-WM phones from S-E) - albeit, except for the OS info, not much more than my previous reports.

In a nutshell: they state the S-E folks aren't allowed to publicly demo the new (otherwise, pretty much working - at least this is what I've noticed at the press conference yesterday, see my remarks on the Japanese S-E guy sitting pretty close to me and using the device to check mails) device because it runs an early version of Windows Mobile 6.5, a "quick release" before WM7.

Source and a more thorough English translation of the text elaborating on this question: THIS article (thanks for SolSie for mentioning this!)

Note that, now, it's absolutely certain the device will have a microSD slot - not the proprietary Memory Stick something (I think it was Pro? I'm not sure) one mentioned in some preliminary specs. The latter would have pretty much killed the sales if there isn't a Memory Stick - microSD converter. And, of course, would have added unnecessary and, with microSD, pretty much avoidable bulk.

You may already have heard of the really revolutionary E Lnk e-paper and the dedicated book readers using it. The most important in-production ones are, currently, as follows. (If interested, see the full list / a full comparison chart HERE; note that the matrix doesn’t contain the very important effective resolution; I’ve fixed this in the short listing below as the value after the slash. Note that, in order for quick accessibility, I’ve also listed the grayscale levels supported in here too.)

iRex iLiad - in my opinion, the best ebook reader, mostly because of its high-resolution (XGA,1024*768) screen and the quality material. (resolution: XGA / no effective resolution given (but, in Landscape mode, it’s only a little bit narrower than 1024 pixel); 16 grayscale)

Sony LIBRIé (resolution: SVGA / 754 x 584, 4 grayscale)

Sony Reader PRS-500/505 (a somewhat enhanced LIBRIé for the U.S. market; it’s smaller (no keyboard) and features a dual Memory Stick PRO Duo/SD slot to augment the memory) (resolution: SVGA / 754 x 584, 4/8 grayscale in 500/505)

Cybook Gen3 (resolution: SVGA / no effective resolution given, 4 grayscale)

And the latest device, the much-criticized Amazon Kindle (resolution: SVGA / 450x550; 4 grayscale)

Now, there’s a new player on the scene: Polymer Vision.

They have demoed a very promising prototype of their phone + reader combo called Readius. Some shots (all taken by me) follow:

Why you may be interested? I’ve talked to the Polymer Vision folks and found out the following:

Read more!

Today morning, thanks to Hal Goldstein, I was let in to the Mobius meeting. The Xperia X1 was also there – switched off. I’ve made some additional shots.

(as with my previous articles, click the images for a far larger version. The iPhone is that of a Mobius member. Sorry, everyone was in a hurry and couldn’t jot down his name – will definitely update this section when the other Windows Mobile sites publish this info.)

In Hall 8, on the official S-E booth, there has always been a big crowd looking at demos of Xperia X1:

When I checked this out, only the Sony-specific main Today-replacement launcher was demoed, nothing else – just like with the MobileFocus (held at the Aveninda Palace hotel) demos the previous evening. HOWEVER, in the Microsoft Q&A press conference held at 9 AM today at the Palace Hotel (MS’ main headquarters), I was sitting pretty close to a Japanese S-E guy that took out his Xperia from time to time to check his email (or, to just play with the device? It definitely wasn't the main Sony launcher screen). This may mean the firmware may be already in a better, not the always-crashing shape – for example, enabling users to run Messaging.

In addition, later in the afternoon, the Xperia was also showcased switched on with the traditional Windows Mobile Today screen (and not that of Sony):

Qualcomm chipset inside?!

Speaking of the Sony-Ericsson & Microsoft press conference, one of the questions addressed assisted GPS – that is, why the device doesn’t have a GPS chipset not necessarily requiring the help of an Assistance Server for quick locking. The Sony folks have stated they needed to reduce the physical size of the device; this is why they haven’t included a dedicated GPS chip(set) like that of SiRFstar III.

Consequently, it must be the core phone CPU / chipset that already has (assisted) GPS, which may mean it’s based on the well-known Qualcomm MSM7200/7500, as neither the TI OMAP nor the Intel (now, Marvell) Xscale architecture has GPS support built-in, not even in the latest versions (this is why, for example, the Nokia N95/N82, which are both based on the latest and excellent TI OMAP chipset, needed a separate SiRFstar II LP GPS chipset).

Then, however, other questions arise; most importantly, that of the 3D hardware acceleration. (And whether Sony will deliver, for gaming / emulation, usable graphic drivers or not.) Remember my yesterday’s post: in there, I’ve already mentioned the Sony-Ericsson guy demoing the X1 at MobileFocus refused to provide me a definite answer to whether the device will have 3D hardware acceleration or not. Yes, it’s in the specs as “HW 3D Graphics”, but the specs may be wrong, which clearly explains why the MobileFocus guy stated it’s not known whether the X1 will indeed have acceleration or not. I can only hope the HTC vs. Qualcomm fiasco won’t be repeated in Sony's case.

As you all may already know, so far at MWC, hardware-wise, the multimedia- and gaming-friendly, high-resolution Sony-Ericsson Xperia X1 has generated the biggest stir. A lot of folks all over Windows Mobile forums have started discussing the new device. Many even called it the HTC Kaiser / AT&T Tilt-killer. Which isn’t far from the truth – if Sony-Ericsson indeed manages to deliver a PDA that delivers excellent multimedia / gaming performance (too), then, this model may be the most popular Windows Mobile device of the day.

