MobilityMinded » Windows Mobile Standard

Windows Mobile 6.5 on the HTC Snap – Impressions and thoughts

Remo Knops — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:00:39 +0000

The HTC Snap is one of the few Windows Mobile Standard devices that received an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5.

In this article I would like to have a look at the Windows Mobile 6.5 improvements for Windows Mobile Standard devices and compare these with the findings of the HTC Touch2 review, with Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional pre-loaded on the device.

1. Homescreen

The left screenshot above shows the todayscreen of the HTC Snap running on Windows Mobile 6.5, while the right screenshot is taken from the HTC Snap review a while ago, at that time powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard. As you can see the changes are marginal, with the only difference is the blue/orange Windows Phones branding (background) vs the green Windows Mobile 6.1 branding.

In addition I could find another minor change in the basic Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard layout of homescreen. An Internet Explorer for Mobile favorites sliding panel has been added. With help of this sliding panel you can quickly access, the mobile favourites directly from your homesreen (without opening the browser first).

However adding this type of sliding panels was already possible under Windows Mobile 6.1, as you can read in the article of Mike Temporale, Windows Mobile MVP and Editor in Chief of MobileJaw: “Customize the New Sliding Panel Home Screen on Windows Mobile 6.1” There I would personally classify this change as a minor one.

But how does it relate to the new Windows Mobil 6.5 Professional homescreen I have outlined in the “HTC Touch2 review – Windows Mobile 6.5 and TouchFLO 3D combined !”

Matthew Miller, Editor on ZDNet Smartphoes and Cellphones blog, described the new Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional homescreen directly after the announcement as:

“The Today screen is the sliding panels we saw on the non-touchscreen Windows Mobile Standard 6.1 devices that finally appears on touch screen devices. IMHO, Microsoft should have rolled this out at the same time as the non-touchscreen version over a year ago. I think this is a pretty functional display, but if you are using a device like the HTC Pure you won’t even see it at first because HTC has their TouchFLO 3D selected by default instead.”

Personally I do think that Matthew Miller makes some excellent points here, but the bottomline is that both implementations of Windows Mobile 6.5 have the same “sliding panels” feeling.

2. Microsoft MyPhone

Microsoft MyPhone is a free backup- and restore service which is bundled with every Windows Mobile 6.5 device. I do have a Microsoft (Hosted) Exchange account with Sherweb, where I keep my calendar, contacts, e-mails, etc. In addition I use Microsoft MyPhone to backup my “Text Messages”, “Photo’s” and more all within the constraint of the maximum storage amount if 200 MB. I live by the rule to backup to multiple sources and via multiple methods in order to keep my data safe.

On October 6th, the Windows Phones launch day, premium features for Microsoft MyPhone were announced. A more extensive article about the premium service and new features is written by my colleague and good friend Paul Willen.

Another example that I have used Microsoft MyPhone for is the recent migration of my girlfriend’s phone contact data from a Nokia 6300 to a Windows Phone. Now everything the contact data is safely stored in an online environment and it’s easily managable. As I concluded already in the article “Windows Live Mail pushed to Windows Phone” Microsoft MyPhone significantly contributes to a free Exchange-like user experience on your Windows Phone.

3. Windows Marketplace for Mobile

The second services which is bundled with Windows Moile 6.5 is called Windows Marketplace for Mobile, and is currently only exclusively available on Windows Mobil 6.5 devices. In two articles this service, and its underlying concepts, is covered quite well: “Windows Marketplace for Mobile coming to Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.0” and “Windows Marketplace for Mobile – Payments and Operators “.

Remarkable is the fact that the Windows Marketplace for Mobile on my HTC Snap is empty, and with help of the readers I’m trying to find out the possible cause. At first the development for third party Windows Mobile Standard is significantly lower that the development for Windows Mobile Professional. Second the Dutch market is relatively small, and therefore it might not interesting for a developer to be included in the Dutch catalogue. That is my personal reasoning why the Windows Marketplace for Mobile is empty.

Are there any othe HTC Snap owners who can confirm the situation, or have another experience. I’m interested to find out more abot this, so all help is highly appreciated.

4. Internet Explorer for Mobile

In the ”HTC Snap review – the ultimate messenger ??” I outlined tht Internet Explorer 6 for Mobile was already included in the Windows Mobile 6.1 retail-prodution-ROM at that time. With the upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 the behavior of Intenet Explorer for Mobile has changed a little, probably aimed at a more similar experience on touch- an non-touch devices.

