MobileViews Blog

Category: Windows Mobile

Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC, Pocket PC Phone Edition, and Smartphone

  • Thinkoutside Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard Works with WM6 Standard Edition

    Just a quick note. The Thinkoutside website doesn’t specifically list the HTC Vox Windows Mobile 6 Standard Edition (AKA Smartphone) as a supported device for the Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard for PDA. But, I installed the WM5 Smartphone driver for the keyboard on the Vox this evening and it seems to work fine.

    The configuration utility even dealt with the incompatibility between the built-in Bluetooth HID profile and let me disable from a menu. It then enabled its own profile and let me setup usage with the keyboard.

    I sent a test email over WiFi (no SIM card in the Vox to make sure it didn’t go out over EDGE instead) with the Bluetooth connected to the keyboard to make sure that both those radios could work simultaneously while using the keyboard.

    Glad to see all this works with Windows Mobile 6.

  • Cell View Tip for WM6 Standard Editon (Smartphone)

    Windows Mobile 6 Standard Edition Excel Mobile cell view

    Excel Mobile for Windows Mobile Standard Edition (formerly Smartphone – no touch screen) is quite different from the Professional Edition (AKA Pocket PC Phone Edition). In general it has much fewer features than the Pocket PC version. However, it does have a few unique and useful features.

    For example, if you navigate to a cell that contains more text (or numbers) than the cell can display, just press the phone’s select button on the navigation rose and it will pop the entire contents of that cell into a zoomed highlighted cell view.

  • Ilium Screen Capture Tip for Smartphone Users

    Ilium Screen Capture

    Small tip for Windows Mobile smartphone (uh, Standard Edition) users who use Ilium Software great (and FREE) Screen Capture utility. The default capture key for the smartphone version (it also works fine on a Pocket PC/Professional Edition) is the asterisk (*). However, if you have a non-clamshell phone (T-Mobile Dash, Vox, etc.), the key sequence to unlock a keyboard locked phone is Left-softkey Asterisk. So, if you forgot that you have it running, you can’t unlock the phone after locking the keyboard (press and hold the End Call key). Fortunately, Ilium provided options for this utility. If you press the Menu key (right soft button), thre is an option to change the screen capture key. I set it to the pound sign (#). But, you might prefer something else. This optional change also seems to stick. So, you only have to make the change once.

  • Raise Your Hand if Your IT Dept. Supports Windows Mobile

    I read Gerardo Dada’s MSDN Blog item titled Windows Mobile eMail Troubleshooting with the hope of getting some insight on topic. Then, I read the key sentence:

    If step 2 fails then you need to chat with your IT department.

    Um, say what? Let’s think this through. From my observation, the vast majority of Windows Mobile device users do not have an IT department to consult with. And, for the ones whose organizations do provide them a WiMo device, their IT group is probably so busy with Windows Server, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and a bunch of server and desktop applications that they are not really focusing on WiMo support.But, let’s say I’m wrong. Let’s say that 80% of all WiMo users are part of an organization that handed them a WiMo device and supports it fully. Why would those people need to read a blog to fix their email problem? Wouldn’t they just go to their IT department first? And, what about the other 20% (which is probably more like 95%) of WiMo users? Let’s say that there are 10 million WiMo units out there in use. If 80% is enterprise supported, that still leaves 2 million people without support of any kind.

    I think a reality check is needed here. The vast majority of people I have spoken or emailed with over the past 10 years do not have an Exchange Server or are not allowed to connect to it with their WiMo devices. So, we really need some non-Exchange based ActiveSync/WMDC/email support. Even those of us who do work for large organizations often (usually) do not have WiMo support (there may be Palm OS or Blackberry support though).

  • Is 0x85002002 Meaningful to You???

    There is no doubt in my mind that no matter how much you like a Windows Mobile smartphone or Pocket PC, you will one day have an epic battle with ActiveSync or its Windows Vista counterpart WMDC. And, on that day, if you look through a log file, you may find a meaningful message such as 0x85002002. This tells you so much, right? It turns out that this code means ActiveSync ran out of memory. That is obvious, right? Sure it is. Fortunately, Jason Dunn over at Pocket PC Thoughts has been contracted by Microsoft to explain this gobblygook and found that Palm has a great customer support web page that deciphers ActiveSync’s otherwise useless error codes. You can find it at…

    ActiveSync error messages when trying to sync a Windows Mobile device

    I suggest you bookmark this page on multiple bookmark sites so you can always find it.

  • Facebook iPhone Site Snubs Windows Mobile

    Facebook iPhone site

    I mentioned a while back that the Digg iPhone website wasn’t viewable on Windows Mobile devices. Well, we WiMo users are being left in the browser dust again. This time it is the Facebook iPhone formatted site. The m.facebook.com site still works for WiMo and other mobile platform users. But, it is still kind of irritating to be left behind again. Ah well.

    FYI: The screen cap above was taken by using Firefox on a Mac (it works on Windows too).

    BTW/FYI: If you are on Facebook, I created a Facebook MobileViews group. Drop by. Say hello. Tell us about your iPhone, Nokia, WiMo, or any other interesting mobile device.