I had the chance to speak to the Sony-Ericsson people today evening. They will release the new device the second half of this year. Currently, their device was truly just a demo device with a very-very unstable Windows Mobile version; therefore, they didn’t really show any of the niceties (for example, the built-in programs), just the main launcher screen.

The camera of the X1 is pretty low-specced – they’re in no way a close match to that of the Nokia N95 / N82. On the other hand, the other parts of the design are far better than those of, say, the new Toshiba G920 I’ve reported on in the previous part.

Physically, the device is really tiny (also meaning the WVGA screen is only 3" ), which can clearly be seen in my following comparative shots:

With the sliding keyboard opened:

(note that the HTC Universal had an extended battery; hence the thickness.)

Compared to a “dumb” S-E "walkman" phone:

Hardware specification-wise, they haven’t told me anything not present in the leaflet. The latter also contains the currently known configuration. When I’ve asked them about the 3D acceleration, they have stated they try to implement it, but nothing is for sure. (Read: it’s in no way guaranteed the device will have hardware 3D acceleration – that is, the official spec may not become fully implemented.)

A quick note: I'll continue writing about what booths I've visited, what I've seen etc. tomorrow. Not, it's very late in here (12:39AM) and I need to wake up very early.

Let me welcome all my readers to the first part of my Mobile World Congress reports. Note that I’ve started writing this report yesterday evening but, having no Wi-Fi at my hotel and Vodafone Spain’s problems, I couldn’t post it right away. Therefore, in order for the most important news to be presented right at the beginning, I have broken up this article to a brand new conference report (see the first few paragraph) and, then, a more complete description of what has happened yesterday. It’s the last section that elaborates on the Showstopper party yesterday, with a lot of info & screenshots on Opera Mobile 9.5 and several other technologies.

Today, first, I’ve met the great folks from Spb Software House. Vasily demoed the latest Spb Mobile Shell, which I plan to review some time in the future, along with all the other shell enhancers, including those of the XDA-Developers folks.

i-mate news

After this, I had the pleasure the meet top i-mate folks. The first question I asked, of course, was the recent DigiTimes / Pocket PC Thoughts news on i-mate’s switching back to HTC. I told the i-mate folks that, with the major problems with the HTC Qualcomm video drivers and HTC’s refusing to fix the problem, how disappointed the WinMo folks have become with HTC.

The major and indeed REALLY-REALLY welcome news is that i-mate is NOT returning to HTC but keeps on bringing out their own handsets. Great news!

I’ve also asked about cancelling the, compared to the latest Marvell PXA310/320 CPU’s, already-dated PXA270 series in their later models and (even silently, just like for example Dell did with the Dell Axim x5) upgrading to the PXA310/320. They stated they’re investigating all these things and the possible upgrade. This is pretty much promising.

Nokia with WinMo devices? Not now

Third, I’ve met John Starkweather from Microsoft. My first question was, of course, the talks with Nokia reported by several sites. My previous remarks, over at PPCT, on a Nokia-manufactured camera / gaming / GPS / entertainment machine are worth checking out to see why I’d welcome Nokia to re-release the N95 or the N82 with Windows Mobile on them if and only if they provide the same high quality add-on software enhacing these devices on Symbian.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing to report on. That is, in the future, it’s highly unlikely Nokia comes out with WinMo phones. But this doesn’t certainly mean this won’t change in the later future.

However, the Sony-Ericsson folks have just announced a multimedia-friendly WVGA touchscreen device, the XPERIX A1, of which you can read more at, for example, on our blog or at PPCT and at XDA-Devs. I'll post other, related threads too when I have the time.

I’ll definitely pay a visit to the S-E booth here to see whether they have the device in here. If they do, I definitely post some comparative pictures in here.

Microsoft’s press conference

Microsoft’s press conference took place at 3PM local time in Hotel Catalonia Plaza, which, fortunately, is just at the other side of the Espana square, facing the entrance of MWC and is, therefore, easy to get there. In addition, it has a more or less working Wi-Fi network, which isn’t really the case with the press section of MWC, where I’ve wasted at least one hour desperately tryng to access the Internet. (Finally, I had to use a local PC and transfer files to be uploaded by a storage card). Pretty much stone-age, I know.
This event will surely be thoroughly covered by other mags, so, I only very shortly sumarize it. First, the most important announcement was Microsoft’s announcing they would invest far more effort on gaming and entertainment. (For the platform’s gaming capabilities, they’ve used the Amiga Inc. game I’ve reviewed some days ago and also called very cool.) I really hope this indeed materializes – at least via the non-HTC players; most importantly, Sony.

They have also announced having acquired Danger. This, however, won’t mean Microsoft starts producing hardware like the T-Mobile Sidekick.

MSN Direct

The MS press conference has also shown MSN Direct in action. After the conference, I’ve also had an appointment with the MSN Direct folks so I could learn a bit more about it.

It’s like a fully-fledged RSS client with the following goodies:

1. It uses some kind of a push protocol, which, while being really bandwidth friendly, still promises updates in realtime
2. It integrates nicely into the MS Smartphone today screen.

Note that, currently, only the MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard) platform is supported and the client is in no way can be installed on a touchscreen Pocket PC. The sole reason for this is the programmatic difference between accessing the Today screen on the Smartphone and the Pocket PC platform. Nevertheless, they promise a Pocket PC version very soon, which I’ll also announce when it becomes available.

Should you have a Smartphone, you might want to check out ne.msndirect.com

Read more!

1. Opera Mobile 9.5 announced!

The most powerful and standards-compliant Web browser for Windows Mobile has, finally, been updated! See THIS for the press release; THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS and THIS for user discussions.

