A mobile WordPress.com application, finally!

Yes, my prayers have finally been answered. Well, not entirely, but sort of. WordPress has developed a native blogging application for the iphone/ipod touch. It’s not brand new by any means, since the application has sat in the App Store since its opening. When scrolling through the free applications, I suddenly saw the “W” icon. I was surprised, expecting to only see the Typepad app. How awesome of WordPress to develop for the iphone, and to keep it free!

Like almost every application for the iphone, it breathes the iphone’s style. Which of course is a good thing. Just a clean interface, showing you a few options. Unlike the Typepad application, the one from WordPress allows you to store drafts locally, so you can save unfinished stuff and keep it for later. That’s why Murray from Palm-Mac doesn’t like the Typepad application for the iPhone. The draft saving comes in handy especially with my iTouch, which doesn’t always has a connection. Write a post, save it as a draft, and post it when in reach of a wireless network. Sweet stuff. I also like the fact that you can upload pictures in your post, but I have yet to try everything out.

So all is good? Not really, but that’s just personal. It’s kind of ironic that I have a device that is perfect for mobile blogging (an always connected smartphone with a keyboard), and that I only can use my ipod for it. I have to admit that it’s a pleasure to use it and so is the software keyboard, but when having a hardware keyboard plus always wireless acces, I would defenitely like a client for my Windows Mobile device as well. Because the mobile WordPress website is only useful for a quick post. There’s no picture uploading, choosing a category or even saving your progress. Or maybe I’m asking to much, like always… I do know one thing for sure, and that’s that I will continue  covering the iPhone/iTouch stuff.

Live Mesh tech preview

I was aware of the Live Mesh service from Microsoft for a long time, but I never tried it. During the last few weeks, the service got a decent amount of attention from blogs like JK On The run and WMExperts. I kept reading about it in my feeds and it was also discussed a lot on the podcasts of the two websites mentioned earlier.

At a certain moment, I was eager to try it out. File syncing between multiple devices and five gigs of cloud-based storage sounds really good, don’t you think? Anyway, being free (at least at the moment) I went to the Mesh website on my smartphone. I had to log in with my Live Mail account, which I fortunately already have. After
logging in, I was told that I had to visit the site on my computer to set up the Live Mesh account.

Later on I indeed did this, only to discover that the beta was US-only. So nobody outside the US of A is able to taste some of the cloud goodness that Mesh offers. What a poor show. The only reason I can think of is that they simply don’t have enough capacity at the moment to support the whole world. That would be smarter then what Apple did with the App Store, 2.0 update and Mobile Me, since they weren’t able to cope with the huge demand. There you have it, I just joined the hype of kicking the dead horse that is Mobile Me…

Anyway, I just hope that this tech preview or beta will be available to the rest of us mobile geeks sooner rather than later. Although Live Mesh will probably be out of beta by that time. Can we have a basic, free service with 5 GB storage please? In that case, heavy users could opt for a paid plan with more storage and additional functionality (probably added afterwards). Because I for one am not a fan of paid subscription services (Mobile Me, I’m looking at you).

Back on track

Of course you have noticed the absence of new posts since my last post on the tenth of July. I took a (very) long vacation, and decided to drop my blogging activities as well. Now that I’m freshed up, it’s time to pick the ball up again. I hope to be more active on PDA Thoughts then before, but I always hope to do more blogging.

The problem is that I live a busy live, and I’m terrible at planning. Hence the reason why I find myself far too often wanting to write about a certain topic, only to be to busy or tired to actually do it. But I keep hoping to kick the posting up a notch. That would improve the quality of the blog and probably also the visitor count. Keep your eyes open for some thoughts this week.

3G iPhone lands in the Netherlands

Yesterday I was riding on my bicycle when passing this T-Mobile advertisement for the 3G iPhone. I must say that I was surprised to find out that we actually get it on 11 July (tomorrow), just like 21 other countries. To be honest I didn’t even knew that it was coming to the Netherlands, I always follow the iPhone launches on the iPhone Blog but the Netherlands remained unknown until now.

