MobileViews Blog

Author: todd

  • ClearType Color Artifacts

    Windows Mobile ClearType artifact

    The other day I wondered about whether turning on ClearType on Pocket PCs (Professional and Classic Editions) helped or hindered those of us with aging eyes. Here’s another ClearType issue that I noticed a couple of years. Under certain circumstances color artifacts show up. In the case illustrated above, I was reading an MSNBC news article on my Pocket PC with ClearType turned on. You can probably see the read dish glow around some characters that is especially noticeable with the letters “i” and “l” and, to a lesser extent, with “o”, “p”, “r”, “s”, “v”, and “s”. This artifact does not occur with ClearType turned off on the same device.

    So, if the text on your screen looks a bit odd now and then, don’t reset your Pocket PC or change the brightness. Instead, try turning off ClearType and then check if the issue goes away.

  • Back to Basics: Touch Screen Alignment

    Pocket PC Align Screen

    I had two recent touch screen issues that prompted me to write a bit about screen alignment.

    The first has to do with the iPod touch. My daughter brought her touch to me and said touching the left side of the screen did not work. After fussing with it for a bit, I peeled off the $14.95 screen protector she bought recently from the local Apple Store. And, yep, the touch screen worked fine. I had to try twice before reseating the screen protector to the point where touching the left side of the screen worked. To make matters worse, this $14.95 screen (ouch!) is not even clear. It is translucent. I don’t like it at all. On the other hand, the $3 screen protector I bought from iFrogz is transparent and does not see to cause any touch screen issues. It is thinner than the one from the Apple store. This makes it harder to place it on the screen without bubbles.

    The second screen issue cropped up with the TyTn (1st model). I found I couldn’t grab the scroll bar on the right side of the screen the other day. After fussing around with this device a bit and aligning the screen a few times, it occurred to me that I was one of the old styuses I had bought in the 1990s. It turned out that the tip was just a little to wide. The Pocket PC (Professional Edition) is a touch screen but not a fat finger or even a fat stylus tip touch screen.

    Touch screens used to be even finickier in the old days than they are now, believe it or not. We used to have lots of problems with dust going under the screen and even a small bug or two taking up residence under the first screen layer. So, perhaps a few alignment issues now and then is not so bad.

  • Sony Playstation Portable 3.73 Firmware Update vs. WiFi Settings

    I read somewhere that the Sony PSP 3.80 upgrade might be out soon. So, I fired up my PSP for the first time in a long time and checked for system upgrades. 3.80 is not out but 3.73 was available. So, downloaded it over a WiFi connection and upgraded the PSP’s firmware. After rebooting, I fired up the PSP’s WiFi again and was unable to connect to my access point?

    It turns out that the 3.73 upgrade changed something about the way the PSP WiFi settings worked. I ended up creating a new profile (very easy to do) and was back online. I wish Sony had put some kind of warning about this in the informational text they provide during the upgrade process.

  • Back to Basics: Is Turning ClearType On Actually Useful?

    Windows Mobile ClearType

    It was, I believe, at the 1997 Fall Comdex that I first saw Bill Gates announce ClearType technology for notebook LCD displays. The ClearType anti-aliasing technique’s purpose was to render easier to read text on LCD displays. I looked down at my HP 320LX and wondered if we would ever see this technology trickle down to the Windows CE Handheld PC (which had just emerged at the previous 1996 Fall Comdex). It took a few years, but we eventually saw it become available for the Pocket PC (but not the Smartphone). After it became available, I regularly turned it on for each new Pocket PC. After a while (a year or two perhaps), it began to dawn on me that text on the Pocket PC screen might actually be easier for me to read with ClearType turned off.

    I’ve tried toggling the ClearType setting on a number of Pocket PCs over the years. And, in general, I’ve been leaving the option unchecked (turned off). My non-expert guess is that as I became older and Presbyopia (a reasonably normal part of aging) set in, a kind of natural anti-aliasing was created by my visual system. So, turning on ClearType just resulted in fuzzy looking font that was harder to read than a font with aliasing.

    This probably varies greatly from person to person. So, you might want to test using your Pocket PC with ClearType turned off and on a couple of times to figure out which setting looks best to your eyes.

  • Morning Sky Capture by an HTC Advantage

    advantage20071210.jpg

    I recall reading somewhere that many (most?) people consider photos taken with cameraphones to be throw away items. I don’t happen to one of those people. I stepped out to head to work this morning and wanted to take a photo of the sky. I didn’t have a real camera. But, I did have an HTC Advantage with a 3 megapixel resolution. So, I snapped a couple of photos. The one above was resized to 320×240 but otherwise not modified. Glad I had the Advantage with me to capture the sky this morning.

    The photo below was taken 10 years ago with my first digital camera: A Kodak DC20. This image is also not modified. In fact, it is not even resized. The photo below is the full resolution of that 10 year old camera: 493×373. Weird resolution, eh? One thing that struck me though is that comparing the sub-megapixel photos I took 10 years ago with the DC20 has better depth of field than any of my current cameraphones. And, the images from the DC20 seem, in general, to be sharper and have greater contrast than any of my cameraphones.

    So, we still have a way to go before most of the current generation cameraphones catch up to 1997 digital cameras. But, cameraphone photos are still better than none at all.

    Photo from a 1997 Kodak DC20 digital camera

  • Weather.gov Mobile Friendly Sites (U.S.)

    mobile.weather.gov radar page

    To say the weather has been whacky recently is, at best, an understatement. If you are in the U.S. and want to get a better handle on the weather situation, the U.S. National Weather Service has two mobile friendly sites:

    mobile.weather.gov is for devices with mobile web browsers
    cell.weather.gov is for devices with WAP browsers