Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"We have waited long for this device, but finally it's here. There were a lot of rumors about the HD2, also known as HTC Leo. Some people believed it would be a (killer) Android device and others told us that it would be the first HTC device with the 1 Gigahertz Snapdragon processor and a capacitive screen. The last party was right. The HTC HD2 has been released to the public with a Snapdragon processor, a large 4,3″ capacitive touchscreen, lots of ROM and RAM and all this in a 11 mm tick housing. Currently there is no other phone with these impressive specifications and comparing it to an iPhone 3GS only reveals that HTC has done a very good job and beats the iPhone in every single way!"

This article is a great walk-through of the HTC HD2. I learned several new things about the HD2 after reading it - the most interesting of which is that HTC has created a Wi-Fi Router application. It takes your 3G connection and shares it out via Wi-Fi, which is quicker than setting up the built-in Internet Sharing application. I'm curious how badly it beats up the battery life though - when I'm using Internet Sharing over Bluetooth, I can practically watch the battery on my Samsung Blackjack II drain. The HD2 is a very exciting device - and if it really does arrive in North America by early 2010, it just might become my next device.

Product Category: GPS-assisted software

Manufacturer: JMD Software

Where to Buy: From the developer -- download available here; or from the Windows Marketplace

Price: $3.99USD

System Requirements: Marathon requires a Windows Mobile 5.0+ Professional device with a GPS receiver and a screen resolution of at least 240x240 pixels.

Specifications: Requires approximately 400K of storage memory. Cannot be installed to Storage Card.

Pros:

• Very easy to install, configure and use;
• Main user interface is very intuitive, but there are lots of settings for individual customization.

Cons:

• Not possible to pause timings if you stop for a drink or chat;
• Some of the terminology used is confusing (eg. Sprint vs Track) A Help file or glossary would be useful.

Summary: Training up for that next marathon or triathalon? Or maybe just looking for something to provide an extra nudge for your personal 'Biggest Loser' exercise program? Marathon, a GPS-enabled software package from JMD Software may be just the right coach. It provides a simple, easy way to track your progress whether you're walking, running, biking or even rallying by car! Read more...

"We have already published a lot of screenshots of Samsung's I8000 Omnia II. Now we have a final build of the software and it looks like Samsung has tried to cover Microsoft flaws as much as possible with it's TouchWiz interface. The device itself is very fast, and build quality is excellent. After a quick check of the specs we present you a vdeo [sic] tour and a ton of new screenshots..."

According to the ar.is blog, the Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional-based Omnia 2 will feature a 3.7 inch AMOLED WVGA resolution (480x800) resistive touchscreen, a Samsung 800MHz CPU, an unknown dedicated graphics accelerator, 256MB RAM and either 2/8/16GB worth of storage - though I'm pretty dubious on the first one. 2 GB of storage is a departure from the norm for the Omnia - though perhaps it's a move to get the phone to a lower price point. The Omnia 2 also features a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash, a G-Sensor, a microUSB port, a DivX software player, TV-Out capabilities, a 3.5mm stereo audio jack, the Opera Mobile browser, and strangely enough also features NTSC (720x480, 30fps) video recording. I'm presuming there's some sort of adaptor you'd have to use for video input - this is a rather curious feature to have on a smartphone. I'm all for cool technology, but I'm hard pressed to think of this being useful to more than a handful of "Why? Because I Can!" types. Lots of screen shots to be found in their gallery.

The audio is Greek to me - literally, it's two Greek guys talking - but mute the audio and enjoy the video. Finally, someone with a camera that can focus and decent lighting to boot! The Touch HD2 looks like an amazing device, and the updated version of HTC Sense (a.k.a. TouchFlo 3D) is ridiculously responsive and gorgeous on this device. The only weird thing I noticed was that they had a hard time doing the reverse-pinch to zoom out on the browser. I wonder why that wasn't working very well?