So the second gen iPhone is solely available on the T-Mobile network, and there is no unlocked version (as opposed to Belgium, where the law requires it). The contracts do seem to have decent plans, but I have yet to see how expensive the complete package will be.

Funnily, very few people Dutch seem to be aware about the iPhone. The people who do know it often don’t know that the 3G version is heading our way. On the Dutch websites, it is the complete opposite situation. A lot of major sites are preparing or alrady having an iPhone-optimized site. There is a nice site for streaming Dutch radio channels, and even our TV guide has made an optimized site in the Mac OS X Mobile style.

On the Dutch iPod Touch Blog, somebody has installed iTunes version 7.7 today to check out the AppStore. He stated that there are 500 applications available at the moment, with 25% being free. But he also writes to not get high hopes about the freeware, in terms of functionality and usefulness. Of the remaining paid programs, 90% will cost less than $9,99. This makes the potential of this already great concept even bigger. It will be easy, fast and (in most cases) cheap to install new stuff on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Simply brilliant.

 I just downloaded the 7.7 update, to be able to acces the AppStore. However, I couldn’t access it by the easy way by clicking on the iTunes Store. I had to follow a link on the Dutch iPod Touch Blog to get to the store instead. I had an interesting browse through the apps, I’m more glad then ever that I have the iPod Touch… I read in my feeds that the 2.0 firmware update for the first iPhone is also already online, but the paid update for the iTouch isn’t. Never mind, I can wait a day…

I feel drawn towards the iPhone more and more. Fortunately (for my wallet, that is), I have already a contract running until February. At that time, the Blogosphere will probably be filled with rumors about the third iPhone. So if I will go for the iPhone, I will wait for that one. Of course you can never predict what will happen, especially not with me, jumping back and forth with thoughts and devices. I hope to get my eager hands one some fine applications as soon as possible, maybe even to write reviews about them. Let’s see what happens.

New PocketMac products

Tim from PocketMac sends me frequent updates about new software products, and they have released a few in a short period. Unfortunately, I can never test and review their products as I don’t own a Mac. However, I might consider buying one when it’s time to ditch my current laptop. But that will take another year or two I’m afraid. I would sure be glad to dump Vista, the resources-eating, need-to-install-drivers-for-everything crappy operating system that failed to be a worthy follow-up to XP.

Now that I have complained again about the big ‘V’, it’s time to get back to the new software. The first application is one that I have received a notification about earlier on but I simply hadn’t got the time to put it up my blog.

PocketMac AudioExtractor

“PocketMac AudioExtractor goes to work every time you open a YouTube video in your Safari web browser. Within a fraction of the time it takes to play the clip, PocketMac AudioExtractor grabs the audio and converts into an iTunes-compatible format. It then copies that file into a special playlist within iTunes. And you’re all set! You can then…

…sync the audio the next time you hook up your iPod…

And then you can hear the audio from your favorite clips when you’re running, in your car or any place you plug in your iPod.”

PocketMac AudioExtractor works with a lot of sites (eight to be precise), and I really like the functionality. In fact, as I’m not able to use the software, I searched for similar software for Windows. I found a number of (free) applications, but none of them are as convienient as AudioExtractor.

PocketMac MacThemes for BlackBerry

“If you’ve ever wished that your BlackBerry could look like your Mac, we have great news for you…  …we’ve crafted a new tool so that you can give your BlackBerry the look and feel of a Mac — all the icons and images you love. The PocketMac MacTheme™ for BlackBerry is available right now and will work on almost all of the BlackBerry handhelds available today. Here’s how to choose the right one for your device…“

Having Crackberry.com in my feeds, I get the impression that BlackBerry users love themes. So I’d understand that the people with both a Mac and a Crackberry would love to turn their little handset in a mini-Mac with MacThemes…

PocketMac RingtoneStudio for iPhone

“If you’re like most iPhone users, you’re addicted to it. The web browsing. The music. Everything. But there’s one thing that’s been missing……the ability to personalize your phone with your own ringtones simply and fast!

That’s where PocketMac® RingtoneStudio^TM for iPhone comes in.

