Steve Green

As much as I would enjoy bashing my first Cassiopeia with its low-res monochrome screen and endless appetite for AAA batteries, I would have to say that the most pathetic device I bought and tried to use was the Fujitsu PenCentra tablet PC with Windows CE 2000.

The PenCentra was a niche device that ran a special version of Windows CE for tablet based devices and had some real promise as a functional device--at least on paper. Don't get me wrong, the PenCentra had some generous specifications and snappy performance with some really neat items such as a charging/sync base, a USB port for thumb drives and 2 PCMCIA slots.

The real killer that absolutely hobbled the device was the color reflective DSTN LCD with a paltry 256 bit color depth. I suppose Fujitsu thought it was special or maybe just wanted to cut corners but the screen was nearly unreadable in any indoor lighting situation. That was the real curious part, if you went into direct sunlight you could read the screen but go inside and you felt like you were trying to read through dirty glass. The backlight had three brightness settings you could try; Low, lower, barely glowing and you could turn it off completely. Oddly enough, turning the backlight off usually produced a clearer image than when it was on. The LCD glass was so thick it felt like you were never right on where you wanted to be and it was very unresponsive to anything other than full force pressure so freehand writing was almost impossible.

I had hoped to use it for business so as to impress customers with my technical wizardry and cool electronic notepad but I quickly realized that this was not so cool after all. It now resides in my gadget graveyard, probably having endless conversations with my Apple Newton on who works better.

So you’ve been hanging onto your trusty 8125 for a while now, waiting for the next PPC from HTC to knock your socks off. Perhaps you bought the 8525 when it first landed on the shelves and have been wondering what the new 8925 has under its hood to lure you to that annual upgrade you crave. You can’t help but wonder… should I?

The object of your affection is the AT&T 8925, commonly known as the “Tilt”. The latest in a series of successful Windows Mobile phones, the 8925 is the upgrade of the acclaimed 8525 released in late 2006. When the 8525 was released, it set a new standard for Windows Powered phones and carries some of the highest ratings amongst such phones even today. With AT&T just releasing the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for the 8525, the question of whether or not to upgrade becomes even more confusing. Let’s look at some details of the new Tilt.

What’s Hot:
The Tilt is built very similar to the 8525 but has unique feature that allows you to tilt the LCD half of the phone upwards after extending the slide out keyboard. The tilt screen changes the viewing angle for typing but only tilts about 15-20 degrees.
The Tilt also boasts a new brand of 400MHz processor and a healthy 256MB of memory onboard. The battery life is rated to be higher than its predecessor and has updated 3G technology and an internal GPS capability and other refinements as well. An updated camera boasts 3 mega pixels and has a new auto focus feature to improve capturing digital images.

What’s Not:
After using the Tilt, the actual tilting of the screen seems fairly useless for most situations and feels cheap in its construction. I could see the hinge getting loose after a while of using it causing it to tilt when you don’t want it too. I personally do not like the front button layout of the Tilt. If we have learned one thing from the iPhone it’s “less is more”. HTC managed to cram more buttons on the front making it harder to use them for fear of pressing the wrong one. The high chrome finish on the front button face makes reading the buttons very difficult in some lighting conditions.
Although the Tilt is slimmer than the 8525, the unit is even heavier at a hefty 6.7 ounces over 6.21 for the 8525.

The Bottom Line:
If you already own an 8125, the 8925 (aka, Tilt) is a very worthy upgrade to be certain. You will be impressed at the new features and snappy performance. With the current promotion from AT&T, you can get into the Tilt for as little as $299 after rebate and a 2 year contract commitment so it’s worth it.

The answer is not as easy for you 8525 owners. If you are like me, you’re sticking with your 8525 now that you have Windows Mobile 6 Professional on it and it works like a champ day in and day out. The 8525 is barely a year old at this point and shares much of the same technology as the new Tilt.
Unless you are seriously into what is hot and new and have money to burn, sticking to the 8525 makes sense for now until it starts getting a little long in the tooth like the 8125 has now.

For those of you who have discovered the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for your AT&T 8525, I am posting a reprint of my article from last months "How To Guide" to make sure your upgrade goes smooth and trouble free.

How to avoid problems with ROM upgrades

Overview:

Occasionally, device manufacturers and wireless carriers will offer major “ROM upgrades” for the Windows Mobile devices they market. When they do, they provide you with an installation file (on CD or downloadable) that walks you through the process, step by step. To avoid problems, follow these instructions to the letter.