"What is Zune HD? Zune HD is a couple things. Number one, Zune HD is a music player with a nice music service. By the way, the same software will be available on Windows Phones and Windows PCs. You have that today on the PC, you'll see that in our phone environment as well."

Straight from Ballmer's mouth to your eyes and ears. Ballmer dropped this tasty morsel during an interview with CNET. Now of course there is no mention of WHEN, but like pocketnow.com, I believe it won't happen until the Windows Mobile 7 OS launches. Even the most powerful of the current crop of Windows Mobile devices probably would choke on a full Zune HD experience.

This is, without a question, excellent news. Microsoft desperate needs to integrate its different platforms in an intelligent way and this is absolutely one of them. I no longer use Windows Mobile (I switched to Android almost a year ago) and I was just saying today I can't see a reason I'd come back. This could be a reason. This would be a major upgrade over WMP at least!

The device-formerly-know-as-Whitestone, now dubbed the HTC Imagio? Yeah, it's definitely coming to Verizon, and the video above is a walk-through of the device.

Product Category: PDA Phone

Manufacturer: HTC

Where to Buy: Expansys [Affiliate]

Price: $699.99 USD

Specifications: From the Expansys site

Pros:

• Elegant design;
• Large, sharp and vibrant screen;
• The best, most "touch friendly" version of TouchFlo 3D yet;
• Excellent speakerphone;
• Nicely designed hardware keyboard will satisfy those for whom only a hardware keyboard will do.

Cons:

• Very expensive;
• Large and heavy.

Summary: As rival phone manufacturers continue to strive to emulate the success of the iPhone, HTC weighs in with its most sophisticated finger friendly WinMo Professional phones yet. The Touch Pro2, the topic of this review, supersedes last year's Touch Pro, with a revamped version of Touch Flo 3D, which strives to make stylus use a thing of the past. Have HTC been successful? Let's put the Touch Pro2 through its paces...

Read more...

This is an unboxing and first impressions video of the Bell Palm Treo Pro. This Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional touch-screen phone is a CDMA phone offered by Bell Canada. The 2.5 inch screen is 320 x 320 in resolution, and the device has a full QWERTY keyboard. It has built-in 802.11 WiFi, a 2 megapixel camera, GPS, Bluetooth, and a microSD card slot. No, it's not a new device, but Microsoft Canada contacted me and asked if I'd like to look at one, and I said yes. Read more...

Product Category: PDA Phone

Manufacturer: HTC

Where to Buy: Expansys [Affiliate]

Price: $469.99 USD

Specifications: From the HTC site

Pros:

• Offers lots of features for a "budget conscious" phone;
• TouchFlo interface is one of the best efforts yet to make WM phones "touch friendly";
• Bundled CoPilot Navigation software adds functionality and value.

Cons:

• Battery life is merely adequate;
• Button layout on front differs from the "standard";
• Back cover feels a bit cheap.

Summary:

Everywhere you look these days, it's "iPhone this" and "iPhone that". For better or worse, the iPhone is a genuine phenomenon and has set the direction for touch enabled phones to come. Windows Mobile 6.5 and 7 will bring a variety of finger friendly touch features, but what do WM phone manufacturers do until then? If you're HTC, you put a flashy touch enabled shell on a variety of phones at a range of price levels. The Touch Cruise is one of the more affordable versions. Does HTC's strategy make it an iPhone contender? Let's take a look... Read more...

Here it is: the latest and greatest from HTC in their Touch line, the Touch Diamond2. [Affiliate] This Windows Mobile Professional 6.1 smartphone has a 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A processor, 288 MB of RAM, 512 MB of ROM, and a gorgeous 3.2-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with a massive 480 X 800 WVGA screen resolution.

