MobileViews Blog

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  • Windows Mobile’s Weak Week View

    What happens when a bunch of Windows Mobile enthusiasts (my fellow Windows Mobile MVPs) get together? Well, there’s a lot of talk about mobile devices (no surprise). And, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Windows Mobile calendar gets a lot of discussion time since it is probably one of the most used applications on a Smartphone (eithre more or less than Contacts depending on who you talk to). One common complaint is the near uselessness of the Calendar’s week view. I tend to mostly use the Agenda (list of appointments) and Month views myself. The Week view is just, well, weak. Apple must feel the same way since their iPhone/iPod touch calendar doesn’t even have a week view. The week view would be more useful to me if it didn’t assume that a week is defined as starting either on Sunday or Monday and ending on Friday or Saturday. I’d prefer a rolling-week view myself where the view starts on the current day and pushes out a week in advance. Why? Because by Wednesday or Thursday, I’d like to see Saturday and Sunday at the same time without advancing an entire week just to see the Sunday after the coming Saturday. For me, the weekend is a unified pair. It is not two days split across two weeks.

    I think AgendaOne and Pocket Informant (as well as other add-on products) let you see a calendar week view in this relative fashion. But, it would be nice if the built-in Windows Mobile Calendar just let us see a week either in the traditional paper fashion or in a relative fashion.

  • The HTC Shift: So Close and Yet So Far

    HTC Shift

    My old friend and fellow Mobile Devices MVP Arne Hess (the::unwired) brought an HTC Shift ultramobile running both Windows Vista and Windows Mobile to the MVP Summit this past week. You can see it above sitting beside my Dash smartphone and on top of my Apple MacBook. The Shift’s unique design using both Windows Vista and Windows Mobile OSes in a compact package has generated a lot of buzz. However, my issue with it has always been its price point – US$1499. Like most UMPC’s, it is just a bit too high for me to think of it as a mass market item. At best, it is a upper-mid-tier gadget (below the MacBook air) for gadget hounds with cash to spare. Its 3 to 5 minute boot time (as Arne described it) seems a bit on a the slow side too. I’m guessing that HP Mini-note I’m considering may start getting into that boot time range as it accumulates the usual Windows boot cruft (anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc.).

    Still, this is the kind of device I’m hoping to see more of – hopefully in the under $800 range in the near future.

  • Gerado Dada Points to Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard Edition Video Demo

    Gerado Dada points to a sleep inducing Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard Edition (produced by marketing) video demo at…

    Windows Mobile 6.1 Video Demo (Standard Edition)

    Note that what is shown only applies to the non-touch Standard Edition devices. Professional Edition does not have any dramatic visible changes with Windows Mobile 6.1 on it.

  • Last Day of the MVP Summit

    mvpday3-2008.jpg

    It’s the last day of the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) Summit. It was great syncing up in person with the other Windows Mobile MVPs and Microsoft Windows Mobile team. Lots of good information was exchanged this week. This morning we have two keynote presentations by Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie to look forward to. Then, everyone heads back home.

    One odd mobile technology related thing I discovered this week is that my new Magellen 4250 GPS does not have any street information for Microsoft’s Redmond campus. It seemed to do pretty well otherwise though. It seemed to consistently take about 3 minutes to acquire enough satellites to determine its location under Seattle’s cloudy skies.

    More later on other mobile related views (pun intended) after I fly back home.

  • Redfly for $500, I Dunno

    Redfly

    A friend and fellow Mobile Devices MVP has a pre-production Redfly Windows Mobile Companion. At $199 this would be a killer product. At $499, I don’t think so. It would make more sense for me to buy an Asus Eee PC even if it couldn’t connect to a mobile phone network.

  • The Dash’s Battery Died Faster Than Any Other Phone Battery I’ve Used

    I’ve had my T-Mobile Dash for about a year now. I don’t switch phones very frequently although I often do have a couple of phones to play with. Why? I usually find a specific phone I like a lot and stick with it for a while. The Dash is a great phone and I haven’t seen anything that might make me switch away from it. I almost switched to the TyTn, but I decided a while back that I prefer phones that can be operated with one hand and one I don’t mind using in the rain. Touch screen devices do not meet those requirements.

    I noticed my battery was discharging faster than usual a couple of weeks ago. At one point, it was down to 40% at 2pm in the afternoon with minimal use. At first I thought one of my connected apps might be the cause. Email and my RSS reader came to mind first. Adjusting their update frequencies helped but did not resolve the problem. So, I started taking a closer look at my battery. I always fully charge my phone in the evening and then turn it off until the next morning. I started checking my battery level right after turning the phone on. The first time I checked my battery was at 78% right after turning the phone on. Remember it was 100% the evening before and the phone was turned off during the night. I tried this again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. And, yep, the next morning, the fully charged battery was around 80% first thing in the morning.

    My next guess was that something during the start cycle was burning up the charge. So, I plugged in my phone while it booted up. It showed 100%. So, I unplugged it and headed to the office. A few hours later, it was down quite a bit. It lasted longer during the day but still didn’t look normal. I tried this booting while plugged in the next morning and saw similar results. It finally dawned on me that this one year battery had already gone bad. So, I ordered a spare battery. And, yep, my battery was at 80% around 4pm in the afternoon. Phew. I am heading Seattle for the Microsoft MVP Summit and don’t want to worry about my phone’s battery.

    I’m still surprised by the Dash’s battery lifespan. I’ve used a lot of phones. And, I think all of their batteries are still in pretty good shape. Still, it is a back to basics lesson to consider battery issues before looking at other possible causes for odd phone behavior.