(BTW, in my last, SkyFire-related news item, I’ve forgotten to link to the related HoFo thread. Now it’s done.)

2. SPB Mobile Shell 2.0 announced!

A lot of you may have been eagerly waiting for this upgrade. See for example THIS for more info.

3. The famous Sprite Software is proud to present Sprite Archie to backup / search / evaluate your call logs/ SMS messages. While there’re some tools (most notably, the free (!) PIM Backup and SKTools) that are able to backup your stuff (see the tutorial I’ve written on this HERE), Sprite Archie seems to take this a bit further.

See for example THIS for more info.

Also note that, for a limited time, get $5 off the $14.95 regular price by using coupon code SAFEB085.

4. Another Jbed MIDlet Manager version has been released: JRebeiro_EsmertecJbed_20071119.3.1.

It’s available HERE (at the bottom of the first page).

As I don’t have the time to thoroughly test it, feedback is REALLY welcome!

5. Finally, some self-promotion again: I’ve collected the year 2007 online (!) frontpages of my articles, Bibles etc. HERE.

UPDATE (02/19/2008): PocketPlayers frontpage

1. There’s another, new demo video (thanks to the PocketPlayers Reloaded folks) of the forthcoming, kick-butt FPSEce 0.010 Playstation emulator:

Coolboarders

(See THIS and THIS for the earlier videos)

2. Mobile2Day.de has some GREAT game rebates until 02/10; most importantly, the brand-new Revival (see reviews linked from HERE), Spb AirIsland and the great multiplayer title Explode Arena. You can save about 40% of their price – don’t hesitate to go and purchase! (I’ve already purchased Revival for Pocket PC in there: yes, I’ve saved some 7 euros compared to, say, the current ClickGamer price.) Note that the portal is German-only; please see THIS for more info if you don’t know the language.

The titles offered:

Revival: 11,95 euros (PPC version) / 7,95 euros (MS Smartphone version)

Mahjongg Deluxe 3D: 5,95 euros

Explode Arena: 5,95 euros

Spb AirIsland: 12,95 euros

Chess Professional: 5,95 euros

(news source: PocketPlayers Reloaded)

Note that the pretty much recommended Arcade Park 1.4 (from the same folks as Revival) is also sold at a some (8,88 euros instead of 10,45) discount – it’s also worth at least giving it a try.

Read more!

Upon my fellow blogger Tim Hillebrand’s report and because I’ll need to quickly enter a lot of info at MWC (and I don’t want to lug around my desktop replacement and, therefore, pretty heavy IBM Thinkpad a31p just for inputting text), I’ve installed the latest StowAway / iGo Bluetooth drivers on all my mobile devices (even non-Windows Mobile ones) to find out whether the drivers available HERE are (still) compatible with the latest operating system / firmware versions. I’ve found out the following:

Windows Mobile

Pocket PC’s (a.k.a. WM6 Classic / Professional):

HP iPAQ hx4700 (WM5 AKU 3.5.2; selecting & using the Widcomm driver, NOT the MS one); HTC Universal (WM6), Dell Axim x51v (WM5 official A12 (AKU 2.3) ROM with the MS BT stack), HTC Wizard (mfrazzz’ XDA Mobile 6 Release 5 FINAL) and the WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210: all work OK with the factory, default driver.

(Note that, as far as mfrazzz’ XDA Mobile 6 releases are concerned, version 3 was a no-go at all: it didn’t even try to connect. Pressing the Disable built-in HID support doesn’t help at all – unlike with all my other test devices or the same Wizard running Release 5.)

Smartphones (a.k.a. WM6 Standard)

HTC Vox / s710 (factory WM6 Smartphone ROM); no native driver; therefore, I tested it with the s620 / Excalibur / MteoR driver (they’re the same – actually, it seems ALL HTC Smartphones have the same drivers, unlike with WM5 and pre-WM5 Pocket PC’s): OK

HTC Oxygen / s310 with the above MS SP drivers (no native driver): the config app doesn’t even load (“Keyboard driver not functioning!”); then, after closing it, I started to get system errors about the keyboard driver DLL not responding.

Read more!

1. Yesterday, I reported on the new FPSEce 0.010 videos. The Pocketplayers.info folks have just uploaded two, brand new FPSEce 0.010 videos well worth checking out:

Rayman
Wipeout XL

It seems FPSEce 0.010 will indeed be a BIG hit, particularly for 3D game fans with a Dell Axim x50v / x51v: it’ll really be able to run the well-known PlayStation classics without any problems. Make sure you donate to the developer (I’ve already done so)

2. A quick overview of Prowler Studios' games

Prowler Studios is a newcomer to the Windows Mobile gaming scene but has already released several titles. Of these, I review the three most expensive ($12.95 each) one (assuming most expensive means the best). Note that they're all Pocket PC only (not compatible with MS Smartphones - I've tested) and support all operating systems starting with WM2003.

a. Toe 2 Toe Boxing Championship is (or, at least, tries to be) a 3D boxing game. I don’t recommend this title. While it tries to be 3D, it in no way utilizes existing 3D acceleration hardware (tested this on the Dell Axim x51v). The in-game sprite animation is also VERY bad: it only has TWO phases. Taken the high price of the title into account, I in no way can recommend this game even for a quick try. I know there aren’t any boxing games for Windows Mobile (quickly checked this at Clickgamer in addition to the Sports category of the PPCMag encyclopedia). Therefore, I recommend going for emulation. The home computers / home consoles had WAY better boxing games; for example, Boxing Legends of the Ring for Mega Drive/Genesis and SNES; George Foreman's KO Boxing for the same two consoles; Riddick Bowe Boxing (which is very similar to Evander Holyfield's Real Deal Boxing for Genesis and GG) for SNES, Gameboy and GG. Make sure you check out my emulation-related articles / Bibles in the Emulators category of my blog. Or, if you don’t necessarily want boxing, just a very similar arcade game, give a try to, for example, Garou (Fatal Fury): Mark of the Wolves under the excellent NeoGeo emulator FinalBurn Alpha. (Note that I haven’t tested the title under FinalBurn. It may NOT work. If it doesn’t, you can still look for another action game to run.)