While there are some slight changes in the Internet Explorer for Mobile GUI (compared to the previous version), the main change is the automatic switching to full screen mode, optimizing the use of the total screen and get rid of the toptaskbar and the soft keys on the bottom of the screen.

I do understand the reasoning behind this change, but it is a matter of personal preferences if you will like it or not. Currently I haven’t made a clear decision, and it might take some time to get used to the new behvior. As you ca see I’m running a head to head comparion with the “old” Opera Mobile browser.

5. Other “minor” changes (for messaging)

In addition to the improvements desribed in the sections above, I noticed some other changes as well which I would like to highlight shortly. At first the command on the left softkey in Pocket Outlook is changed into “Reply All” which makes more sense for the heavy messengers.

Second it seems that the reply- and forward icons in Pocket Outlook have slightly changed. In addition at the initial set-up of my Hosted Exchange account with Sherweb I noticed in the screen where you can “choose the content you want to synchronize” that in addition to the options “contact”, “calendar”, “e-mail” and “tasks” the option “text messages” is included as well.

Synchronizing “text messages” will be part of the Exchange Server 2010 improvements for Windows Mobile, so I hope that Sherweb will soon migrate to Microsoft Exchange 2010.

Concluding thoughts on Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard

Let me start the conclusions by comparing the HTC Snap with the HTC Touch2 within the basic Windows Mobile 6.5 perspective / changes. Without any doubt the impact of Windows Mobile 6.5 is more severe for Professional “touch” devices, look for example at the lockscreen, and the new integrated start and settings menu.

The Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade for the HTC Snap however brings the services Microsoft MyPhone and more timely excusive Windows Marketplace for Mobile to the Windows Mobile Standard platform. I truly love Mirosoft MyPhone and hope to unravel the dynamics of my Windows Marketplace for Mobile findings.

As far as the new behavior of Internet Explorer for Mobile is concerned I haven’t made up my mind. Despite that it offers a more optimal use of the screen and a similar experience as Internet Explorer fo Mobile on the HTC Touch2, it is “different”.

Furthermore HTC has brought some minor improvements in the messaging area and upcoming Microsoft Exchange 2010 updates for Windows Mobile to the HTC Snap as well. Finally you can experience a noticable improvement in the battery life as well.

HTC a great many thanks for delivering the Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade and as a result “Quietly Brilliant” finetuning of the HTC Snap, the ultimate messenger !!

SBSH Facade 2.0 review – An excellent userinterface for Windows Mobile Standard

Remo Knops — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:05:15 +0000

SBSH Mobile Software has just released SBSH Facade 2.0, an essential application for Windows Mobile Standard that combines personal information management (PIM) and the graphical userinterface (GUI) in a clever way. In this article an overview of SBSH Facade 2.0 will be provided, and some of the key features are emphasized in a short step-by-step review format.

With the release on Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard and the introduction of Sliding Panels the user experience has significantly improved and you get more things done from the homescreen. In this review I will look also at how SBSH Facade builds further upon the Windows Mobile basics, and I will certainly look if and how I can get more things done from the homescreen on my Windows Phone.

SBSH Facade 2.0 step-by-step overview

In this section I will go through the SBSH Facade application in a step-by-step sequence, and I hope this will provide you with a good overview of the opportunities this clever application provides.

Let me start with the remark that during the installation process I have selected the “standard” options, so the screenshots you see in the review are the result from an out-of-the-box installation. Personally I do think that SBSH has done some great improvements on the graphical design part with: (1) a Windows Vista-like background and topbar, (2) New Icons for the counters on the HOME-screen.

1. Home

The screenshots above show you the SBSH Facade 2.0 HOME-screen, and I will describe the different building blocks of the HOME-screen with help of the right screenshot in portrait mode.

“The Home tab provides a single screen display and access to all of your phone’s vital information.”

At first you can see that the Windows Mobile topbar, which shows you the network- and cellular data coverage, is skinned in the same style as the background image and therefor it “integrates” nicely with the SBSH Facade application.

Below the topbar, you can see a slightly darker bar with the text HOME in bold capitals, with on each side another text. On the left- and on the rightside there are arrows, so it won’t be a big surprise that this is the “navigation”-bar to easily move through the SBSH Facade application. It works well on both a d-pad and a joggball, and it is a very natural way of navigating on a Windows Mobile Standard device.

Below the navigation-bar you see the selected profile (on the left) and the operator name (on the right). This information is shown on a slightly different location if you own a Windows Mobile device with a landscape oriented screen.