This is a 3G GSM phone, featuring HSDPA/WCDMA on the Europe/Asia frequencies of 900/2100 MHz. It's a quad-band 2G: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz are supported. It also has a built-in GPS, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, and a 5.0 megapixel camera with autofocus (no flash). There's a small front-facing VGA camera for video calling, and a microSDHC slot allows you to expand the storage memory on the device. Oh, and there's an FM radio and G-Sensor (accelerometre) as well.

It weighs 117.5 grams (4.15 ounces) with the batter, is 4.25 inches tall (107.85mm), 2.09 inches wide (53.1mm), and 0.54 inches thick (13.7mm). The 1100mAh battery allows for 300 minutes of talk time (3G) or 340 minutes of talk time (2G).

"The display is beautiful. Though not as vivid as the AMOLED display on the Samsung Impression QWERTY feature phone for AT&T, it's one of the nicer on the market. The mind-boggling 800 x 480 resolution is in itself impressive (a resolution shared with the HTC Touch HD and the HTC Touch Diamond2). The screen is very sharp (even tiny text is legible), colorful and bright. The phone's ambient light sensor can control display brightness and we found that it rarely raised brightness above 50%. Use manual brightness (at the possible expense of battery life) for an impressively bright display. The display is legible outdoors but does fade, making it hard to get a good sense of what you're shooting with the camera."

Yup, another HTC Touch Pro2 review - this time it's from our friends at MobileTechReview. They do a great job drilling down on everything that this new device from HTC has to offer...but they probably share my weariness in reviewing a swanky new phone and not being able to take full advantage of it in North America because it's stuck on pokey 2G speeds. I hope HTC evolves to the point where they can crank out a single phone that has all 3G bands in it, or can release a North American version at the same time as the Euro/Asian version.

"HTC used to equip their top range smart phones with wide, side sliding, full QWERTY keyboards that seem to have been largely successful, since the first, fifth generation device with the same form factor, the HTC Touch Pro2, has just been released. Unlike its predecessor, it´s larger rather than smaller and brings the round-shape design back into the game, chucking the edgy form all latest handsets of the same manufacturer stake on. The phone sports a huge 3.6-inch screen, awesome 5 row keyboard, mechanism that lets you tilt the display so you can see things better and a bunch of extra business features to drool over."

phoneArena does their usual excellent job looking at the latest and greatest from HTC: the Touch Pro2 [Affiliate]. This is HTC's flagship business professional phone, and it's both beautiful and big. phoneArena has a few gripes - apparently the call quality in terms of how others sound to you isn't that great - but the hardware is fast and responsive. And look at that keyboard! It practically screams "Type fast on me!". Video walkthrough after the break. Read more...

Keen on the new HTC Touch Pro2? [Affiliate] Chris Leckness over at MobilitySite put together a 26 minute video - wow, 26 minutes! That's a lot of detail to chew on - check it out!

My friend Chris Leckness over at MobilitySite got his hands on a Touch Diamond2 [Affiliate] and does a 17 minute walkthrough video of the device. Chris does a few size comparisons and gives the viewer a great overview of what you get. This device looks great - or, rather, the device that works as a 3G device in North America will be great...we just have to keep on waiting for it.

I'm a big believer in the wisdom of crowds - well, except when they're angry and carrying pitchforks and/or torches - so I wanted to put this question that I received to the community at large:

"Hi, Jason, I've had my T-Mobile MDA for 3 yrs., the logest I have ever had a PDA. I once was sold on the HTC TyTN II and the Xperia X1, but reading users' comments about cracking and being discontinued, I just don't know where to head. I looked over the T-Mobile G1, loved the sleek design, touch-screen,etc. but I am afraid I'd lose too much with the Android OS. I have Bibles and ebooks I read from daily. I am currently on weight watchers and found a perfect Point Calculator. I'm afraid I'd lose all my apps like that, not to mention Wor, Excel and Power Point. Here is what I am looking for 400 Mhz, 256 MB, GPS (would really like voice navigation.) Does any such animal exist? What, in your opinion, is the best out there today."

