Windows Phone Thoughts: Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition And VGA Resolution

I posted on a neat hack yesterday called SE_VGA that enables "real VGA" unlike SE's default behavior on VGA PDAs, but a few posters were wondering why you'd want something like that. I'll write a bigger article myself one day, but in the meantime, Pavel over at PDAgold wrote up a nice article on exactly how SE handles VGA resolution, complete with lots of screenshots. Microsoft made a conscious choice that may suit regular-end users, but power users may want to seek hacks like SE_VGA to enable more functionality -- especially for PIE's disappointing default behavior.

"It is no secret that besides an easy 90-degree rotation of the screen, the main attraction of the latest version of Pocket PC operating system from Microsoft, called Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, is its support for full VGA resolution (480 x 640 pixels) where supported by hardware. I must say could not wait for VGA devices. Unfortunately, my first encounter with the system was a great disappointment. Surprisingly, it was not Toshiba e800 but HP iPAQ hx4700 that was the first PDA with this feature I could try. If you would like to avoid such a disappointment yourself, I recommend reading this article carefully to find out about all the advantages and disadvantages of the new OS."