TamsWMS - the Windows Mobile Smartphone Blog

So far, developers of mobile devices have not felt the need to especially advertise the third-party extendability of their products in their Point-of-Sales demos. However, Apple’s iPhone 3G demo explicitly features third-party apps in Austria - read on for a few images and a Tam-Hanna-made translation:

	“Web applications directly on your Phone”
(this now shows a few applications in the iTunes app store. Note that all of them are free)
	(Now, Super Monkey Ball is selected)
(The icon now shows up in the launcher’s screen. Amusingly, the payment process and the application’s price have not been shown)
	(The game starts up and the screen begins to tilt)
(The device is shown toppling around as the game runs)

AFAIK, this is the first time ever that a mobile phone manufacturer explicitly advertises the expandability and third-party application availability of its platform. Palm once planned something similar, but never aired the TV spots…looks like another first for Apple!

P.S. Want to know more about Apple? Visit our sister site TamsIJungle!

The two screenshots below are the first signs of an upcoming release of Adobe’s Photoshop mobile:

Before anybody goes bonkers: this is NOT a photo editor, but rather a basic photo viewer/photo uploader that uses the Photoshop name for publicity reasons.

The program will initially support a few Q9 and BlackJack models along with Palm’s Treo 7xx series. It is said to drop “as a free download in September”…

P.S. The boys at WmPowerUser’s have posted a very interesting piece of speculation looking at Flash Lite 3 in conjunction to this announcement. People interested in FL3 should definitely give them a click!

Motorola’s Q9 WMS is very similar to Palm’s Treo 500, and has been on the market just as long. Unlike Palm, however, Motorola keeps rehashing and rehashing the device - the latest incarnation can be seen below:

This box seems to be AT&T exclusive for now - the carrier calls it Moto Q Global. Its specs seem to be mostly unchanged except for the OS: it comes with Windows Mobile 6.1 out of the box and includes the Opera browser:

Overview
The MOTO Q Global is a high performance Windows Mobile 6.1 smart phone offering a full integrated QWERTY keyboard, 3.6 Mbps HSDPA, 325 MHz applications processor, 128MB RAM and aGPS, among many additional features and capabilities. With Windows Mobile 6.1, the MOTO Q Global supports Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager which provides single-point access to line of business and corporate data such as applications, files and other information located on the corporate network. It offers robust Email & Messaging services including personal email with Xpress Mail, corporate email with Good Mobile Messaging, Microsoft Direct Push and Blackberry Connect, and SMS, IM and MMS. It supports AT&T Music, Video and Media Mall services for capture and playback of photos, music, games and video. Finally, it provides a category-leading 3G browser experience with Opera browser.

People wanting to get the box pay 149$ with a 2yr contract (after a 100$ mail-in rebate) - the OTC price for an unlocked device is 399$…

Providing ads to mobile web sites gives you loads of data about mobile web browsers. Intelligent companies like AdMob make parts of this data available to the press to gain free PR (here you go) by helping the press do its job.

Anyways, this month’s “Mobile Metrics Report” was especially interesting, as it looked at worldwide browser market shares for mobile web browsers. The chart below is from the report linked above:

Classic smartphone web browsers surprisingly make up a minuscule of requests: Palm’s Blazer and Apple’s mobile Safari (which is a much better browser) both have 2% market share, Microsoft’s Pocket Internet Explorer and RIM’s browser both don’t exceed the 4% mark.

Nokia’s browsers (S40 and S60) and OpenWave (a classic dumbphone browser) both have about 30% of the market each, with Access’s Netfront (deployed on smartphones and embedded) coming in as a distant third with 12%. Amusingly, Sony’s CLIE handhelds make up for 4% of these 12%, which gives them a total market share of about 0.5%.

The real lesson which can be learned here is that smartphones and their users are an almost-ignorable minority when it comes to mobile web usage. We may be the most vocal bunch, but our numbers diminish compared to the millions of “dumbphone” users populating the mobile internet (and likely having a data contract). As each and every phone that has a web browser also is Java capable nowadays, the implications that this has on the size of the J2ME market are obvious: it is huge.

What do you think?

A big thank-you goes out to AdMob for providing the data!