Read more!

1. Some GREAT, new FPSEce 0.010 videos released!

I’ve long been waiting for the long-announced, 0.010 version of FPSEce, the one and only PlayStation emulator for Windows Mobile, which will deliver MASSIVE optimizations and GREAT speed enhancements, especially with PDA’s with the Intel 2700G 3D graphics accelerator. This, unfortunately, means only the Dell Axim x50v and x51v are supported (if you need SPEED, that is).

For long, the project seemed to be completely abandoned, until, in early December, the developer announced there would be an imminent release of the brand new and heavily enhanced version. Unfortunately, he still hasn’t managed to get it released; however, in addition to the old demos already available HERE, he’s (more precisely, Damien of PocketPlayers Reloaded) posted five brand new videos showing the capabilities of the new engine:

Ridge Racer
Pandemonium
Tekken
Motortoon

Check them out if interested. Again, note that the videos have been shot on the hardware-accelerated Dell Axim x51v. A non-hardware-accelerated device will behave far worse (see for example THIS non-accelerated Tekken video to see the difference).

2. A cheap Final Fight / Streets of Rage clone, Dark Street, released

The just-released Dark Street is a cheap, very simple but, if you’re a fan of the genre, quite entertaining bash’m up game, pretty much similar (but still inferior to) the console beat 'em up classics like Capcom’s Final Fight and Sega’s Streets of Rage.

It is compatible with both Pocket PC’s and Smartphones. With the latter, even the lower-resolution 176*220 models are supported.

Currently, it’s only available from mobile2day.de. Click the Download link there. Note that it loads VERY slow.

Unfortunately, it, as of the current, 1.0.1 version, has MAJOR problems on both Pocket PC’s and Smartphones.

a. On Pocket PC’s, if you touch the touch screen to either fire or activate one of the super skills (the small icons in the upper left corner), the game will start stuttering. For example, on my HTC Wizard, it has just stopped and I had to entirely reset the phone. On my old, WM2003 HP iPAQ h2210, it behaved better; so did on my WM5 AKU2.3 Dell Axim x51v. Still, this bug made the game almost unplayable on the latter two devices too.

Unfortunately, as you can’t reassign the action key (kicking etc.), controlling the game becomes REALLY hard because you can only do any action by pressing the Action button in the D-pad. This alone renders this game useless.

b.On MS Smartphones (tested on both the QVGA WM6 Vox and the 176*220 WM5 Oxygen), the situation is decidedly better because, there, you can also use the “5” dialpad key to kick / shoot (as opposed to, say, how Amiga Inc.’s Invasion, where, on a Smartphone, you can’t use any of the dialpad buttons.) However, as there aren’t any dialpad shortcuts to activate the super weapons, there is little point in playing the game on the Smartphone platform either.

The (mono) music is pretty OK at first; later, however, becomes really repetitive.

All in all, before these problems are fixed, I cannot recommend this game at all. If you’re REALLY into the genre, go the SNES / NeoGeo / etc. emulation route instead. The better emulators (please see my related Bibles HERE) all have redefinable buttons; the original games are far better too (much better music, animation, sprites, backgrounds etc.)

(Source & another, German language thread on the game: PocketPlayers Reloaded)

3. SmartGear news

The folks at BitBank Software, developers of the award-winning SmartGear emulator, have, two days ago, announced they would add SNES and/or GBA support for SmartGear. Also, they have asked whether anyone needs a pre-WM2003 build of SmartGear. You can “vote” for these in the dedicated MoDaCo thread.

4. An excellent Java platform game released & reviewed

There is a brand new and pretty nice MIDlet game, Sola Rola. It received a stellar review over at All About N-Gage. While I haven’t tested it, you might still want to give it a try to see whether it’s compatible with Windows Mobile MIDlet managers and/or it’s a good game by Windows Mobile standards as well.

1. After publishing my review of VirtualCE 4, there have been some changes:

1. a new MyMobiler version has been released, implementing, for example, manual screen rotation and the ability to hide the Today screen icon
2. some of the bugs of VirtualCE 4 have been fixed (for example, BMP24 crashing). Hope the developer also finds a way to completely (even from the bottom taskbar) hide the main selector / controller screen as is asked in the above-linked HowardForums thread
3. Pocket Controller 6 has turned out to support LAN discovery and hiding the connection “bubble” upon TCP/IP connection (as opposed to the ActiveSync one).

2. I, after more than a week’s waiting (see my previous post HERE), still haven’t received any feedback from the Strategy Analytics Inc. folks regarding the lack of Opera Mini in their 5-Star Safari Leads Mobile Browsing Experience, which, in many Windows Mobile users’ (including me) opinion, is the most useful / quickest Web browser for the Windows Mobile platform. And, for other mobile platforms too – on my Symbian Nokia N95 and BlackBerry 8800, I almost exclusively use this browser to access the Web. Not including it in the test makes the entire report pretty hard to depend on – it’s like completely ignoring, for example, Ferrari (a top-performing car) when evaluating the cars of Formula-1.