It’s the first tool to allow you to easily create ringtones from practically any multimedia file — from QuickTime movies to unprotected music files of all types.

What’s even better, there’s no crazy iPhone hacking required. Your iPhone doesn’t even have to be connected when you’re creating your ringtones.”

I happen to know that Mac-owner are already able to create custom ringtones with the application Garageband. This RingtoneStudio is a nice addition if you want to rip sounds from movies or songs.

That were the new applications for the happy Mac/BlackBerry/iPhone owner among us, stay tuned for more ‘PDA Thoughts’ about their products. By the way, did you notice that PocketMac likes to play with capitals like Apple does?

The future of Digital Rights Management

One of the lectures I attended was about the future of Digital Right Management. The lecture was given by Jan van der Meer, ‘Director Standardization’ at Philips and also president of the DRM workgroup within the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). This is somebody who has been involved with the standardization of audio and video compression within MPEG. Right. So this was somebody who knew what he was talking about.

I sure was interested what he had to say about the future of DRM, especially since you might know that I have raved about Apple and what I saw as their walled garden. My protest about Apple aside (as I wasn’t right on a few things), I hate DRM restrictions and everybody who makes them or puts them on their content. As with a lot of things in the (mobile) market, there isn’t an easy answer to it. In a world of piracy, it is logic that creators want to protect their content. But DRM is far from perfect, let alone secure. From my point of view, content restrictions are annoying for its users but not even a small threat for hackers. Since the restrictions are meant for the latter, DRM is more of a problem then a solution.

But let’s get back to the lecture. First, he explained a lot about the history of both DRM and the Open Mobile Alliance. Second, Jan van der Meer explained how the process of securing the content works. He focused on encryption with mobile devices like phones. Very interesting, it’s always nice to find out how something works. But as the title of this post has already revealed, his last (and for me most important) part was about what the future of DRM will be.

 

The future

 

Before you get high hopes: don’t. There is no answer to the question of how the future of content restriction will look like. He did stated the obvious by saying that the DRM technology has come a long way since its start, and that nowadays advanced DRM technology is available. According to Jan, it’s way ahead of the current market’s requirements. He states that there is no major market need for sophisticated DRM features. Err, right. A personal thought of me is, that if this technology will continue to improve in the future, might it become less cumbersome to its users? At least it is a hard needed improvement.

Since Jan van der Meer had nothing else to tell about the digital rights future that was interesting, I asked him why he thought that DRM would stay, since a number of content selling companies offer DRM-free stuff. I got a pretty standard answer, but it is fair enough. I quote: “The music industry will always need some kind of content protection. It will be a less positive experience for the customers, but otherwise the music industry will die.” I bet you saw that one coming…  As I said before, I am very unhappy with DRM messing up the user experience, but it is still needed.

Spb Insight troubles

Although I really like Spb Insight, I have had a fair amount of trouble with it. From having difficulty with updating certain feeds on WM Professional, to long loading times of images within articles on WM Standard. Otherwise I really like this reader, so I take these niggles for granted. However, today my rss reader pissed me off.

During the morning, I fired up Insight to update my feeds as usual. Only this time, I was greeted by the Spb Insight logo together with the “tap to enter new channel” message. All my feeds and articles were gone. I checked the location on my expansion card to check if the data was there, but unfortunately the folders were empty. So no faulty expansion card recognition or something like that.

So without finding the cause of this error, I had to set everything straight. Insight has a proper feeds search engine, but of course it won’t find every tech site’s feed. So off to the laptop, browsing to every site to search for the little RSS logo, click on it and type in the url on my smartphone. Sigh.

After adding three feeds that could be found through the search engine, I updated them to check how much news I had missed. Apparently there was a download problem, as the progress bar didn’t move for quite some time. After cancelling and restarting the update, the same occurred. So I reinstalled and registered Insight, and now I hope that the problem is finally over.

Press Play 2008

I recently attented to a congress in the Netherlands about the future of mobile publishing. Press Play is an annual event, organised by students from my media study. It attracts a bunch of corporate people and marketers, who seek for inspiration in the mobile age. The congress consisted out of a number of lectures and the topics varied from Blackberry applications to digital rights management. Being kind of a geek (or gadget aficionado ), this was a no-brainer for me. And since I study journalism and have a blog this was a nice opportunity to write about the event.

