MobileViews Blog

Category: Smartphone

Windows Mobile Smartphone

  • iPhone vs. Blackberry & Android Vs. Windows Mobile

    I’ve noticed some talk of comparing the upcoming phones based on Google’s Android platform to Apple’s iPhone. But, if you look at the platforms (literally and figuratively), the comparion doesn’t actually make any sense except in the fact that all these platforms will compete with each other.

    Apple and RIM are more alike than Apple and Google. Both Apple and RIM control both the hardware and the software. Both own their respective market spaces at the moment: Apple iPhone = Consumer and RIM Blackberry = Business. And, both are trying to cross over into the other’s market territory.

    Google Android is more like Microsoft Windows Mobile. Both are software reference platforms that rely on third party hardware manufacturers to deliver products to the market. Microsoft has no branding mind-presence in the market (no casual observer asks if you are using a Windows Mobile based phone). Google may find itself with the same problem. This may be ok if a single manufacturer (say HTC) hits a home run on the first swing and everyone identifies the “Google Phone” with that one device or brand. But, if Android phones are diffused in the market with lots of brands, form factors, and models, no one will care enough to ask if you are using a Google Android phone.

    Google has one huge advantage though: It has no legacy products to worry about destroying. Microsoft has had to reduce the functionality of Windows CE/Mobile since day one to make sure it does not destroy the existing Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista market. It had to reduce the functions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Mobile to keep Microsoft Office at the top tier. Microsoft didn’t provide syncing to its Live/MSN cloud services (calendar, contacts, tasks) to protect Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server. Google doesn’t have this problem. They have just one platform: The Google Cloud.

    Microsoft has to be willing to destroy itself in order to move forward in the mobile/cloud age. Couple of words/proper nouns to the wise: Pony Express, Western Union, DEC.

  • Zumobi 1.1

    Zumobi 1.1 was released earlier this month. So, I finally decided to try it out on my TyTn (Windows Mobile 6 Professional Edition) last week. The interface is nice and, I guess, finger touch friendly. But, it seems a bit slow on my Pocket PC. The content in the available Tiles didn’t interest me much. However, Version 6.1 lets you create your own Tiles from RSS feeds. So, I should try to do that sometime. However, it seems to me that it is actually faster to scan through RSS feeds using a more conventional looking interface like Ilium’s NewsBreak.

    I’ll play around with it a bit more, build a tile or two, and post some screencaps here later.

  • Windows Mobile PowerShell Provider

    I haven’t taken a close look at this yet, but this sounds very very cool! I found it mentioned in Jeffrey Snover’s blog…

    PowerShell Access to Windows Mobile Devices

    …and then hopped over to the Nivot Ink blog to learn more…

    Windows Mobile PowerShell Provider

    Here’s the feature list from that blog entry…

    • Copy, Move, Delete items between folders on your device (including Storage Card) with standard PowerShell Cmdlets
    • Move/Copy files to/from your device and your desktop with ConvertTo-WMFile and ConvertFrom-WMFile
    • Get device information and manipulate and explore the registry with a rich device object returned from Get-WMDevice
    • Invoke-Item against remote items to or execute or trigger their associated applications
    • Invoke-Item with -Local switch to attempt to execute a remote file in the context of your local desktop (e.g. office docs or images/videos)
    • New “Mode” attributes specific to Windows Mobile file attributes: (I)nRom, Rom(M)odule
    • File/Folder objects’ attributes can be modified with .Attributes properties just like FileInfos etc.
    • Tab completion with MoW’s PowerTab Download

  • Windows Mobile WiFi Fussiness

    Windows Mobile WiFi stability seems to have hit its peak with Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. My Dell Axim X51 could connect to pretty much any unsecure or WEP wireless access point (WAP). It did not support WPA. My Windows Mobile 5 devices seemed a bit fussier about which WAPs they would connect to. Older WAPs seemed to cause the most issues. Windows Mobile 6 devices (all of mine are upgraded devices, I don’t have any native WM6 boxes) supports WPA. And, connecting to WAPs seems like a real hit-or-miss proposition here. It again looks like older WAPs (even with the latest firmware for the model) cause the most problems. But, it seems like my iPod touch doesn’t have the same problems I’m having with my Windows Mobile devices. It is pretty frustrating to see the SSID for a WAP and then watch my WiMo devices flail about trying to connect and fail most of the time. Some WiMo boxes are better than others. But, I’ve never quite figured out which ones work best under what conditions.

  • Apple MobileMe: What About the Rest of Us?


    My first opinion of Apple’s MobileMe was: OK, so they renamed .Mac, it has more storage, it costs the same (US$99/year), and… wait… It is what I wishes Microsoft Live would give Windows Mobile users like me.

    I used to sync my WiMo smartphone daily with my PC. But, that has become such a chore and a statistical probability rather than a sure thing that I don’t do that anymore. I still sync a couple of times a week to make sure I have a backup of my current calendar and contacts. But, it is a chore. I hope the Windows Mobile and Windows Live team can get together and provide similar functionality for WiMo smartphone users soon.

    The one big iPhone issue for me is still the lack of a physical keyboard or a Bluetooth keyboard option. I still can’t type worth a darn on my iPod touch. So, I still can’t use it effectively use a email or data entry device.

  • Back to Basics: Cameraphone Sports Mode Setting


    Generally speaking, the cameras on most phones are much slower than even the slowest of the first generation consumer digital cameras back in the 1990s. So, I’ve never really expected to get much in the way of action shots with my cameraphone and ignored the so-called Sports Setting the camera configuration. However, while waiting for my daughter at her gym today, I decided to play with that setting to while the time away.

    You can see one of the photos I took using the Sports Setting using my T-Mobile Dash (AKA HTC Excalibur). On this particular phone, this setting reduces the resolution to 640×480 (which makes sense) and takes three (3) photos in succession after pressing the selection button. You can adjust the number of photos it takes per squeeze in the configuration menu.

    I’ve shrunken the photo from the original 640×480 to make it blog-friendly. It won’t make anyone throw away their Digital SLR. But, the result was better than I expected. I guess I should try some of the other camera phone settings too now.