And, of course, I’ve already elaborated on the bad ranking of Nokia Web (running on Symbian S60 3rd edition devices – that is, NOT on Windows Mobile) and, particularly, Opera Mobile (running on all major mobile platforms). Again and again, if you do learn the dialpad shortcuts and/or, with Opera Mobile running on a dialpad-less Pocket PC, use a third-party tool to assign its key functionalities (accessing favorites, current tabs, back etc.) to Pocket PC hardware buttons, they both become quicker and easier to operate than Internet Explorer. It’s clearly at this point (in addition to the lack of Opera Mini) that Strategy Analytics Inc.’s report severely lacks – it’s evident the test folks didn’t really make an attempt at learning the dialpad shortcuts / configure Opera Mobile for easy and much quicker access / use.

Read more!

I've already reported on Moregames Entertainment’s NanoBotz. It has just been released and is available HERE for download / purchase. Note that the homepage of Moregames Entertainment still doesn't list the title as available.

If you’re a fan of Worms and its clones and/or Atomic Cannon (of which I’ve reviewed the recently-released version 3 HERE), or, just like the previous titles of the developer (most importantly, Enslave, Azgard Defence and the two Orions (Legend of Wizards and The Second Age)) you’ll most certainly welcome this game. Go and give it a try - it's certainly worth it! (Pocket PC only; no MS Smartphone version available.)

BTW, still speaking of games, there's still no sign of the new, in addition to the venerable and no-longer-developed Pocket Humanity, Civilization-alike, Revival (see the links to (p)reviews HERE), the forthcoming, VERY good game.

Last Summer, upon the release of the brand-new, 6-series of SOTi Pocket Controller Pro and the free My Mobiler (click the links for a review!), I’ve already pointed out the “let’s control your Windows Mobile device from your desktop!” scene is really thriving.

Since the above reviews, here have been major upgrades. First, My Mobiler has been greatly enhanced (for example, TCP/IP connections have been added) and the bugs I’ve elaborated on in the review have all been fixed – while still maintaining its free status. In this article (and the accompanying chart), I also thoroughly elaborate on these changes.

Even more importantly, the, for long-time Windows Mobile users, known VirtualCE has been greatly upgraded and enhanced.

As VirtualCE has been written by the same developer as the well-known and very fast PQV and SmartGear – one of the best titles in their respective categories (picture viewers and pre-SNES home and handheld console emulators). I wasn’t disappointed: while there is indeed some missing functionality in the new version, its price, CPU usage and, at times, speed, speak for themselves. It’s evident it has been written by a Windows Mobile & C / assembly language guru that knows how to optimize code and, therefore, reduce the CPU (and memory) usage.

(The main interface screen and an example of remote controlling a HTC Vox / s710. The latter displays the VirtualCE client on the handset.)

VirtualCE is, feature-wise, somewhere between the free My Mobiler and the pretty expensive, albeit VERY capable and highly recommended SOTi Pocket Controller. In some respects, it’s definitely more capable than SOTi’s app (for example, see the parallel multicontrol feature, which is only present in the even more expensive Enterprise version of SOTi’s app; also, the much lower CPU usage should be mentioned); in other respects, it’s inferior to even My Mobiler (see for example the complete lack of handheld / handset -> desktop PC clipboard synchronization).

Read more!

• As many of you already know, the long-awaited, high-end, albeit “disconnected” HP iPAQ 21x series is out - currently, the only (standalone) PDA to have a 4", good-quality (if they use the same, excellent screen as in the predecessor, the hx4700 – that is, not a cr*ppy one, heavily suffering from severe polarization issues like the one in the Dell Axim x50v/x51v) VGA screen – at a pretty nice price point, compared to the high-end PDA phones of, say, HTC.

  Some (not all – see for example THIS) of the initial discussions talked about the new, high-end, 210-series being based on the PXA320 CPU, the best of the new, Marvel PXA3x0 series. This is why I really was looking forward to this device - after all, it would have been the very first VGA device to sport a PXA320.

  Currently, there is only one Windows Mobile model out there with the PXA320, the LG KC1, but it's just an, in my opinion, pretty much mediocre QVGA phone - really nothing to write home about (no 4” VGA and it’s Korean and WM5-only – and I don’t know of “hacked”, “cooked” ROM’s making it English – albeit I haven’t searched XDA-Devs for more info), except for the high (806 MHz) CPU clock, which can come VERY handy when running for example emulators like Masterall's excellent FinalBurn, the various SNES or GBA emulators or Mplayer playing back HTTP RealAudio streams, all requiring as much processing power as possible.

  Using the new PXA320 instead of the 310 would have been a decent decision. Not only because of the higher CPU clock (and, therefore, the higher maximal speed) and other goodies like the large(r) cache, but also because of the seemingly superior video decoding capabilities, which help a lot with decoding for example full (not just “plain” 640-wide VGA), that is, PAL/NTSC-resolution (720 pixels wide) H.264 videos (please consult the just-linked H.264 Bible if you don’t but would like to understand this paragraph). Incidentally, the H.264 PXA320 is so powerful that it’s even rumored to be able to decode 720p (that is, 1280*720) H.264 videos on even an underpowered Pocket PC (!!) without problems. Quite a feat, isn’t it? Not that there would be any point in watching 1280*720 videos on a 640*480 (or, at most, 800*480) screen – let alone the huge storage requirements of these x264 files, which, in many cases, exceed the file size capabilities (4096 Mbytes at most) of the FAT32 file system used on current cards (because, initially, they were designed for NTFS or other file systems capable of much bigger files).