Although being a Dutch event, I heard enough stuff that is worth mentioning on my blog. Unfortunately, I could only attend to three of the twelve lectures (as you had to choose). Andrew Tipton from Blackberry held the lecture “How mobile applications will change the future”. It was already full when I checked, grumble grumble… These are the three lectures that I went to, I will write a (small) article about each of them:

• The power of the small screen.
• The role of Digital Rights Management.
• The influence of mobile advertising on privacy.

On a less serious note, I couldn’t help but check out the devices being used during the congress. Not a lot of people were using their devices, except for a few laptops. Here’s the surprisingly low stack of smartphones:

- 1 HTC TyTN;

- 1 HTC TyTN 2;

- 1 Nokia N82;

- 3 Nokia N95’s;

- 1 Palm Treo 500v;

- 1 red Blackberry Curve;

- 2 Blackberry Pearls.

That’s all for today people!

Too many touch phones?

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit tired of hearing about all these Windows Mobile touch-like phones that never seem to stop coming out. I may have been a first generation HTC Touch lover, but I got rid of it in favor of a keyboard device. Now that doesn’t mean that these touch phones aren’t good or something, but a large amount of device have come out with not much innovation (besides the specs in some cases). The lack of a physical keyboard on the HTC Touch Diamond might put me off personally, but it has some nice addictions like the new TouchFLO, GPS and accelerometer. Obviously, the keyboard from HTC Touch Pro would suit me better- and so would the expandable memory from the Pro.

But to which devices am I referring with the title of this post then? Well: the LG KS20 (Prada 2 methinks), the Asus Lamborghini Zx1, a number of recent E-TEN devices and the Samsung Omnia. There are probably some more, but I can’t think of them at the moment. I hesitated to mention the Xperia X1 because it’s yet another device tweaked for finger usage, but on the other hand it has some innovative features like the high resolution screen and curved sliding system. At first I was exited about the X1 just as much as the next WinMob guy, but unfortunately Boy Genius says that the keyboard pretty much sucks. So that’s a no-go for me then…

So the latest addiction to this family is the Samsung SGH-900i Omnia, which was the reason why I wrote this (after seeing the demo’s). Judging from the demo, the homescreen looks to be drag ‘n drop type of thing with room for pictures, appointments and alike. I could be completely wrong, but what the heck should it be otherwise? If I’m right, it still needs to prove it’s usefulness. Maybe I’m just being negative about this, but I have seen far to much videos with fingers tapping all kinds of stuff to be drooling all over it.

Then there is some kind of menu, with icons and a lay-out that looks like a straight rip-off from the LG Prada/Viewty (picture is from the Viewty menu). So you built you own GUI, complete with some cute menu interface. Even if you had designed your own menu, it would still be nothing important. As instead, you think it’s so exciting that you show it off in your demo. For crying out loud. Six months from now, these manufacturers still expects us to shout of joy when seeing large, finger-friendly icons simply thrown upon the WM core. They should focus on doing something new (I don’t dare to say revolutionary), that strategy could work out better than playing ‘catching up’. Until they do this, I will remain sick and tired about all the buzz around new touch-like devices…

The specifications of the Omnia are nice, but every Windows Mobile users knows that you need more then that in order to create a good smartphone. HSDPA connection provides speedy internet, and the 5 MP camera is still unique in this part of the phone world. Thumbs up for that, but not really a surprise for a high quality cameraphone manufacturer like Samsung. Optical joystick, same as the one on the i780. That means I don’t like it. 3.2 inch screen, larger than the common 2.8 “. 16 whole gigs of storage, which certainly knocks the pants off the 4 GB Touch Diamond. All in all, great stuff, but I’m still not getting excited.