Here’s how to do it:

The problem with performing ROM upgrades is that the instructions that come with it may not be so clear or are far too generic. If you botch a ROM upgrade, it can leave you with a non-functional device—commonly refer to as “bricked.” One of the first things to consider when upgrading is looking at whether or not you really need to perform the upgrade. Some upgrades are very minor in scope and may be more bother than they are worth if your phone is working well. Be sure to spend some time reading about what the upgrade fixes and check Web site forums to see if any new problems are generated by the upgrade. If you feel the upgrade is worthy, then roll up your sleeves and follow these steps:

1) Back up your data and other files. This is critical! Upgrades to phones almost always involve deleting all of the data in your phone’s memory and putting all of the settings and everything else back to a factory fresh state as if it were new. Back your data up either to a memory card or your PC. If you sync with Outlook or another PIM, your contacts and calendar will sync back to the phone. All other data will be erased. Also be sure to jot down any critical settings you might need from your e-mail accounts, browser favorites, installed applications, etc.

2) Perform a final synchronization and delete the ActiveSync partnership: After you upgrade the Windows Mobile device, it will appear to ActiveSync as a new device. ActiveSync won’t normally let you use an existing partnership device name again. Deleting this now will make that process easier.

3) Do a hard reset to restore your device to factory settings. This procedure is usually found in the user manual or on device manufacturer/wireless carrier support pages. Hard resets delete any user-installed applications that are running which may interfere with the ROM upgrade process.

4) Shut the phone off and remove storage cards. Since receiving a call during a ROM upgrade could cause problems, remove the SIM card from a GSM phone and put a CDMA phone in flight mode to disable the phone. Make sure to remove memory cards as well.

5) Make sure the phone is fully powered before beginning the ROM upgrade. If you have a power adapter, leave it connected during the entire ROM upgrade process. It’s also best that the battery is fully charged.

6) Connect your phone to your PC via your USB cable. Do not attempt a wireless connection. Since you deleted the existing partnership (step 2), ActiveSync will see the phone as a new device and ask you if you want to set it up for synchronization. Select “Cancel” and allow your device to connect as a guest. We don’t want to load the phone back up with data again. This connection to your PC must not be interrupted for any reason. Confirm that your cable is well connected and your PC is not busy doing other things that might interrupt the upgrade. In fact, don’t use your PC for anything else while this is being done.

7) Locate your downloaded ROM upgrade on your PC and double click it to start the procedure. Follow the instructions and don’t miss any specific steps along the way. Be patient. Sometimes these upgrades take time and even look like nothing is happening. If the instructions say this will take 30 minutes then wait 45. Most of the time, ROM upgrades run for just a few minutes and with this prep work we’ve done, your upgrade should be problem free.

Once complete, follow the instructions for rebooting or disconnecting the phone. After the phone has been successfully upgraded, you will then want to check its operation and then reestablish your ActiveSync connection and start reloading data, applications, SIM and memory cards, etc.

Being a lover of all things gadget, I was compelled to place the iPhone at the top of my list for new goodies. Having used the Apple iPhone from day 2 of its release to present day has left me with a mix of joy, pain, learning and frustration; very similar to having children oddly enough. Having used this device for over 2 months gives me a better perspective on reviewing it without being influenced by the hype surrounding its initial release and debunk some myths that I commonly hear from others who are curious about it but are afraid to own one.
Part one of this series focuses on the myths I frequently run into about the phone and later I will post a more in depth review of the phone itself.

“It’s so expensive”
Well, yes and no. Initially, the iPhone was a bloody fortune at a whopping $599 for the 8GB model and $499 for 4GB. Considering that a decent low-end laptop costs about the same, it was hard for a lot of people to peel off 6 bills to own a new phone. If not for the timing of its release being the day before my birthday and my loving wife, I probably would not have owned version 1.0.
Since the iPhone’s release, Apple has slashed the price of the 8GB model to $399 and dumped the 4GB model altogether so now the pricing is on par with other smartphones.

“Did you have to wait in those lines for hours?”
I am not a big fan of crowds nor long lines so I planned on getting the iPhone about a week or 2 after its release expecting the iPhone to be sold out everywhere except on eBay. The news showed huge lines with people camping out in front of Apple and AT&T stores for sometimes days just to be the first to get the new iPhone. This was just hyped in the news in many ways and far from reality.
On the morning of day 2, I walked right up to the counter in the Apple store near my home, asked for an iPhone and walked out less than 10 minutes later with phone in hand. The 8GB was sold out but the 4GB had all the same stuff in it so I opted for that one. Two weeks later I swapped it out for the 8GB model since 4GB these days is just too small if you plan on watching video.