  However, HP’s decision for going with the clearly worse 310 is pretty much understandable (considering the price difference between the two CPU’s) and acceptable – as long as you resize & reconvert your H.264 videos to be no wider than 640 pixels. Then, assuming CorePlayer (the premium video player for all major mobile platforms) indeed, as is promised HERE, receives support for WMMX in version 1.2, you’ll see a dramatic increase in decoding efficiency of at least inferior video formats like MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 Part 2 (a.k.a. DivX / Xvid; not to be mistaken for the much more advanced H.264 / AVC!). This subject, by the way, is also thoroughly discussed HERE – I really recommend sonichedgehog360’s posts in there.

  Note that, currently, the CorePlayer folks only promise WMMX support (which, again, doesn’t help with decoding H.264). That is, no hardware H.264 decoding support has been announced. They have stated they will announce if and, if it’s possible at all, when this kind of support is added to CorePlayer after the release of CorePlayer 1.2. This means don’t run out to purchase the new iPAQ if you’re a H.264 buff: CorePlayer may not receive H.264 hardware decoding support at all.

  Of course, even if no H.264 hardware decoding support is added to CorePlayer, the new CPU platform is still vastly superior to the old, PXA270 platform. Just take a look at THIS and THIS (the PXA310 and PXA320 specs, respectively). Note that some of the online comparisons are plain useless. For example, the PXA310 quick summary HERE doesn’t even mention WMMX2 or H.264 hardware acceleration support (as opposed to the PXA320 quick summary HERE). The above-linked PDF files, on the other hand, contain much more dependable information.

  Otherwise, the device is pretty nice and the fact that it is no longer based on a touchpad (as opposed to the predecessor, the hx4700) makes it much more usable in everyday situations (for example, gaming, e-book reading or Web browsing using the D-pad). It also sports USB host capabilities, which, unfortunately, is a very-very rare feature among current Windows Mobile models and was REALLY useful on the Fujitsu-Siemens (RIP!) Pocket Loox series (for example, the most versatilye WM2003SE device ever, the Loox 720) and some other models like the Toshiba e750+ - and some current ones like the (otherwise, isn’t that nice) Toshiba G900.

Read more!

1. Moregames Entertainment’s NanoBotz will soon be released!

   If you’re a fan of Worms and its clones and/or Atomic Cannon (of which I’ve reviewed the recently-released version 3 HERE), or, just like the previous titles of the developer (most importantly, Enslave, Azgard Defence and the two Orions (Legend of Wizards and The Second Age)) you’ll most certainly welcome their latest title, NanoBotz. I’ve been betatesting it and, so far, have found it excellent. Including the music, of course, which is on par with the music of both Orions and Enslave. Some VGA and QVGA screenshots:

   

   

   

   

   

   Also see THIS for more screenshots. (Source: e-mail contact with the dev) (PPC only)

2. SpaceTime’s Realms, which I’ve reported on HERE, has been made free. While it’s, in my opinion, a bit weaker than, say, SkyForce Reloaded, the above-announced NanoBotz or Enslave, for free, it’s definitely worth downloading. Get it HERE. Also make sure you check out SpaceTime Mathematics, which is one of the best maths package out there. (Source: PG, PPCT) (PPC only)
3. The folks at PDAMill have substantially dropped the price of all their games: their premium are now $14.95 and the other titles $9.95. (Source: PG) (PPC, Smartphone)

   OK, now, some emulation-related news:

4. a brand new, 0.11 version of ScummVM has been released. If you’ve read my ScummVM Bible, you know what it’s all about. If you haven’t but would like to play old adventure games on your MS Smartphone or Pocket PC, go read the Bible.

   Compared to the old version, there are few changes (but, of course, it’s still worth upgrading): adding support for both Lure of the Temptress and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream and some other goodies:

   + Seven other new supported games: Elvira 1 and 2, Waxworks (Amiga version only) and 3 Sierra pre-AGI games for children

   + Support for the Mac version of The Legend of Kyrandia and the Amiga version of Nippon Safes
   + Better support for Sierra AGI games
   + Support for FLAC encoded music in Broken Sword 1 for the purists among you
   + Better support for non-English versions of games, including eastern languages
   + Sound compression for SAGA games
   + Much much more

   Specifically for Pocket PC users, the 'Free Look' action has been improved.

   (Source: the related ScummVM.org thread. It's worth checking out for additional info. Note that the thread starter post also links to the now-freeware Lure of the Temptress.) (PPC, Smartphone, Symbian, Palm etc. Also note that the engine now also has an iPhone port – not only the “traditional” mobile platforms.)

5. Finally, Masterall has announced he’ll be shortly releasing the 0.12 version of FinalBurn for WinCE - one of the BEST console emulators ever written for Windows Mobile. He has promised a lot of improvements and adding CPS-3 support (PPC, Smartphone)