Is it just me? Several months ago I went crazy over the Xperia X1’s features, and know I don’t give a rat’s ass about specs. I think that leaving the touch-interface away would make things only worse. So would adding a keyboard to the mix make it attractive to me? Dunno. Maybe I’m seeking for a unified interface on Windows Mobile, while being finger friendly at the same time. Something like Windows Mobile 7? I think that the current iterations of these manufacturer-created interfaces just don’t cut it. I’m not even eager to get my hands on TouchFLO 2. At the same time, I’m not unhappy with my current operating system or something. Just as I thought it wasn’t possible, things got even more confusing.

 

iPod Touch review

 

 You might know the drill here at PDA Thoughts, no matter if a device is old(er) or already reviewed by many websites, I will still do a review-ish post to give my opinion about it. This weeks toy: the iPod Touch aka the little brother of the iPhone. I just split the topic in a number of parts in order to get an overview. 

The box

The box is tiny, with a real size picture of the Touch on it. An AC-charger is nowhere to be found, which is a bad job for such a expensive toy. According to an employee from my local Apple Store, they did this because people who frequently buy a new ipod end up with a lot of these chargers. They also have compensated this with the prize, which I don’t believe for one bit. They dare to ask up to 40 euro’s for just an USB to AC adapter, and the prize surely didn’t went down that much.

The design

Being an Apple product, one can not go without mentioning the design. And as usual, it’s stunning. The black front with glass screen, the amazingly thin sides and shiny back which is known to get covered up in scratches. The somewhat strange looking power button on the top looks awfully thin, but after weeks of thorough use I can say that it’s robust enough. There is a light sensor on the front to determine the screen brightness, and it’s so well implemented that you will only see the little black dot when holding the device in the sunlight. A 10+ for the best looking mp3-player on the market.

The touchscreen

This is one the main strengths of this ipod, with the multi-touch capability and eye-candy. It feels really nice when touching it, better then say, touching the HTC Touch. I immediately reduced the screen brightness to half, with the auto-setting on. Still, the screen is really gorgeous. It could also be the combination of the black background with the colorful icons, but if you lay the Touch down and watch at it from a disctance or angle, it doesn’t seem so be a screen at all. It looks more like a picture, so bright and clear. The device is snappy and the multi-touch technology feels natural. But it’s obvious that the iTouch/iPhone had to feel so natural in order to become successful. How amazing that such a bright screen doesn’t consume much power.

The speed and memory

Being a music aficionado, I opted for the largest amount of memory currently available (32 GB that is). Due to the flash-based storage of the iTouch the device isn’t even a bit thicker than the  16 GB model. Pretty awesome if you ask me… Other advantages of the SSD memory are higher speeds, and lower battery consumption. So you can browse through your cover flow as much as you like, without a single slowdown. And you can do it for a really long time with this neat battery life. It will not beat your previous iPods, but this isn’t strange with the large screen, Wifi and operating system. Back to the 32 GB again. My previous iPod, which I replaced with my smartphone, was an iPod Photo with 30 gigs. I couldn’t even fill it up half, but then again I didn’t play movies on it. Now with the iTouch I have also 30 gigs of free memory, because of the operating system and software updates.

The overall experience

Great. That is to say it in the way Apple advertises; i.e. short, simple and effective. Apart from the odd behaviour that occurs at times when browsing or creating an on-the-go playlist, the iTouch works as it’s supposed to. Fluid graphics and almost non-existent waiting times allow you to do want you want to do- and fast. Tap, tap, tap and push the home button. Although being so simple, it doesn’t become boring. I don’t miss the five way d-pad, but I’m pretty sure I would miss it if it was my main device (like the iPhone would be in that case). I’ve become accustomed to being able to use my devices without looking, and I can’t archieve this with Apple way of navigation. Not that this is a problem for my multimedia device, but it would certainly be one if it was my phone. Again, the people at Cupertino have done a great job.

Conlusion

When compared to my regular reviews, this one might be a tad short. However, I have covered everything that matters with this device. Sacrificing a bit of portability by carrying two devices, I have a better user experience. The battery of my phone will last longer now that I don’t use it for music/video/pictures, and of course I have more free memory left. I can really enjoy multimedia now like it should be, with a near flawless experience. Plenty of memory and long battery life make up for the extra device in my pocket. My smartphones might not stay very long with me, but I just hope that this iPod does.