“I hear that hackers are getting into the phone and stealing information”
Another tale propagating in the media. It seems that a lot of people want to be the first to trash the iPhone and show that it’s seriously flawed in some way. That report came from a security agency that finds security flaws for a living. This is done all of the time so that security holes can be patched BEFORE a hacker can exploit it. This is why we get security updates every month for Windows XP. To my knowledge, nobody fell victim to this minor flaw, which really was not that serious that users would lose their data and Apple pushed out a fix for it along with others within iTunes and alerted users to update the phone.

“I hear the iPhone has problems and crashes a lot”
Not sure where this got started but my experience has been that the iPhone has been at least as reliable as any other smartphone and its performance has been very consistent. While I do realize that some buyers did have issues with the phone, I have never seen any statistics that there are any wide-spread problems with the phone itself. In over 2 months of daily use, I have probably forcibly rebooted the iPhone 2 or 3 times for erratic behavior but I do keep my phones on 24/7 so eventually they all need a reset.

“I heard people have to wait hours before they can use the phone”
This is all day 1 stuff that got this started. I am quite sure that the first surge of buyers on release day ran home and all tried to activate their iPhones at the same time which no doubt clogged up AT&T’s network for a while. When I activated my new iPhone, the process took less than 2 minutes, both times. This is simply a non-issue.

“The iPhone is expensive to use with AT&T”
Completely untrue. AT&T has packages that start at $69 a month including data plans. I was already with AT&T so my account transferred over and my monthly bill actually went down because the iPhone uses the cheaper unlimited data plan instead of the one I had which was twice the cost.

“The iPhone is supposed to be slow I heard”
Well yes, the iPhone has been criticized heavily for not having 3G technology for fast data speeds over the cell phone network. While this is an issue that sometimes irritates me too, southern California has such a spotty roll out of 3G that I often don’t get it with my 3G phones either so for me it’s hard to go ape over this. I have little doubt that the next iteration of the iPhone will have this feature prominently displayed by Steve Jobs.

“You can’t see the Internet sometimes”
Apple did leave out full blown support for Flash animation which is a pretty big deal since so many web sites use Flash today. Future updates may include this but for now, some sites just do not display properly. The Internet itself does run well on the iPhone.

“I heard it has GPS”
No, there’s no GPS capability on the phone nor can you install any GPS applications at this time. This got started because the iPhone has Google Maps as standard issue on the phone. It actually works really well but it’s far from a full function GPS device, in fact it really can’t locate your position in any way but you can read the maps while driving as long as you are careful to keep you eyes on the road or not on a phone call. Like Google maps on your computer, you can quickly search for addresses or places, create driving directions, reverse the directions and even view traffic data for major highways. You can even view high resolution satellite images of your location that are just as outdated as the real Google Earth.

These are the bulk of the comments or myths I have experienced so far while using the iPhone. Later, I will post my actual experience using the iPhone and my initial impressions, day to day experience and final thoughts on this seemingly ground breaking device. Stay tuned.

In a seemingly unusual move, Apple computer announced a large $200 drop on the price of its flagship 8GB iPhone. Not being known for big discounts, Apple’s move caused a reaction by investors, bringing the price of its own shares down over 5%.

This move has current iPhone users understandably angry after the substantial price reduction only 2 months after its release. Internet blogs are brimming with angry responses from buyers and anti-iPhone types taunting them for running out too quickly to buy the thing. The sudden move by Apple has fueled the speculation that iPhone sales are way short of their expectations.

No word on the pricing of the 4GB model being altered but after looking at Apple’s website, the 4GB model is not even sold anymore which leads me to believe that the lackluster sales for that model have led to its removal from the product lineup.

The pricing restructure of the iPhone was timed with the announcement of the new Apple iPod touch which is nothing more than a reworked iPhone with the phone features and all of the goodies stripped out of it. The new price points now have the 8GB iPhone and iPod touch within $100 of each other which is more realistic.

With the holiday season looming just around the corner, Apple’s price move and the addition of an iTunes application for the iPhone may stimulate sales of the iPhone dramatically.