1. I think it was worth asking the developer of SmartGear to go commercial; his excellent emulator has been further enhanced after the major upgrades (the touch screen tap zones) in the previous version reviewed HERE. Now, almost all the NES mappers (more on this in the NES Emulation Bible) have been implemented, resulting in tons of previously incompatible games becoming playable. Thumbs up, Larry!
2. Revival will very soon be released – the first Civilization-like game for all mobile platforms, including both the touchscreen-enabled and -less two Windows Mobile platform. It seems to be REALLY great. Before it’s released, read Ben Stanley’s excellent review, “Revival: Finally a Civilization-Like Game for Windows Mobile!!!” and Masa’s in-depth one HERE (in French; the Babelfish and the Google Translator “translations” are HERE and HERE, respectively). Attila Katona’s (Symbian S60-related, but the game is basically the same on Symbian S60 as on touchscreen-less MS Smartphones) preview is HERE; his full-length review hasn’t been published yet. The related PG thread is HERE.
3. Lygue Games, who don’t seem to have a homepage of their own, have released a new platformer called “Bananas”. It’s available HERE and is definitely worth a try. (PPC only!)
4. There’s another platformer, Killer RoboRabbits from Mars; see THIS for more info.
5. Windows Mobile leading gaming news site PocketGamer.org has reported on some of the games of the free and pretty much high-quality games of XFlib website. See their report HERE, HERE and HERE of TangledBugs, Pipes (a Pipe Dreams clone – see the Windows Mobile Gaming Bible Part I for more info on this genre and the alternatives if interested) and ChristmasXed, in this order.
6. Still speaking of free games, the excellent Just Another Mobile Monday has published their Arcade Best Five (Plus Two) of 2007, listing the, in the staff’s opinion, best freeware games they’ve reviewed in 2007. Definitely worth a read. Also, don’t forget to check out their monthly freeware reports; their list is HERE.
7. Two new Sudokus have been released: Impossible Sudoku and Skinz Sudoku.

I'm not really into writing hardware news (I don't have the time for something that other tech writers / bloggers also elaborate on - instead, I prefer spending my time on tutorials, software reviews, Bibles and unique, genuine hacks instead), but the latest hardware news (reported on by Geek.com) is indeed pretty interesting and certainly shows there will be some REALLY exciting Windows Mobile devices in the (unfortunately, not very near: late 2008 / early 2009) future. Let me cite Geek.com:

First look at Qualcomm’s new Fairbanks and Anchorage mobile platforms

The other model, the more exciting one for most people, is the “Anchorage”. This is based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform so it will use a 1.0GHz processor (said to operate at 1/2 watt peak) along with WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, cellular, and a lot more good stuff. The unofficial word is that Snapdragon will offer close to the best power/performance ratio of anything on the market. The Anchorage device will be aimed more at productivity and the test model I saw had a QWERTY keyboard. The form factor of this model was a lot like the Nokia N810, but the actual design will be whatever OEMs want. So far we know that Samsung and HTC are on board, but there are a few others that are not official yet.

Anchorage

Anchorage and iPhone

The Anchorage was running Windows Mobile 5.0, which was only used for display purposes as any OS, even a full OS, can be run on the 1.0GHz processor. It also has the camera with video recording, GPS, and live TV playback capability. Because it has a cellular signal it will be prime competition for a device like the HTC Advantage, though it will also compete against products like the Nokia N810 and Sony mylo 2.

Everything is still in its early stages and things will change a lot once the OEMs get their hands on them and start to customize. This may mean lost/added functionality as well as many different form factors and large swings in the price. All we do know is that we should start to see the devices released by the end of 2008, possible early 2009.

A lot of Windows Mobile users have been asking for answering machines for years. While it has long been available on competing mobile smartphone platforms (for example, Best Answering Machine for the pre-S60v3 Symbian), for Windows Mobile, so far (see THIS), there wasn’t a generic one - that is, one that wasn’t shipped along with a specific Pocket PC model only. (For example, the GIGABYTE gSmart i128 has such an answering machine.)

Of course, there have been many attempts at extracting the above-mentioned gSmart answering machine or the one in the O2 XDA Flame (I’m not entirely sure about the latter – see THIS) – without any success. Also, standalone answering machine development attempts (see for example THIS) have all failed.

Now, this seems to be changing: the first “real” answering machine has been released for WM Pocket PC’s. It still doesn’t seem to have a real homepage – for example, Google has found no occurrences of it anywhere. It’s only via a blog comment that I got known of it. The About screen (x51v screenshot HERE) only lists an email address of the author; that is, you’ll need to use e-mail to get more info.

Two screenshots of the incoming, recorded calls:

(HTC Universal)

Read more!

Anyone having had a O2 XDA Flame have already seen SRS WOW HD, which helps at both widening the stereo (a particularly useful technology on handsets with stereo speakers like the Flame, the HTC Wizard or the HTC Universal) and enhancing / modifying the sound in other ways as well. For example, it adds the, for lon-time audiophiles / Hi-Fi geeks, the well-known loudness-based bass control.

One of the reasons I love the Nokia N95 are the built-in, loud speakers with extremely good frequency response. In the N95, the built-in Music Player has a dedicated stereo widening mode, which can be en/disabled from inside the player:

Its results, when used together with the built-in stereo speakers, are simply phenomenal. It really widens their stereo, making listening to music via the built-in speakers a true pleasure (also taking the very good quality speakers into account, unmatched by any Windows Mobile device so far). This has been one of the main strengths of the N95.

Up until now, there wasn’t a generic, non-OEM, similar solution for Windows Mobile-based devices, except for the built-in applet in the already-mentioned O2 XDA Flame. The multimedia players available haven’t really supported stereo widening either, the only exception being Conduits’ excellent Pocket Player, which does support stereo widening at External Pitch/Echo/Stereo Wide DSP (listed as “DSP Stereo Example”). While it lets for the settable widening of the stereo:

it’s in no way as good as on the N95. It certainly makes the stereo a bit wider. No effect at all on mono sounds (as opposed to Nokia’s widening). (Note that, in Pocket Player, there’s another, similar DSP, but it doesn’t do any widening, just makes the center far quieter than the two sides. It’s, strangely, a bit more useful than the first DSP with the built-in speaker.)