The next, larger building block of the SBSH Facade homescreen provides an overview of basic information, and has already some cleverness build in. On the right you can see the time (on the first line) and day of the week and date (on the second line). On the left you can see a summary of today’s weather when you have SBSH PocketWeather installed. In other words SBSH has done some excellent development work to integrate SBSH PocketWeather and SBSH Facade, and if I’m informed correctly the right side integrates with SBSH Clock as well.

The next block shows the text “No alarm set”, but if you do it shows you the time of the alarm and the time due to the alarm you have set. Again this is some basic information you probably want to access from your homescreen.

Below you will see a building block which is dedicated to the device status. It are widgets for (A) E-mail Count, (B) Missed Cals, (C) SMS Count and (D) Voicemail Count. In the screenshot you can see that there are 3 new/unread e-mails. Each of these counters gives you quick, one click access to Pocket Outlook, your Voicemail or Missed Calls screen of the standard Windows phone application.

Finally you see an overview of the upcoming appointments. You can scroll through this appointments by using the left and right command on the d-pad of your device.

Overall summary

Allright this is really a lot of information which is presented to the user on the “HOME” screen within SBSH Facade. Personally I really do like this ammount of information, because it combines the information that is important to you in a clever way.

Let me emphasize on the fact that navigation among the different building blocks is very easy and very natural for Windows Mobile Standard users, and it gives me a similar feeling as the widgets of SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 for Windows Mobile Professional devices.

2. Schedule

The second tab in the navigation bar is called “SCHEDULE” and this provides you a nice overview of appointments, birthdays, and if you like tasks on a daily view in your calendar. Furthermore you can see in the screenshots above that there is again a clever integration with SBSH PocketWeather, and probably not very surprising with SBSH Calendar or Webis Pocket Informant.

3. Tasks

I started this review with marking Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard “sliding panels” as reference point for benchmarking SBSH Facade 2.0. One of the major lacks I personally experience in the Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard “sliding panels” is the absense of a tasks-panel. In other words despite that I use tasks to order my personal- and professional life, there is no way to quickly access or manage tasks from the home-screen.

“The Tasks tab lists all your tasks divided by status and time groupings. With Facade tasks tab you can easily review your tasks from your device Home screen.”

SBSH Mobile Software has included a TASKS tab/screen in the SBSH Face 2.0 application, my compliments for that. Despite that the screenshots above show just some sample data I can quickly select a task and by clicking on it a sub-menu is openend with the following options: (1) show notes, (2) view details, (3) open tasks, (4) open calendar, (5) complete, (6) new task, (7) delete, and (8) reload view.

As you can see this is a complete set of actions to manage tasks from within SBSH Facade, without the need to open another application. To summarize this tasks-screen really puts a smile on my face !

4. Calendar

The screenshots above show the CALENDAR screen within SBSH Facade 2.0, and it mainly provides a monthly overview of your calandar. You can navigate really fast throught the upcoming months and years. Furthermore this CALENDAR screen perfectly integrates with SBSH Calendar or another PIM application.

5. Weather

The WEATHER screen/tab is only included in the “navigation-bar” if you have SBSH PocketWeather installed on your Windows Phone. On the SBSH Facade product page we can read about the SBSH Pocket Weather integration:

“When used along with PocketWeather, weather forecast is added across the Facade displays: (1) Current weather included as part of the Home tab, (2) weather icons and temperature values added to schedule tab and (3) full weather forecast tab is automatically added within Facade!“

6. Programs

The final tab of SBSH Facade is a familiar one, the PROGRAMS launcher, which is shown in the screenshots above. If I remember correctly this functionality was already part of the previous SBSH Facade 1.4 version. As you can see the icons of the last used applications is shown, so you can quickly relaunch them from within the PROGRAMS screen of SBSH Facade 2.0.

“Using the Programs tab you can create shortcuts to your favorite applications accessible from your device Home screen. Shortcuts can be customized to your favorite applications, or you can use one of Facade’s pre-defined smart shortcut buttons, counters and meters!“

As you can read above there are even some “custom” commands included by SBSH, for example reload SBSH Facade Homescreen, Rotate screen, Storage information and battery level.

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

Despite that Wikipedia is not a scientific reference, I would like to share the Wikipedia description of the word Facade:

“A facade or façade is generally one side of the exterior of a building, especially the front, but also sometimes the sides and rear. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning “frontage” or “face”.”

However in the case of SBSH Facade it is more than just some exterior beauty, despite the excellent new graphics make it even more eye-catching. SBSH Facade is cleverly connected with the underlying structures that go way beyond the exterior surface.

