MobileViews Blog

Category: Smartphone

Windows Mobile Smartphone

  • Motorola T305 Bluetooth Hands Free Speaker

    Motorola T305 Bluetooth Speaker

    I really don’t like using phone headsets. I’ve bought a couple of and have used them sparingly. But, they are just plain uncomfortable in warm weather environments. And, I can’t hear my podcasts clearly when listening to them in the car with one ear blocked. So, I finally got around to buying the Motorola T305 Bluetooth Speaker from a local Costco (under $50). It came with both a car charger as well as an A/C adapter. Best of all, it has a standard mini-USB jack for charging. So, my portable charger should work fine with it.

    I tested it with a T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile 6 Standard Edition) and it seems to work fine. It has a metal clip to clip it to the visor. Here’s hoping it is loud enough to use for those rare times I need to make or receive a phone call while in the car.

  • Microsoft TechNet: Intro to System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008

    If you’ve been looking some info about scmdm (System Center Mobile Device Manager) 2008, Microsoft TechNet has a 23 minute video interview about it at…

    Intro to System Center Mobile Device Manager (scmdm) 2008

  • iPhone Searches on Google 50x More Than Other Phones

    Saw a reference to this on the AppleInsider site and followed the link to…

    Google homes in on revenue to phones

    …The key quote from the article that AppleInsider pointed out is: Google on Wednesday said it had seen 50 times more searches on Apple‘s iPhone than any other mobile handset, adding weight to the group’s confidence at being able to generate significant revenues from the mobile internet. I guess this means we’ll see even more cool web services and sites designed specifically for the iPhone (and as a side effect the iPod touch) while Windows Mobile and other smartphone platforms will have to be happy with WAP text sites and CSS-ed reformatted pages.

    You know, I think it was around 11 years ago that Charles Fitzgerald told Bill Gates that Microsoft needed to focus on the web (I was a contractor for MSN at the time, btw). I hope there is someone like that over at Microsoft now pointing out that they need to focus on the mobile web now.

  • Microsoft Posts: Troubleshooting BCM for Pocket PC/Smartphone

    Just noticed this blog post over on the Microsoft Business Contact Manager (BCM) Team Blog…

    Troubleshooting BCM for Pocket PC/Smartphone

    If you are using BCM, you probably want to bookmark this blog entry.

    And, I continue to be amused when even Microsoft forgets the whole awful Classic Edition (Pocket PC), Professional Edition (Pocket PC Phone Edition), and Amateur Edition, um, Standard Edition (Smartphone) branding. Tsk tsk.  🙂

  • Social Micro Presence Sites for Windows Mobile

    I’ve become a fan of social micro presence sites over the past year or so. I think Twitter and Tumblr were the two that showed me the way and their value.

    Although all the good mobile web designs are being developed for the iPhone Safari browser, there are a lot of social micro presence sites that look and work fine on Windows Mobile smartphones. Here’s a list of the mobile versions of some popular micro-presence sites I’ve tried (plus one I haven’t – MySpace Mobile). Check ’em out…

    If you have a social micro presence site that works with Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile smartphones, please let me know. You just add it as a comment to this blog entry if you would like to share the information with anyone else who might wander by here.

  • MSN Direct for Windows Mobile Standard Edition

    MSN Direct for Windows Mobile
    I read about the MSN Direct beta release for Windows Mobile before heading to work this morning. So, as soon I got in, I point my T-Mobile Dash at http://phone.msndirect.com/ and downloaded the installation CAB file. To make a long story short, MSN Direct was removed from my phone within 20 minutes. Here’s what happened…

    The installation itself went smoothly. A segment of my home screen displayed MSN Direct with the current Dow Jones Industrial Average chart and left/right arrows. I tapped my navigation rose to get to the next item and saw weather for Seattle. I clicked on the select button to change that. But, nothing happened. I tried a few other things, but still nothing. During this time I noticed my phone getting warmer and warmer and also slower and slower. Finally, it got to the point where my Dash froze completely. I had to pull the battery to shut it down. After rebooting the Dash, I uninstalled MSN Direct. Check my battery revealed that it had dropped from a 90+% charge to about 63%. This was not good to see at 8:15am.

    During lunch I decided to try to load it on my HTC Advantage (the other WiMo device I’m carrying). Unfortunately, an error message popped up saying that it was not supported. So, I took a look at the MSN Direct Phone Finder page and learned that it only works with Windows Mobile Standard Edition (non-touchscreen devices formerly referred to as the Smartphone). So, if you have a Windows Mobile Professional Edition, sorry, but you cannot use MSN Direct for Windows Mobile Technology Preview. It is, apparently, strictly for amateurs 🙂

    After getting home, I installed MSN Direct on an HTC Vox smartphone. Instead of using a slow EDGE connection, I used a 802.11g WiFi connection. This combination of hardware and network access worked much better than the Dash/EDGE combination. Still, MSN Direct seemed sluggish and balky at some points. The content views have too much white space IMHO. This means I have to scroll down more that I really should have to. The Vox’s battery held up very well through the evening with WiFi left on. My guess is that the sustained EDGE radio usage on the Dash drained its battery. This reminds me of the problem I had last year with Google’s Gmail IMAP4 email. It is so slow that the Dash battery again drains when retrieving Gmail mail from the IMAP4 server.

    I should probably move my SIM from the Dash to the Vox sometime to see if the battery drain issue is caused by the EDGE radio or the battery differences between the two phones.

    You can watch a 2 minute video demo I recorded and posted to YouTube.

    MSN Direct for Windows Mobile YouTube demo