Yet another toy: iPod Touch

I have just taken a step back in the word of convergence, and one step into the magic world of Apple’s mobile Mac OS X. You already read the title, so it’s clear that I’m not talking about the iPhone. Because a) it’s still not available here in the Netherlands, and b) I have no intentions to go for the jailbreaking way. Being tied to a one year contract at the moment, I wouldn’t be able to get the iphone officially either. So after considering my options and some playing at the Apple store, I obviously got hold of an iPod Touch. The high-end 32 gig model that is of course.

So I now own an HTC Touch, S620 and iPod Touch? Well, no. I sold the Touch because I don’t want to have unused gadgets. So the waiting for the WinMob 6.1 update isn’t going to happen either. Not that the update is available anyway, it should be one of the first devices to get it but until now only the TyTN 2 has received the awaited update. But I’m going a tad off-topic now.

The iPod Touch will not (partially) replace my S620 with it, of which I have yet to write my review (soon, I promise!). That is because I have been very happy with the physical keyboard of my smartphone. I think I wouldn’t be able to go back on a touch screen-only approuch. I will use it for the heavy multimedia usage with my entire music collection and a good couple of movies/series. The five added applications and stuff like the famous Safari browser should also give me some more insight about this particular operating system.

Last but not least, the upcoming Appstore is also why I decided to buy this mp3 player with pda-capabilities. Reading a lot about the very promising future of this platform on websites like the iPhone Blog and RoughlyDrafted Magazine, I know that the Ipod Touch and iPhone will become premium gaming devices with third parties. With more power than a PSP and famous game developers signing in for the SDK, the demo’s alone already won me over on this front. My focus is much less on the traditional kind of applications, with the limited connectivity of the Touch. And at the moment, I don’t even have a wireless network at home to gain advantage of the Wi-Fi. I know, it’s sad. So stay tuned for the review which is coming tomorrow.

iPhone 3G: not so exciting release

At the moment, everybody is all over the second generation iPhone. And to be honest, it deserves that attention. However, I must say that I didn’t thought the release was exciting. I didn’t follow Job’s keynote live, I read about all the happenings at WWDC later via RSS.

So why am I not excited about the iPhone 2.0? Well, I’m sure that if I ever get my hands on it, I will go mad about it. But it’s just that everything the new iPhone brings is already old news, leaked out via rumors. We heared about the 3G settings, the GPS and the casing. Poor Murray over at Palm-Mac is afraid of the reactions from the WinMob camp, because they called the device ‘fatty’ when they saw it. I think it looks pretty neat, except for the 16 gig version which ships in white. I agree with you about that, Murray.

So mister Jobs brought out another awesome phone, which will probably continue to shake up the industry (that’s good for everybody).  Yesterday I wasn’t exactly shouting of joy, because all the details mentioned were already public in our blogosphere. I’d say that I need a few good review of the device to get my appetite started… I just checked the new commercial out, the link I found on the iPhone Blog.

Picture courtesy of the iPhone Blog.

New Windows Mobile devices

 The HTC Raphael aka Touch Pro

So the anticipated HTC Raphael turns out to be the Touch Pro. This is a logic name, as I can’t imagine it being the successor of the TyTn 2. Why? Well, to begin it lacks the tilting mechanism that makes the TyTn 2 so great. I really hope that this feature will stay in future devices. It also has a lot less buttons than the TyTn 2, which reveals the position of the device. By that I mean more buttons vs. clean look, functionality vs. design, professional vs. consumer, etc. The remaining 4 buttons (minus navigation key) are touch-sensitive, the whole front looks like the Diamond. Quite impressive is the separate number row on the keyboard, which might improve typing. I think the Touch Pro bridges the gap between the powerful business-type devices and the consumer devices, which lack some features but have a better design.

I won’t discuss the specifications, as they are good (at least on paper) but widely available on the web. One last thing about the Touch Pro; its keyboard slides out to the left, whereas the TyTn 2 slides to the right. I did some research about the keyboard slide directions, below are the HTC devices with a side slide-out keyboard.