Tasks management within SBSH Facade 2.0

SBSH Facade is a true productivity tool that helps you to get more things done from your homescreen in line with the reasoning behind the sliding panels on Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard. But it even extends the functionality of the homescreen by including a TASKS screen and a PROGRAM launcher.

Especially the TASKS screen put a smile on my face, and I hope that in upcoming version we can see more functionality added in this tasks area. Personally I would like to see the getting-things-done tasks-improvements of the latest Webis Pocket Informant 9 release in future versions SBSH Facade as well.

Integration and personalization

Furthermore I would like to compliment SBSH Mobile Software with the excellent integration of SBSH PocketWeather, SBSH Calendar and SBSH Facade. SBSH Facade also integrates perfectly with PIM applications like Pocket Outlook and Webis Pocket Informant.

“In addition to the special integration, Facade can also host any other Home screen plugin (not only SBSH’s) within Facade tabs, even without special integration!”

My compliments to SBSH Mobile Software for the high level of widgetization, close integration with SBSH software and third party software.

Pricing and availability

You can download a trial version of SBSH Facade 2.0 directly from the SBSH Facade productpage or purchase a full version for a reasonable price of $14,95. If you already own a copy of SBSH Facade 1.x you can upgrade at a +/- 50% discount and get SBSH Facade for onyl $7,95.

Overall SBSH Facade 2.0 is a true productivity tool that helps you to get more things done from your homescreen, it cleverly integrates with other software, and gives the end-user the ability to completely personalize and customize SBSH Facade to the end-users’ own needs and preferences. At a reasonable pricepoint you simply can’t go wrong with this high quality application from SBSH Mobile Software.

Pocket Informant 9 for Windows Mobile released by Webis

Remo Knops — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:35:08 +0000

Webis has just released Pocket Informant 9 for Windows Mobile Professional and Windows Mobile Standard. Pocket Informant is my favourite PIM application for many years, and honestly I do believe that this is (one of) the best PIM application(s) available on the market. On the Pocket Informant 9 product page you can read the following description:

“Pocket Informant™ was the first full PIM (personal information management) for Windows Mobile in 2000. Windows Phone 6.5 now offers a more touch-friendly interface and Pocket Informant™ takes advantage of the new system level features to provide swiping and other gestures to maximize your finger friendly usage. With a scalable interface that can go between the touchable finger user interface, to a stylus use interface, all the way to a completely one handed interface Pocket Informant™ 9 works the way you want it to.”

Pocket Informant 9 New Features

You might think that the description implies that there was just focus during the development to take advantage of Windows Mobile 6.5. The feature list below clearly shows that there have been some excellent improvements, which are not Windows Mobile 6.5 related.

Windows Phone 6.5 Support 9 offers support for the new Windows Phone User Interface and data formats;
Getting Things Done (GTD) support in Tasks: (1) Inbox – Collect your tasks quickly, (2) Context Groups, (3) Project Groups, (4) Next Actions;
Starred Tasks Allows you to set a hotlist of tasks that you need to get to or visit quickly across your filters;
New One month Date Picker Based off the full month view giving you easy finger friendly movement and actions;
Free Time Finder In the Month View use the F-T-F to find free time in your schedule for an appointment;
Touch mode improvements throughout the app;
Editors are now touch friendly;
6.5 Only: Swipe left and right in Month View, Week, Date Picker to navigate between time periods;
6.5 Only: Swipe left and right in Editors to navigate between the editor tabs;
Bounce Scrolling;
PNG support Gives you more and better looking icons as well as a size filter within the icon picker;
Many more! There are many new features all over the place in Pocket Informant 9 – try it out to see for yourself!

At first great to see that the Getting Things Done method -originally introduced by David Allen- is applied to tasks management. Since I’m a heavy user of tasks, I really like this improvement, and foremost the ability to group related tasks. In addition there is the improvement to star tasks, to find them quickly. Again a feature that contributes a lot to the daily efficiency of the mobile professional.

But what if I own a Windows Mobile Standard device, without a touchscreen that fully takes advantage of gestures and swipes ?

“The Smartphone version works nearly identically to the Pocket PC version with only the following features not available: 12-key Touch Search, Drag and Drop, Touch Scrolling, Finger Time Picker and New Appointment Timezone. Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone versions are licensed separately. Windows Mobile 2003 is not supported.”

You can see that you still get a lot of new features and improvements for Windows Mobile Standard as well. If you would like to read through a complete list of new features you certainly need to check out the features section on Pocket Informant 9 product page.