Weigh in with your opinions Pocket PC Thoughts readers! What would you suggest for this person?

"When a product proves to be a success, it´s fairly logical it sooner or later gets a successor. As it name suggests, the HTC Touch Diamond2 comes out to lend some more color to the otherwise nice, but aging model that was released last year. Hitting the shelves less than a year after its predecessor first appeared, the new smart phone doesn´t feature any ground-breaking novelties, but rather picks us where the previous model left off improving on blunders HTC made with the predecessor. It seems the model has gotten a bit fatter, but it sports larger screen, more powerful battery and system memory and has got an expansion slot."

phoneArea.com always has extremely detailed reviews, and this one is no exception: they take a really detailed look at the HTC Touch Diamond2 [Affiliate]. Their verdict? It's a bit of a mixed bag - they don't like the new "boring" look compared to the design of the first-gen Touch Diamond, and say it's difficult to see the screen in direct sunlight. That's a legitimate complaint, but I've yet to see a Windows Mobile device with a screen that's sunlight-friendly. Even OLED screens aren't sunlight friendly. Those minor complaints aside, phoneArea.com gives the Touch Diamond2 a 9/10 rating and it looks like it's ready for Windows Mobile 6.5 when it comes out later this year.

"Yesterday I managed to get my hands on a pre-release version of the Diamond2 which I'm going to use to start off my review of the handset. This pre-release unit is final hardware but there will be a few more tweaks to the ROM before the final version goes on sale in the next few days. I've had the Diamond2 for less than 24 hours so far and I have to say that I like what I see. I'm happy that the back is now flat rather than angular like the original Diamond and despite the larger screen, larger battery and the inclusion of the MicroSD card socket HTC have managed to keep the overall size and weight down so that it's not much bigger or heavier than the Diamond and still retains the slim-appeal."

Salivating over the forthcoming HTC Touch Diamond2? Then you'll enjoy this 18 minute long video that goes into great detail on this new device. I was shocked to see how quickly it booted up - evidently HTC has figured out a fairly major optimization here since it's still Windows Mobile 6.1, not 6.5. All in all, looks like a nice device - especially that screen resolution. Our affiliate partner Expansys is selling the Diamond2, Euro/Asia 3G frequencies, for $574.99 USD.

TmoNews has uncovered some release dates for a number of Windows Mobile phones on the US T-Mobile network. It looks like the HTC Snap will be available around July 1 and the Wing II, better known as the HTC Touch Pro 2, will be available around July 22. HTC has said that the Touch Pro 2 will have an upgrade made available to WinMo 6.5 later this year. I hope T-Mobile passes that upgrade along.

"Virtual Mobile is an online service allowing you to backup and control your whole mobile life. It allows you to securely remote control your mobile device and its data from any computer with an Internet connection. Virtual Mobile is a combination of all our award winning software. Secure your mobile device online with our new integrated Backup, Device Management and Security solution."

This is from the team that does Sprite Backup, but now it is online. Features include:

• Backup and manage your contacts, calendar, sms, photos, calendar and call history securely online.
• Control up to four phones from one VM account.
• Restore or Migrate your data across your phones.
• Remote Mobile Device Security like Remote Lock and Wipe
• Management of phone content / functions online

The beta is free, though I am sure there will ultimately be a cost. It supports Windows Mobile 5 and 6.x. If you are interested in trying it out, head over and sign up.

"After signaling its intent to follow Apple's wildly successful iPhone into the smartphone business, Dell's first attempts to produce a phone have been rejected by the carries for being too dull and lacking enough differentiation to stand out in a competitive environment, according to a report."

Ouch. Apparently the design could run either Windows Mobile or Google's Android platform. It failed to get any interest though. The research report suggests carriers either want the basic phone that is inexpensive or a Wow! device to compete with high end phones like the iPhone or G1. I suspect Dell did something that would have been loved by IT managers, but not consumers. Maybe they should let their AlienWare division have a crack at it.