After the unspectacular failure of the XPERIA X1 (crappy keyboard), many Pocket PC owners plan to purchase a HTC Touch Pro because of its integrated QWERTY keyboard. Unfortunately, people wanting a WMS are left in the rain - enter the extremely stylish HTC S740:

Even though its screen is quite a bit smaller than the Touch Pro’s, the device’s specs aren’t shabby:

Processor
Qualcomm® MSM7225™, 528MHz

Platform
Windows Mobile® 6.1 Standard

Memory
ROM: 256MB
RAM: 256MB SDRAM

Dimensions
116.3 mm (L) X 43.4 mm (W) X 16.3 mm (T)

Weight
140g with battery

Display
2.4 inch TFT-LCD with backlight LEDs and QVGA resolution

Network
HSDPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz for Europe
(Up to 384 kbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps download speeds)
GSM/GPRS/EDGE: Quad-band 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
(The device will operate on frequencies available from the cellular network.)
Standalone GPS / AGPS

Connectivity
Bluetooth® 2.0
Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)

Camera
3.2 megapixel color camera with fixed focus

Battery
Rechargeable Lithium-ion polymer battery
Capacity: 1000 mAh
Standby time:
- Up to 400 hours for WCDMA
- Up to 280 hours for GSM
Talk time:
- Up to 320 minutes for WCDMA
- Up to 380 minutes for GSM
(The above are subject to network and phone usage.)

Unfortunately, the device seems to suffer from a problem similar to the one found on Asus’s rather badly-designed M930 - the main screen is too small. While the Asus phone’s screen dimensions can be explained only by corporate boneheadedness (which is common at the company), HTC didn’t really have a choice. A WMS can either have a big screen or big keys - a tradeoff not found in PocketPC devices…

Further information can be had at HTC’s web site!

As I also work for print magazines, I never like to hear about magazines being discontinued. However, discontinuation is the fate that awaits the Smartphone&PocketPC magazine.

The reason for the discontinuation is not lack of interest, but rather issues reaching customers according to an official press release:

Thaddeus Computing sees a strong future for Windows Mobile. Microsoft sold almost 20 million Windows Mobile phones in its last fiscal year. There are some very cool new devices coming out. In addition Microsoft has committed to make future versions of its operating system much more fun and user friendly. The decision to switch to the iPhone O.S., was a business decision, based mostly on the difficulty of cost-effectively informing new Windows Mobile users about the magazine. Thaddeus Computing estimated that less that 1% of new Windows Mobile users even heard of the magazine.

Smartphone&PocketPC magazine will be replaced by a new publication called iPhone Life, which will be sent out to all current subscribers. Alternatively, a “knowledge bundle” is given away to subscribers.

Further information can be obtained from the press release:
http://forums.pocketpcfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=20415

I have always wondered why HTC doesn’t include industry-standard connectors into its devices - while every other PPC/WMS manufacturer managed to at least include a standard headphone jack, HTC’s QTek 8500 (a music phone!!!) missed even this basic commodity.

The reason is the funky little thing shown below - a “docking station” that plugs into HTC’s proprietary port and provides a variety of industry standard ports.

Price: 20$. Guranteed sale.

Quot erad demonstrandum…

While most PocketPC’s have already received their scheduled WM 6.1 updates, many popular Windows Mobile Smartphones are still on the “waiting list”. The AT&T edition of the Motorola Q9h now received its update from Motorola - the link below allows you to download it directly:

https://rsddownload.motorola.com/download/AT&T_Q9h_01.09.28R_Standalone_Update.exe

Even though the update is said to install fine on non-AT&T Q9h’s, users at The Boy Genius’s report a variety of annoying issues with their devices. As said - buyer beware…

The folks at PocketNow’s recently complained about why Windows Mobile applications are sooo expensive compared to the offerings found in the iTunes App Store. At the first glance, their blurb may look good…but, just like communism, the flaws are hidden in the details.

The difference between WM and iPhone apps cannot be understood until you are willing to accept that WM boxen and iPhones cater to different user groups! Windows Mobile users are power users (similar to classic Treo users)…and demand loads of features in their applications. iPhone users, on the other hand, are happy with the bare minimum as long as it looks cool(what the iPhone’s UI server does automatically).

Also, the selling conditions are completely different(no, we are NOT talking about commissions here). Apple iPhone stuff sells for a few bucks at worst. As seen with DOS and OS/2, a price point burnt into the people’s minds sticks…which forces developers to blend into the iTunes pricing scheme for music and video with their apps.

Last but not least, the iPhone’s UI system is not well suited to complex, full-featured applications. Screens like the one shown below(from a Palm OS app) are very difficult to realize on the iPhone…as it lacks simple UI widgets like a menu or a dropdown picker:

All of these factors add up to one thing: developers want to make apps that blend in. The price and UI constraints do not allow for “heavy” apps. Developers thus apply the Pareto Principle, which leads to simple and beautiful apps that can be sold for cheap.

