MobileViews Blog

Category: Smartphone

Windows Mobile Smartphone

  • RedFly Windows Mobile Companion Now $399. Still Too Expensive IMHO

    Back when Windows Mobile was Windows CE (Windows Mobile is actually a shell on top of the previous Windows CE 5 generation), the Handheld PC was referred to as a PC Companion. Celio’s RedFly turns the tables on this old concept by looking like a mini-notebook PC but is actually an unintelligent companion to your Windows Mobile smartphone. At $499 it was much more expensive than your subsidized Windows Mobile smartphone. But, with a price drop to $399, oh wait, it is still much more expensive than your subsidized smartphone. And, what do you get for $399 (plus shipping and maybe tax)? A bigger screen and QWERTY keyboard, basically. Yes, WiMo’s Internet Explorer is no longer a pinhole view of the web. But, it is still can’t deal with AJAX or other complex Javascript-ed sites. It still renders many non-AJAX sites incorrectly. It is still basically Internet Explorer 4 with a few tweaks.

    Don’t get me wrong, though! Conceptually, I think the RedFly is a good idea. I just think it is way overpriced when I can buy full-blown netbook like the Acer Aspire One for $379 get gigabytes more of storage, multicard reader, and full-blown versions of apps like the Firefox and OpenOffice. And, if I move from a WiMo phone to a Nokia, Apple iPhone, or one of the Google Android boxes, I haven’t wasted $399.

    If the RedFly were priced somewhere in the $175 to $225 price range, I think it would be interesting to me as a possible purchase. At $399? Well, let’s just say I’m ordering an Acer Aspire One later today.

  • Back to Basics: Email Key Sort


    I cannot believe I did not know about this until yesterday. You all probably know that you can search through contacts and recent calls by typing a string on a Windows Mobile smartphone keyboard. Type O-G-A and my full name shows up as part of the search results of people in your contacts list, for example. But, I didn’t realize this also works with Email. In the example illustrated above, I tapped the keyboard letters P-B. As you can see, the email messaging client found this two letter sequence in both the From and Subject lines and highlighted the string. I am kind of embarrassed that I didn’t know about this useful email filtering feature until now. I wonder when it first appeared? It works on both the Standard (non-touch) and Professional (touch) Editions of Windows Mobile.

  • Watch NBCOlympics.com Video Clips on Your Phone (iPhone too!)


    Everyone probably knows about the Microsoft Silverlight-powered NBCOlympics.com site. But, did you know you can access its information AND videos on your smartphone too? Yep, head over to…

    mobile.nbcolympics.com

    I tested video playback on my iPod touch and found that it works fine. So, iPhone users will not be left out of the Olympics this summer.

  • HTC S710 (Vox) Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone Firmware Update

    I noticed there was an update for my HTC S710 (Vox) Windows Mobile smartphone on the HTC Support site. The upgrade does NOT move the phone to 6.1. However, based on the changes in version numbers, the update may be fairly important. My ROM version went from 1.15.405.2 to 1.34.405.1. The radio version went from 4.1.13.37_02.83.90 to 4.1.13.54_03.10.90. Windows Mobile itself remained at version 6.0 (not 6.1).

  • Microsoft Live Mesh Mobile Web Interface


    Microsoft Live Mesh is one of several cloud storage services offered by Microsoft (along with Skydrive and Office Live Workspace). One interesting feature of Live Mesh is its web interface for mobile devices. I looked at it from both a TyTn (Windows Mobile Professional Edition 6.0) and iPod touch (2.0 firmware) Both allowed retrieval and photo upload (but not the uploading of other file types). However, when I tried to upload a photo from my TyTn, it was unable to see any photos on the storage card. It could only see files in system RAM rendering this feature near useless. However, I uploaded one of the sample images left in system RAM. And, it did indeed get uploaded to Live Mesh and was visible on my PC.

  • Windows Mobile Gets No Respect: iPhone Gets Credit for Touchscreen Revolution

    Information Week trumpets…

    iPhone: Catalyst For Touchscreen Revolution

    Never mind that Windows CE/Windows Mobile devices have been continuously providing touch screen devices since 1996. And, of course, the Apple Newton essentially defined the concept of PDA in 1993.

    But, hey, I’ll give credit where credit is due. Apple did the touch screen right. I know that I much prefer to use my iPod touch for a variety of information retrieval tasks (web browsing, reading email, etc.). But, I still prefer to use my Dash smartphone for writing email, creating a calendar event, or entering contact information.