TamsWMS – the Windows Mobile Smartphone Blog

HTC’s WMS devices do not use TouchFLO (is it is intended for touchscreen devices) – but their custom UI nevertheless tends to be somewhat close to the features offered on touchscreen devices.

Thus, taking a look at the features found in the new version could be interesting – the list below hits us via xda-developers; a user dubbed shadowline claims that it’s the “change log” for the upcoming version 2.5 of the UI:

Home screen:
New look
new shortcut icons on up swipe, along with 3 on the main screen.
Tapping on an appointment brings up a new appointment info screen.
Tapping on date lets you change the date.
Tapping on the alarm info lets you change alarms.
Tapping on time lets you view the world clock.

People Tab:
New layout, grid style like Manila 2D.
New Messaging screen (see messaging below)
– All people:
Nothing new in the main screen, but under “Updates and Events” tapping on “me” brings you to a list of your facebook notifications.

Messaging Tab:
Nothing new on the main screen
– All Messages:
Brand new all messages screen. Listed by conversation/contact, and includes contact icons.
– In a conversation:
Brand new screen, scrolling has changed, icons included in each message along with the contact icon at the top.

Mail Tab:
Nothing new.

Internet tab:
New bookmarks view, includes thumbnails of your favorite sites (can be used on home screen too)

Calendar tab:
Nothing new

Stocks tab:
Nothing new

Photos and videos tab:
Nothing new

Music Tab:
Totally new page
Album thumbnails now “flow” in from the top
new controls
– Menu:
Update album art from the web on selected track, or on all of now playing.

Weather Tab:
Nothing new
– Add City:
New search by typing name.

Footprints Tab:
Brand new tab, works much like its Manila 2D cousin.
Not able to test more on this as it is not currently working for me.

Settings tab:
So much to list!
All of the windows mobile settings menu has been placed into this tab.
If you could get to it from start > settings, then it is now here too.

None of this is final, and there are a LOT of features that at either not working, temporarily broken (requiring a restart), or tf3d itself crashes a lot.

As of now, no further information is available – stay tuned!

HTC’s S740 can see the bright light coming closer and closer – the picture on the left side was shot in an Austrian technology outlet store.

They have a nice amount of S740’s in their original box (about 10), and sell them for 250 Euros / piece.

P.S. If anyone of you feels like a pop – let me know!

Don’t ask me why the Bluetooth SIG leaks as many devices as it does – the FCC can do so as it is an essentially invulnerable governmental body, which the SIG is not.

Anyways – the picture below is from their web site and probably doesn’t need any further explanation:

BTW: their web site really has the msmobiles.com text below the logo – click this image for a shot of the full page:

Krusell is a huge Swedish manufacturer of protective cases. Their top list tends to be somehwhat representative for “average users” – and saw some severe changes this month.

RIM fell out, Palm didn’t get in (no wonder due to European focus)….and Sony Ericsson has gone amiss too:

1. (3) Nokia 6300
2. (-) Apple iPhone 3G
3. (-) HTC Touch Diamond 2
4. (2) Nokia 3109
5. (-) Nokia E51
6. (1) Nokia 5800
7. (5) Nokia E71
8. (6) HTC Touch HD
9. (-) HTC Magic
10. (-)HTC Touch Pro2

11. (4) Samsung SGH-i900/i910 Omnia

() = Last month’s position.

Last month Nokia took a Grand Slam by taking all Top 3 positions at Krusell’s best seller list for May. The list in June also gives an impression something is happening in the market. Nokia takes 5 out of 10 positions, HTC takes 4 and Apple one. Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are all out of the list.

To me it is surprising even the previous best seller Omnia had to leave the list this month, says Ulf Sandberg MD at Krusell. Yet another surprise is that everybody in the industry always talks about how short the lifecycles of mobile phones have become. This month’s No 1, Nokia 6300, was introduced in February 2007 in Krusell’s assortment and is now back on the No 1 position 28 months later, he ends.

Microsoft’s C# programming language sometimes reminds me of a pinata – it is full of surprises. The latest one comes in the form of the two delegate definitons below:

//DELEGATES
public delegate void doneSearchingDlg();
public delegate void newResultDumbDlg();

doneSearchingDlg doneSearching;
newResultDumbDlg newResultDumb;


In case anybody is new to C#: a delegate is a function pointer which can accumulate multiple functions, which are then called at once with a single call. But this is not the reason for this little rant – instead, I am pissed about why the declarations cannot look like this:

//DELEGATES - CAN NOT COMPILE AS OF VS2005
public delegate void doneSearchingDlg() doneSearching;
public delegate void newResultDumbDlg() newResultDumb;


In plain-old vanilla C, almost every language primitive can be animated while it is being declared – why this feature was omitted from Delegates is a mystery to me.

Ideas, anyone?

People who own more than one handset can tell a tale of the charger eekers – every manufacturer has at least one (usually two or more) incompatible charger types.

