MobileViews Blog

Year: 2007

  • Another Pocket PC Bites the Dust: Dell Drops the Axim

    Brighthand reported that Dell No Longer Offering Any Axim Models today. I hopped over to Dell’s website, and, yep, the Axim Pocket PC line is no longer there in the Handhelds, Tablet PCs, and GPS section. In fact, what you do find in the Dell Handhelds section are Palm devices (not the Treo though). Axim accessories are still there though.

    The Axim X50 and X51 were great Pocket PCs. My X50v still works fine and gets daily use as a portable news and email device connected to a WiFi network. It will be interesting to see whether this means Dell is getting ready to introduce another Pocket PC based device or is simply dropping the Pocket PC form factor.

  • Smartphone Calculator Keypad Shortcuts

    The Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone calculator looks (and is) awfully weak. However, while it is an “old skool” 4 function calculator, it is reasonably easy to use if you know its keypad shortcuts. The Smartphone’s navigation rose provides the four functions as well as the equal function. Press the top of the nav-pad for + (add), press down for – (subtract), left for / (divide), right for X (multiply) and the center for = (equal; complete the calculation).

    The bottom-left key on the numeric keypad (labeled * T9) types in a decimal point (.) while the bottom-right key (labeled #) can be used for addition (+).

    And, that is pretty much all the Microsoft provided calculator can do on the Smartphone. No square root, no trig functions, nothing. Very 1971 “old skool”.

  • T-Mobile Drops the MDA: Is the Pocket PC Phone Edition Doomed?

    Too melodramatic a title, I know.

    T-Mobile has never had much of a Windows Mobile line-up to start with. They recently dropped the only Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition model they carried: The MDA. This leaves them with two Windows Mobile Smartphone models:  The SDA and the Dash.

    The most likely reason for dropping the model is because T-Mobile is getting ready to introduce a Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PC Phone Edition (now called Professional Edition) to their lineup. But, wouldn’t it be interesting if they were the first of the mobile carriers to drop the Pocket PC Phone Edition altogether. Ok, it is unlikely. But still, this is something that will happen in the next year or two IMHO.

  • Bev Howard’s Pocket PC Radar Finder

    I tried to post a response to a question about weather radar images on Windows Mobile devices to a Microsoft newsgroup earlier this evening. But, the new Microsoft Mail in Windows Vista decided it didn’t have a clue on how to post it to the NNTP newsgroup. So, I figured I’d mention this very cool Pocket PC formatted site here created by a fellow Windows Mobile MVP, Bev Howard:

    Pocket PC Radar Finder

    Bev’s mobile friendly web page lets you quickly and easily find animated radar maps that can be viewed on your Pocket PC (or desktop for that matter). Check it out. Very cool and useful.

  • Microsoft Device Emulator 2.0-Standalone Release

    Microsoft released a new version of their…

    Microsoft Device Emulator 2.0 — Standalone Release

    …on April 4. The release information lists 4 major changes (the 5th item is really for Microsoft – Customer Experience Improvement Program). The most important change is probably the performance increase.

  • Email Documents to Google Docs

    I’m sure the feature has been around for a while but I only noticed this evening that you can create document files in Google Docs by sending email to it. After logging in to Google Docs, click on the Upload link to read detailed information about how you can bring in foreign files (Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, for example) into Google Docs. If you move your eyes down the page a bit more, you’ll see instructions on how to create text documents by email (no spreadsheets yet). It works like this: Google assigns a unique email address to you in the form of username-secretstring@prod.writely.com (Google bought Writely to get their web based word processing techology). You can then either send a simple text email file or an attachment. The text on the subject line becomes the Google Docs document name. And, the text body or attached document file becomes the document text (translated to HTML).

    The availability of QWERTY thumb keyboards on current generation phones makes this a simple and convenient way to quickly create easily accessible documents without the need to sync the mobile device by tethering it to a desktop or notebook computer. And, since I view the battle with Microsoft’s ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center to be a losing one, anything that gets me away from those sync solutions is a good thing.