Instead of selling a few apps, developers try to go for the masses. This leads to shorter product life cycles(anyone notice how bad the iTunes App store handles updates?)…which in turn leads to many many many apps flooding the market.

Aa of now, the effects that this flood will have on business perspectives can not be predicted. I am pretty sure that things like support and product quality will be affected…but only time can tell…

I have used a dual-screen workstation for literally years, and don’t feel comfortable working on a device that has just one screen (laptops included). However, development tools have traditionally ignored multi-screen setups, leading to awkward setup procedures in order to get the most out of your two screens.

The UK-based tech news service TheRegister has claimed that Microsoft’s VS product manager has confirmed that the next version of Visual Studio will include changed that make VS work better on multi-monitor systems.

As of now, no information is available on what the folks at Microsoft’s will come up with - but its definitely a good thing to see the biggest developer of development tools focus on multi-monitor issues…

People waiting for the Celio RedFLY will probably be happy to hear that the device is now compatible with even more smartphones and PocketPC’s. The full list (current as of this writing) is below:

P.S. The deviceÄs price has now been lowered to about 400$/€…

SmartphoneMag’s Nate Adcock recently posted an article called “What happened to the iPAQ”. His core point is that iPAQ’s look boring compared to devices like the HTC boxen, and that HP should spice up its graphics department to make its handhelds “cool” again.

Even though HP had some excellent consumer handhelds like my beloved rx4240, Nate IMHO still missed the point. HP is a B2B company that caters to businesses - and corporate IT departments couldn’t care less about stuff like TouchFLO. For them, every extra app is more support hassle…and the more an app looks like Windows 2000, the better.

The lack of upgrades has actually surprised me to some extent, as Compaq has traditionally had long model cycles with excellent spare/software update supplies (sometimes lasting over ten years). The reason why HP eventually stopped to offer WM upgrades IMHO was a sort of stand-still at Microsoft’s…the changes in WM 6 were not considered important enough by many to warrant the hassle of an effortful upgrade.

Thus, a generation or two went by without upgrades…and HP fell into the same mind set when Windows Mobile 6.1 hit the scene. But: WM 6.1 is completely different. Even though it looks bland from the outside, IT departments love it due to the addition of a central management server that allows WM devices to be managed remotely with ease.

And this is where the hare is buried. IT departments don’t care about design, coolness or duffergile - for them, a device must be easy to maintain. WM 6.1 gives competitors devices a real advantage here…an advantage that HP IMHO will not be able to ignore on the long run…

As for the current devices: I am sorry, but I don’t think that HP will offer upgrades for these unless huge movements happen in the market. However, I am pretty sure that the boys in blue will eventually rediscover old (IBM-American) values - it (hopefully) is a question of time…

What do you think?

P.S. In case anyone feels like asking about entertainment iPAQ’s - these probably are done for good. The competition is way to intense here…

I have really liked the so-called Music Genome Project’s streaming radio service called Pandora - unfortunately, licensing concerns no longer allow them to send to Europe.

Nevertheless, Windows Mobile users in the USA will soon be able to enjoy Pandora on the go (if they have a hefty data plan). Tom Conrad, the CTO of Pandora’s mother company, stated that a version of Pandora is upcoming for WM in a recent wmpoweruser.com interview:

…
Without question I’ve learned a lesson about commenting on unreleased products… truth is it was almost two years ago when I shared on our blog that we were working on a Windows Mobile build of Pandora. At the time I really believed it was less than 90 days away from release. I guess it’s never a good idea to talk about products that you haven’t yet released.

…. our deals with Sprint (and then later AT&T) came through. With those deals in place we started shifting our mobile development priorities to sync up with what the carriers wanted us to do — without exception that was to so-called “feature phones” and not smart phones. …

The good news is that we do have a team working on Windows Mobile versions of Pandora. Given my track record it’s probably best not to comment on the “when” but it’s certainly not a question of “if”.
…

So far, HTC’s web site has been among the most annoying on the internet (along with Sprint’s) - you had to give up your email address and get an account in order to get ROM updates for your (purchased) device.

According to SmartphoneThoughts, the company has now seen the light of day. From now on, you just need to enter the serial number of your machine in order to get your hands on updates.

P.S. Other device makers give out updates to everyone. I consider it somewhat likely that HTC intends to introduce “tracking information” into the updates eventually…which could be very helpful when it comes to quenching the flow of “inofficial updates” seen at xda-developers…