This is not only annoying (extra weight), but also bad for the environment. As such things tend to attract EU regulators attention, manufacturers had to act – Yahoo Tech reports the following:

…

The agreement by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other industry majors will mean phones compatible with standard charging devices are available in Europe from next year, said the EU executive, which has pushed for such a deal.

…

The Commission said the agreement would involve the creation of an EU norm, and that the new generation of mobile phones would use a standard micro-USB socket to ensure compatibility.

…

According to them, the situation will go even further: chargers and handsets will be unbundled one day (which would lead to even lower handset prices).

Even though I personally prefer MiniUSB as I feel it handles better, MicroUSB nevertheless seems to be a pretty robust solution. My Nokia XPressMusic 5800 is still alive and kicking, and Nokia’s large-scale roll-out has started with the Nokia N85 (review here)…

Verizon has just unveiled its version of the HTC Snap – pricing and availability as per Verizon is as follows:

* The HTC Ozone will be $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Customers will receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.
* Customers can purchase the HTC Ozone beginning June 29 online at www.verizonwireless.com, by calling 1-800-2 JOIN IN, or through business sales channels. It will be in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores on July

HTC’s recently-announced Android handset (dubbed HTC Hero) contains an UI stack of its own – it is dubbed Sense, and is radically different from the current TouchFLO implementations which sit on the Today screen of various WM handsets.

WMPowerUser asked the folks at HTC’s whether TouchFLO is here to stay – and got the following response:

The Hero UI has been created specifically for HTC’s Android-based phones but also represents that three core pillars of HTC Sense. HTC’s future Windows Mobile phones will also be based on HTC Sense, but will enhance Windows Mobile in a way that is as appropriate and valuable to people.

I personally think that their choice makes perfect sense: people think about brands first, and about operating systems only after that. Nokia is as successful as it is as its S40 and S60 handsets share a largely common UI stack, thereby simplifying switching.

HTC gains a lot from unifying their UX: I personally would not be surprised to hear that HTC got thousands of calls from people switching to the G1 and who ended up looking for the Start menu…

Unfortunately, developers will likely end up paying the bill. HTC TouchFLO has already made loads of Today plugins obsolete – the more it does out of the box, the less there is to do for developers.

What do you think?

The Mozilla Foundation has just unleashed the second beta of its mobile FireFox (dubbed Fennec):

The following things have been added or changed:

New for Alpa 2:

* Improved panning performance
* Newly designed theme
* JavaScript error console is now built in
* Improved add-on support
* Numerous bug fixes
* Improved UI polish

As of now, the Mozilla Foundation has stated nothing about hardware requirements – all they state is that Windows Mobile 6 is required. This could theoretically mean that the program is compatible with WMS devices – please let is know how you fare if you happen to try it out!

Further information can be had here:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/fennec/1.0a2-wm/releasenotes/

Microsoft France’s product manager for all things mobile has made a very interesting quote in a recent MobiFrance interview:

Audrey Zolghadr: 20,000 applications are now available for Windows Mobile. For the launch of MarketPlace, 600 applications will be available. It will be possible to retrieve the software from the search engine. Only software compatible with the screen resolution, touch or not touch will be visible to the user.

600 applications is might not be too much – but is nevertheless impressive especially of compared to what other manufacturers have unleashed upon their customers (Palm: less than 50 apps, Nokia Ovi: full of crap)…

T-Mobile USA seems to be just as stupid as its European sibling – their press department has still not been able to provide me with a few stock images of their version of the HTC Snap.

Fortunately, the boys at Mobile-Burn’s managed to get some hands-on time…and report that the Inner Circle feature is gone.

It furthermore looks like the device underwent a minor redesign: the picture on the left shows the Dash 3G, while the one on the right shows the Snap:

Hit their link above for a little video…

This one goes out to all Windows Mobile Standard haters in the world! LG has recently unveiled a bunch of Windows Mobile phones…and one of them is a WMS. The folks from Tech2.com captured the GW550 at their CommunicAsia booth:

As of now, very little is known about this device – LG’s official press release doesn’t even mention the critter. However, similarities to Nokia’s E63 / E71 can not be denied…

Windows Mobile always boasted some kind of Flash support – while not native as in other platforms, a downloadable Flash plug-in allows our boxen to access quite a few pages. Unfortunately, the emphasis is on few…as applets which require advanced functionality tend to break the plug-in.

Our handsets might just be in luck – the slide below is from an Adobe keynote:

As of now, nobody knows which devices will be affected – but things nevertheless could get very interesting soon…

The full slide deck can be had here:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/09q2analyst/

Don’t ask me what eekers the man pictured on the left has – Mike Channon has created a web site containing literally thousands of useful documents related to HTC’s handsets.

He describes his page as follows:

Here you will find a collection of Service Manuals, User Manuals, dismantling guides and disassembly videos.

The emphasis is placed on PDA Phones manufactured by HTC, but some of the more popular models form other makers are included. Many of the manuals are of a technical nature and are not designed for the everyday user. In fact, using these guides to dismantle your phone will invalidate your warranty

As all of the stuff seems to be free, hit the link below for a really cool resource:
http://www.mikechannon.net/