• HTC Wizard: slides left.
• HTC Herald: slides right.
• HTC TyTn: slides left.
• HTC Titan (Sprint Mogul): slides right.
• HTC TyTn 2: slides right.
• HTC Touch Pro: slides left.

If you look at which side the keyboards slide out to, you will see that it is completely random. Do they do a coin flip to decide the side or something? I would prefer such a device to slide out to the right, maybe because I’m right-handed. But the Touch Pro is back at the left sliding again. HTC, please keep it consistent in order not to confuse us, okay? Thank you.

Four new E-TEN Glofiisch devices

These days, if you want to spell a device’s name right- you have to spell it wrong. I don’t know why the manufacturers even bother, it’s probably a market thing. Anyway, it causes me headaches and I constantly think I made some kind of mistake… Apparently E-TEN launched some new “HTC-inspired” smartphones; they are all different but all very much a HTC Touch lookalike (except for one which is so ugly that it can’t hide its identity). Not every E-TEN device is ugly, but to be honest most of them are. To match their mostly stolen inspired design, a finger friendly 3D cube has been inplemented in WM 6.1. Where did I heard that before? Never mind. To finish the job, they either put Spb Shell in the rom or stole the ideas of that software as well. I’m sure not everyone will agree with me as HTC as “borrowed” the idea for the Touch from Apple, but to make a clone of a clone is a bit ridiculous. The specs are not special, aside from a dual-SIM feature. But I have to give them credit for one thing though: the VGA screens. These babies are to be found on most E-TENs, which is definitely a plus. I consider mentioning the digital mobile TV as well, but I’m still not very fond of that concept. At least not in it’s current form. A lot of these digital mobile TV devices carry the antenna which makes them look like a radio, and it will probably take some time before this mobile TV technology is adopted by the carriers. And don’t dare to think about prices, some kind of flat fee idea sounds reasonable but then again new services are almost always expensive. But where are the keyboards? It seems as if the next generation of E-TEN custumers simply don’t need them. Good for them, but it makes them less appealing to me. I hope I haven’t been too harsh on these phones, it’s just my opinion. One last thing: like HTC should get some consistency on the keyboard front, E-TEN should do the same when it comes to branding. These codes just don’t make any sense.

Check it out from left to right: The good (two Touch clones), the bad (a Touch/radio clone) and the ugly (enough said).

Hands-on: Samsung i780

Yesterday I was in one of my favourite electronics stores again, where I found a demo unit of the Samsung i780. I was eager to try the device, as the people from PDA247 recommended it. Of course this phone has been reviewed already by a lot people/websites, so I only did a quick hands-on to give my opinion about it. I snapped a quick picture with my S620, which did a fairly good job with its 1.3 MP camera.

The look and feel

When walking by, the i780 immediately grabbed my attention with its nice looks. The design isn’t special by any means, but it’s just right. The plain black with silver/grey accents create a stylish, business-like look. Like always, seeing a device in real life says more than the picture. So that’s good. Even attached to a cable, I could get a good feel of the phone. Although it is kind of big, it’s real thin and light. However this doesn’t guarantee you that it will lay in your hand nicely, but this one does. I may not have had it in my hands for a long period (5 minutes max), I’m sure that I would be able to type on it two-handed just fine. And I almost forgot to tell that it feels pretty solid!

Using the device

Now you didn’t actually think that I would skip mentioning the infamous joystick, did you? When seeing it on pictures and reading about it, it already put me off. After using it for a short period, I can fully say I’m right. A lot people might like it, I simply don’t. It used the pointer-mode by default, which I found to be either too slow or too fast- and inaccurate (or am I clumsy?). I experimented with the speed settings, but I still wasn’t able to use it with comfort. Switching to four way-mode I wasn’t very satisfied either. Sweeping my way through Windows Mobile Professional seemed tiresome, a regular d-pad would have been much faster in this case. You want to hear more? Tactile feedback, or rather the lack of it. Except for using the center button, you can’t feel how much you clicked- as some sweeps are faster then others. I always do a lot of actions without looking, because I know which buttons to press at what moment. But unfortunately that isn’t possible with the i780, making it a device less suited for usage when walking or multitasking.