Pocket Informant 9 Upgrade Schedule

Personally I do think that Webis provides a fairly reasonable upgrade policy for current Webis Pocket Informant owners:

FREE: Any Full Copy Purchased* On or After August 1 2009;
$10: Purchased Before August 1 2009 or other;
$10: Sidegrade between Pocket PC and Smartphone versions;

Also the full price is reasonable for non Pocket Informant users, since you get a great amount of useful features. Now it is just time to wait for October 6th since: “Windows Phones, Windows Mobile 6.5 & Windows Marketplace hit the market October 6th” What could go wrong if there is such great software already out there !!

Iliumsoft Screen Capture Update of a Freeware Application

Remo Knops — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:30:02 +0000

Normally I use SOTI Pocket Controller Pro if I need to take a bunch of screenshots for a review. But sometimes you need to take a screenshot on the go of your Windows Phone, without connecting it to your notebook or desktop. Iliumsoft Screen Capture is the perfect application to suite these needs.

On the Iliumsoft Blog an update of this freeware application was announced 2 days ago. Iliumsoft also know from the applications eWallet, ListPro and Newsbreak provided some additional information about the improvements of Ilium Screen Capture.

“The main goal was to bring the UI up to date with the latest version of the Windows Mobile OS. We also made a few tweaks to fix a couple bugs we found, and we gave it a new icon (woo hoo!) Yes, I know the MS Paint style icon we had before was super retro cool, but we figured it was time.” [ref01]

“We first built it as an internal utility back in the days when there weren’t any screen capture apps. After sending it to a couple folks for support purposes (”Can you do a screen capture of that error message?”) we found that people liked it. We decided we’d share it.” [ref01]

First I think it is awesome that Iliumsoft, a developer for the Windows Mobile platform from the first hour, also provides updates for their freeware applications. Another useful freeware application from Iliumsoft is “Tipster”, so give it a try as well !

You can download the updated Iliumsoft Screen Capture application for Windows Mobile Professional, Classic and Standard! Let us know what you think about this useful freeware tool!

Spb Geo Game for Windows Mobile reviewed

Mark Briggeman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:20:28 +0000

Last week Spb Softwarehouse announced their latest game: Geo Game. The goal of this fun game is to test your knowledge on the world’s capitals and national flags.

The game contains all the 234 flags, 235 capitals and 235 countries in the world and it is up to you to enter (or guess) them right. It is a great way of testing your knowledge or if needed, improve your knowledge or show off to your friends.

One thing I didn’t know was that not every country in the world has a capital and a flag. The FAQ on the Spb website answers that question for me:

Every country has its own flag. Most of the countries have official capitals with the following exceptions:
Tokelau consists of three tropical coral atolls and does not have a capital.
Nauru does not have an officially designated capital but Yaren (the largest city) is often considered the capital.

Vassili Philippov, COO of Spb Software says:

Getting to know all the countries in the world with their capitals and flags is something a lot of us always wanted to do, but never had the time.

Spb Geo Game grants the opportunity to test ourselves and study the world’s diversity in a fun and relaxing manner, within the few spare moments we have

Installation

Installation of the game is very easy. You can install it in two ways:

Download the executable file, connect your mobile device to your pc using Activesync or Windows Mobile Device Center, run the executable and follow instructions or:

Dowload the CAB file to your PC, copy it to your mobile device and use the File Explorer on your mobile device to install it.

The game starts !

After the installation you can start the game by pressing (or selecting if you have a non-touchscreen device) SPB Geo Game from your Start Menu.

Now you have to select Capitals or Flags to test your knowledge. Press Play to start the desired option.

Capitals

When you start the game, a counter is also started and you will have only one minute to complete the game. So, when you answer the question right, the correct answer is shown in the next screen on a globe.

If you answer it wrong, the wrong answer becomes grey and you have to guess again ! When you are done, the game returns to the first screen where you can choose to exit the game or play a game of Flags !

Flags

Flags works in the same manner as Capitals. A flag is shown and you have to choose the right answer. In the screenshots below, I had the first answer wrong (Solomon Islands) and the second one was right. You can see the wrong answer is now grey.

When you are done, the first screen will be presented with you personal High Scores, so you will have a challenge to beat them ! Guess I have to work on my knowledge of Flags in the world

Overall Wrap-up

Geo Game is most of all a fun game and great for testing your knowledge of flags and capitals of the world. The user interface is clear and easy to use. The only remark I have that the wrong answer is not clearly shown. Sometimes you have to look twice to see what the wrong answer is and meanwhile the clock is ticking ! I would like to see the wrong answer marked red or some other bright color.

You can download the game here: Spb Geo Game Download
If you like the trialversion, you can buy the game for only $4,95 here