TamsWMS – the Windows Mobile Smartphone Blog

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/

Content agregators like AvantGo date back to a time when mobile data traffic was unaffordable – back then, the only way to read newspapers on your handheld in an affordable way was to download them via your desktop PC and sync them over. Fortunately, data has become a lot cheaper…and this trend has now claimed its first victim.

AvantGo’s mother company has just posted the image below to the official AvantGo web site – the intentions should be clear:

While this move will hit users without a data plan hard, most of us should IMHO switch over to RSS feeds. RSS feeds are available from most news services (including this one), and tend to offer the same thing which AvantGo has offered. A variety of such programs are available – hit the TamsShop to find free and paid ones…and don’t forget to use the discount code CRAZYSUNDAY to get 20% off your paid app of choice…

Microsoft has long been known as the home of a process called dogfooding or “eating one’s own dog food“: it involves using your own products for productivity purposes whereever possible. This (obviously) has its merits and benefits, but was not done so far for Windows Mobile.

Fortunately, this has now changed – the quote below hits us via BusinessInsider:

…

Microsoft won’t pay for its employees’ Apple iPhone data service plans anymore, even if they’re used significantly for work purposes. Nor will it pay for Research In Motion BlackBerry service, or a new Palm Pre. Instead, it will only reimburse data plans for Microsoft Windows Mobile-powered smartphones.

…

While this measure may not have too many short-term benefits, the long-term implications are clear: as more and more Microsoft folks become acquainted with Windows Mobile, they will also become aware of the possibilities offered. This might lead to better integration in the future (think Visio-to-Go, and so on) – and definitely is a very smart step…

We have covered the World Business Guide Scam some time ago – don’t ask me why, but the jerks still don’t give up (even though they know that I covered them on here some time ago). The email below has just hit my inbox:

Ladies and Gentlemen.

In order to have your company inserted in the registry of World Businesses for 2009/2010 edition, please print, complete and submit the enclosed form (PDF file) to the following address:

WORLD BUSINESS GUIDE
P.O. Box 2021
3500 GA Utrecht
The Netherlands

email: register@wbgtoday.net
FAX: redacted

Updating is free of charge!

If you are not the intended recipient, please submit an email to unsubscribe@wbgtoday.net Your request shall be dealt with accordingly.

Once again: if you get ANY communication from these folks, just delete/destroy it unless it comes from a court in your home country (which has never happened so far). The boys have never sued anyone AFAIK, and are sending these emails out illegally themselves.