Moving on, the device feels pretty snappy but that is subjective and we are talking about a device with zero data on it (except for the out of the box stuff of course). The screen looks really nice, the 320×320 resolution is sharp and I always like to see flush touch screens. I was less happy about the keyboard, which looks like those on the Blackjacks but I never used those. At first sight it looks spacious with the keys being spread around the available space, but they are small and (feel like they are) made of plastic. I think I’m spoiled with the keyboard of the S620, because I haven’t found a device too date with a front facing keyboard that I liked better (maybe the Motorola 9Qh?). I did read that most of the keys have double functions like a task manager and a quick menu for Windows Media Player. That kind of convenience is hard to beat.

Conclusion

 I might not buy this device because it doesn’t suit me, I still think it’s a great smartphone. The specifications are great, you get plenty of bundled (quality!) software- at a price which is hard to beat. Being around 450 euro’s, this is kind of unique for such a complete device with not much flaws. I can only hope Samsung continues to make good smartphones like this one, as we need good competitors against HTC- in order to keep the innovation going. Off to the next device I can get my greedy hands on…

Where is the industry heading?

Lately rumors the news about a new Qualcomm product popped up everywhere. A number of things aren’t clear to me, but I do know that this could be a game changing thing. That’s why I wander where the Windows Mobile industry is heading.

Qualcomm Snapdragon

Qualcomm spread the word that they will release a $299 handset which runs on Linux and is based on their Snapdragon mobile chip set. First they call their chips MSM72xx, and now it’s Snapdragon?! The real deal here is that articles mention it being a mini-laptop, but in the picture (source: Engadget) it looks like it could be a phone as well. To go even further, I would say that this device looks like an iClone with touch-sensitive buttons.

However the device isn’t the important thing, Qualcomm said it will bring out these kind of device running on Windows Mobile as well. It will go head to head against Linux powered devices, so I assume were talking about MID’s? A lot of mobile internet devices run on Linux, because the desktop Windows system is way too resource intensive. But Qualcomm calls WM 7 more laptop friendly, whatever that means. Using Windows Mobile allows them to build a small and streamlined device, and it will probably run quick too. Does it means that will be seeing these powerful (1GHz) Snapdragon chipsets in smartphones as well?

Windows Mobile 7

 I’m anxious to find out what they mean with ‘ more laptop-friendly’. After all, one of the biggest faults of Windows Mobile is the fact that it’s a scaled-down version of the PC platform. Version 7 should increase usability, in order to prevent users from changing platform and to attract new users with a more user-friendly image. How does more laptop-friendly fit in with that? It should be more phone-like instead. I can think of a few possible situations:

• There will be a special version of WM 7, meant for mini-laptops. It will be a different platform like Professional and Standard, which isn’t a good thing with the current fragmentation trend. The lack of compatible WinMob software might be critical. Can anyone say, Foleo?

 

• The touch screen operating system WM Professional will be more friendly for mini-laptops. It will be very hard to combine that advanced aspect with higher usability, the latter being one of the key features of version 7. The developers at Redmond might find a way to combine the two, which should create a very smart os. Possible? No idea. However there is an image which support this theory, one of the leaked images of WM 7. If you look at it, you will see both finger friendly controls and a top bar filled with ultra-small icons which looks like Office 2007. This could be a simple mashup, or they would have to use some kind of zooming system.

 

• WM 7 will be a touch screen-only, even more pc-like platform. That means that the Standard platform dies, something not impossible to think as very few Standard devices are being released nowadays. Windows Mobile would be back at where it started: touch screen-only devices with a hard to use interface. This situation has the least chance to happen (WM Standard dying aside), as Microsoft must know by know that they will lose a lot of users if nothing changes. That’s why all the rumors around version 7 being iPhone-esque popped up.

So there you have it, my view of the possible directions of Windows Mobile. Am I making any sense, or do you have other idea’s? Be sure to let me know.