Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC, Pocket PC Phone Edition, and Smartphone
YouTube Mobile was released from its exclusive deal with Verizon Wireless this week. Unfortunately, most Windows Mobile devices (at least the ones I have) don’t support the 3GPP video file format. I could swear I had a Windows Mobile Smartphone or two that did. But, I can’t remember which one it is. I tried it with Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Edition, Windows Mobile 5, and Windows Mobile 6 (Smartphone and PDA) devices this evening. None of them could display a YouTube Mobile video.
First, yes I know that Pocket PCs don’t really have a power button. The button just toggles the device between a low-power suspend mode and active mode. But, let’s just call it a Power Button to simplify life.
The photo above is of my old Compaq iPAQ 3650 Pocket PC. It was released in Fall 1999 and was probably the first Pocket PC that really drew a lot of attention. Unfortunately, mine had two moving parts that wore out a lot quicker than I thought they should: The power button and the stylus release button. I ended up having to turn on the device by using its feature of letting any hardware button activate the underlying application. I used the PHM Suspend PowerToy mentioned a few days ago to turn it off. It finally gave up the ghost in early 2002 after I used it about, hmm, 18 months or so. I had a 3850 by then. But, the 3650 was actually replaced by the a first generation T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition.
I noticed a few weeks ago that Internet Explorer on both my Windows Mobile 6 smartphone and PDA has a drop down Favorites and History area on its home screen. Thinking that it was just another link to the Favorites list, I ignored it until a few days ago. It turns out that the drop-down favorites link provides a list of the last five sites visited from the Favorites list. Very handy, The History list lists the web page titles (not the URL) of the last five pages visited. Again, very handy.
I wrote about the old (last revised in 2004) PHM Pocket PC toys last year. But, since we have moved from Windows Mobile 5 to 6, I thought it was worth mentioning the SUSPEND and RESET utilities from that toy kit works fine with a Windows Mobile 6 PDA (Pocket PC). I use the suspend utility to reduce wear and tear on the Pocket PC’s on/off button. And, yes, actually wore out the button on an iPaq 3650. Reset performs a soft reset without needing to push in the sometimes ill designed soft reset button on a Pocket PC. Some software do not need to be revised and updated to be useful. These two single minded utilities are good examples of such software.
Using Bluetooth from a Windows desktop or notebook and anything else seems a lot harder than it should be. And, since Microsoft’s Windows Mobile ActiveSync is a general pain in the neck itself, the combination of Bluetooth and ActiveSync often is a test of patience and some detective skills.
Here’s some info that might help you get your Windows Mobile device to sync over Bluetooth with ActiveSync running on Windows XP. Note that even if you do everything right, it still might not work. I could never get my T-Mobile SDA smartphone to sync over Bluetooth, for example. But, I was able to get a Windows Mobile 6 smartphone and pocket pc to sync over Bluetooth.
If all is well, you should see ActiveSync start up on your PC and normal syncing should occur. If not, well, there are all sorts of possible problems. I’m not even going to try to figure out the myriad of ActiveSync awfulness that can happen. Couple of thoughts though:
Good luck. ActiveSync continues to confound many of us after more than a decade of existence under various names (Windows CE Service, ActiveSync, WMDC). So, again, even after going through these steps correctly, you may find as I did that some devices just won’t sync over a Bluetooth connection.
Last month I noted the PC World magazine article about Windows Mobile 6 smartphones that incorrectly said that Word Mobile and Excel Mobile on WM6 smartphones could not edit documents. This month iti s Maximum PC magazine’s turn to get it wrong. The Smartphone State of the Union article in the July 2007 issue of Maximum PC includes mini-reviews of many smartphones. Page 44 has a 1/3-page review of the T-Mobile Dash says: You’ll be able to open MS Office documents but not edit them. Given paper publication lag time, this article was probably written way before Windows Mobile 6 became available. Pre-WM6 smartphones did not come with Office Mobile components. So, the review may be speaking of some third party viewing application (but does not clarify this). WM6, however, does provide mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Word and Excel do have edit modes. But, they are just that: Modes. It is not seamless experience like what you find on the desktop or Pocket PC. It is more like old moded vi editor in UNIX. You need to select Edit Mode from the Word or Excel initial menu (the Word menu is shown here). A different menu structure appears at that point and you can edit an existing document.