Now, the plug-in that has only been available for the Flame has been released for the entire public. It can be installed on any WM5+ Pocket PC and Pocket PC Phone Edition. I’ve tested it with the following Pocket PC (phones):

Read more!

It was yesterday that I’ve explained how you can listen to Sirius, North America’s one of the two most widely listened-to radio network.

Listening to XM Radio, the other major US-based radio broadcasting company is equally easy on all mobile platforms (Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, iPhone etc.) Let’s take a look at what we have at our disposal.

1. If you have WMA playback support (currently, Windows Mobile only)

... then, just fire up your mobile browser (any browser capable of invoking external applications: Netfront, Internet Explorer or Opera Mobile; Opera Mini or Thunderhawk will NOT work!) and navigate to http://www.xstreamxm.com/mobile/. There, just fill in your login data, select the channel you’d like to listen to, the bitrate and click Go at the bottom:

after this, you’ll be shown the currently playing song title (the Web page is automatically refreshed every 5 second so the artist / title / album metadata is always kept up-to-date) and the default WMA player (by default, on Windows Mobile, the built-in Windows Media Player) is invoked in the background:

Read more!

mobile2day.de has become 6 years old today. To celebrate this, they offer the following apps for free download:

Pocket PC:
SBSH iLauncher PPC 2.3.07 (note that it’s 2.3.07 “only”, not the latest 3.1. However, it might still be sufficient for many – after all, it was last updated last May.)
MASPware Checklist 2006 4.6
Mobile2Day myWallet 2.0.1
mYspike® mobile for Windows Mobile Pocket PC 1.4

Palm OS:
Ausgaben 3.2

Symbian, Blackberry (Java!):
EUROPAinfo 1.0 (Note that, instead of “EUR100”, you must use “EURO100” to get this tittle!)
mYspike® mobile

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Now that I’ve published the Radio Stream Transcoding Bible (which has, in the meantime, been frontpaged by MoDaCo and All About Symbian!), I’ve received several questions and a lot of help requests on listening to Sirius streams on all mobile platforms (Windows Mobile, Symbian etc.) This article will surely help them a lot. (Note that I’ll also publish a similar article on XM Radio very soon).

Sirius Satellite Radio is one of two satellite radio services operating in the United States and Canada, along with XM Satellite Radio. It also has Internet streaming, which needs specialized clients because of the need for authorization. (Sirius’ streams aren’t free.)

1. If you have a Windows Mobile device...

... then, all you’ll need (unless you have VERY specific needs – more on them later) is SiriusWM5 downloadable HERE for free, for both Pocket PC’s (Windows Mobile 6 Professional / Classic) and MS Smartphones (Windows Mobile 6 Standard).

This app, which is just a front-end for either the built-in (Pocket) Windows Media Player, is really easy to use – you just fill in your official, Sirius login / password credentials in File / Settings (Guest accounts are disabled – don’t tick in “Guest”):

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(Continued from Part I)

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With the advent of cheap and/or unlimited data plans, good coverage and the increasing presence of Internet radio stations, the importance of listening to streaming radio stations have become much bigger than ever. In this Bible, I mostly elaborate on practices that

1. may make the sound quality much better using the same bandwidth, and/or
2. may save you tens or hundreds of bucks a month by heavily reducing data usage, while providing the same (or even better!) sound quality should you not be able to access any unlimited data plan (Canada with its ridiculous data rates comes into mind), and/or
3. may heavily increase your battery life by letting you “falling back” to the much more battery-friendly 2.(7)5G Internet access technologies instead of the power-hungry 3(.5)G ones, and/or
4. in cases, may even let you listen to some radio stations you would never have thought of because of the network / operating system restrictions, and/or
5. makes the central administration of your radio station favorites much easier – no need to switch between different radio programs if there’s a difference between the protocols / formats they use.

This article is part of my “Multimedia Bible” series and will, eventually, be incorporated in some way in the final version of Multimedia Bible, which, hopefully, will be published this month. Note that I'll also elaborate on TV (video) streaming and transcoding in a later Bible. We’ll use many of the tools / technologies introduced in this Bible in there; most importantly, Orb and VLC.

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Ever wanted to play your RMVB videos without converting them? Now, you’re taken a little bit closer to the solution – a RVMB plug-in has just been released for Windows Media Player Mobile, which makes it possible to play RMVB videos on Windows Mobile devices.

No, don’t think everything is OK now. The plug-in, while it’s indeed compatible with RMVB videos, won’t play back the currently available, high(er)-res videos without severe slowdowns. As it’s only “old” RM videos that are, generally, encoded at low (say, QVGA at max) resolutions and RMVB files are, generally, encoded with the width of at least 576 pixels, you will encounter very choppy (2…5 fps even on the fastest devices) playback. Therefore, you might want to forget playing back this format entirely and transcode them into either MPEG-4 Part 2 (DivX / XviD) or, if your handset is powerful enough, MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264 / AVC) for seamless playback in either TCPMP or CorePlayer. Please see THIS for more info on these target formats and THIS for more info on RMVB-compliant transcoder tools.

Furthermore, it only runs on devices using the Intel Xscale PXA-27x CPU’s. This itself rules out most of current models based on other CPU’s like the TI OMAP (I’ve tested the plug-in on my HTC Wizard; it exits at once upon activation), Qualcomm 7200 (HTC Kaiser, Touch Dual etc.) or Samsung (Trinity etc.). That is, you can only run it on some scarce or somewhat outdated models like the HTC Athena (x7500), the HTC Universal, the Dell Axim x50/x51 series, the previous-generation HP iPAQ’s etc.

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