Category: mobile-technology

Been meaning to write this one for a while, specially now Sam helped me solve both connection problems I was having in one go without even knowing it. So if you follow this guide and you should be able to do most of what you want with the windows mobile phone.

However there is a problem with some phones like my TouchHD. They have the wrong MTU setting and this sometimes depending on how you got your machine setup can make it unresponsive when trying to access the web. So if you have the problem of being able to ping but not access the web correctly now check the MTU size. I also got everything working with Bluetooth too instead of USB but its a lot more complex and battery life becomes a problem when you got Bluetooth on for 3 hours straight during a train journey.

Tethering on a Windows mobile phone is pretty simple and as far as I know its pretty much the same on Windows and the Mac. I know you can get those USB dongles but do I really want another contract? Not really thanks. Its a shame that Microsoft didn't give this platform much more attention because its actually pretty good in parts. I mean I couldn't imagine buying a phone which can not be tethered for internet access and mass storage.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

I expected a bill of about 120 pounds but not 220 pounds. The killer part is the roaming costs for data while in Las Vegas. I spoke to Orange about this bill and in the end grudgly they dropped 60 pounds off my next bill. Some would say I should have pushed for more but I couldn't prove I had not used the phone for data myself because I had installed and used a certain amount of data.

Be careful when roaming, I only used it to grab a couple of maps and twitter. Cory write a comment about his bill from India which was 1200 pounds.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Steve Ballmer talks about Windows Mobile 6.5 at the Mobile World Congress today. Pretty screenshots float around the web but honestly where the innovation and new features? Good thing this is a point release otherwise I'd be even more critical. I mean a cloud service for windows mobile phones? So what? I already backup and sync with both Plaxo and Google. A application store (because we never saw that coming) yes well ok nice, good there also keeping it open like the googlephone appstore. New version of Pocket Internet Explorer? Ummm Opera is well ahead of you guys and fenric (Firefox) is just days away from beta. New style lock screen and home screens? Why Microsoft haven't just bought the Point UI? I just don't know.

Don't get me wrong its all reasonable stuff from Microsoft. They have moved up a gear but there really not cooking on gas yet. Windows Mobile 7 better have some serious changes in it. Its frankly embarssing to move between the Touchflo interface and the standard Windows mobile interface. One minute your browsing around using your thumb next moment your using the edge of a finger nail because of the legacy windows mobile interface.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

So I have a new phone to add to the line up (watch the unboxing), the HTC Touch HD (far left). Its not like I'm collecting them, the ipod touch isn't really a phone at all (I just use it for reading rss feeds and ebooks but that may change now I got the Touch HD). After that there is my old phone the HTC Kaiser/Tytn II and finally my work phone the HTC Touch Diamond. Yes I like Windows mobile phones but I'm certainly still interested in turning the Kaiser into a Android phone some time soon.

So far the HTC Touch HD is good, the touch flo3D interface is so much faster that the Touch Diamond. Its also so much more usable with its extra resolution. Browsing the web using Opera is much more like the iphone browsing experience. I'm still typing faster with the stylus that my fingers right now, but I'm sure that will change soon. Thumbs up to the Touch HD right.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

This time things are less interesting. Because I'm on a 18 month contract with Orange and only done 15 months come Feb 14th I can only upgrade within the Orange range of phones. This isn't such a problem because the only other network I would consider switching to is Tmobile and thats only because they have the Google G1. I already found out that O2 and Vodafone don't let you use your phone as a modem, actually the guy in the Vodafone seemed shocked why I would do such a thing. I explained I don't want two contracts and a modern phone can do everything those USB modems can but then he tried to bulls**t me about the speeds of 3G/HSDPA, claiming I would struggle to reach a fifth of the speed.

Anyway the selection is pretty poor from Orange, there coming soon phones really don't fill me with amazement. The only phone worth upgrading to is the HTC Touch HD and I got to say i'm having douhts about that choice even. Don't get me wrong its a very nice phone but I'm quite liking my HTC Kaiser with its keyboard. If I had any choice I would upgrade to the SonyEricsson X1 or the Touch Pro. To tell the truth the only interesting phone out there outside of the previously mentioned is the Palm Pre and who knows when the UK release will be.

So it looks like I will end up with the HD Touch HD from Saturday.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Everything was fine, Plaxo would sync to my windows mobile phones via there propitery sync application. And I could grab the specially crafted ical feeds for use with Evolution. Then Google released Sync for mobile devices. My world would never be the same…

Synchronize your contacts. Get your Google contacts quickly and easily to your Windows Mobile phone. With Sync, you can have access to your address book at anytime and place that you need it.

Get calendar alerts. Using your phone's native calendar, you can now access your Google calendar, and be alerted for upcoming appointments with sound or vibration.

Always in sync. Your calendar and contacts stay synchronized whether you access them from your phone or from your computer. Add or edit contacts or calendar entries right on your device or on your Google account on the web.

I tried to add Google Sync to Evolution directly, but evolution seems to get hung up on the fact theres no mail attached. Once I find a way around that, every single device I own will be syncing with Google Sync. I'm really going to have to consider what I use Plaxo for in the future.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

When new technology comes along and disrupts, its hard to grapple with the questions and answers. I've been thinking about Google Latitude for a while since I got it working on Friday night and decided theres quite a lot of complexity to this new distruptive technology. Here's what I've been thinking

• In Google Latitude you can turn the share my location off but what about those who you want to show your location. There's no fine grain control over what your friends can see it would seem.
• Even if you could control what each friend saw, it would be a pain in the ass to change each time. Maybe in the future some kind of grouping would make more sense.
• Following on from that, it would be good to see a more Fireeagle type response, where I can say to a group of friends I'm in this city, while to the public I can say I'm in this country. And of course to the selected group of friends, which street I'm actually on
• But also following that, will friend get funny about only being able to see which City I'm in instead of the area or street. Maybe they will only share what you share with them?
• Maybe it even makes sense that you can only share what that other person shares with you? so if I share only which city I'm in with all my friends, I can't see which street there on. Reforce the friends factor?
• I've decided not to add close work mates to my friends list because I really don't want them to know where I am. And yes I can turn it off but then theres the whole, why did you turn it off? Were you hiding something?
• Using your mobile with cell trianglation is pretty good but with additional GPS you can track right down to a small range of house addresses.
• I didn't agree to Google Latitude getting my updates from Jaiku, even if they are public. But hey its not bad little feature
• Where's the public view of Latitude for some of more darling types? And talking of which, where's the API, ical feeds and georss feeds?

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

I finally got Google Latitude working on my own HTC Kaiser and work's Touch Diamond. Only a couple of my friends are on it right now but its not bad. Its like Fire Eagle but with a pre-build example/application. I do wonder if you can actually get the geodata out like Fire Eagle? Because I might be not be so interested in the application, but I am interested in the where am I part.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

My bill came through from Orange just recently, I expected it to be very high because I had used it over Christmas and New Years pretty much non-stop while in Bristol. Most of the usage was using the phone as a modem for my laptop and of course microblogging from the phone its self. Anyway, bill came in at about 50 pounds which is quite a bit but not the amount I was expecting. What I found interesting was the Summary's for December.

Talk Summary: 80:08 (I get 100mins free)
Text Summary: 148 (I get 500 per month for free)
Data Summary: 2741.6411 (yes almost 3gig of mobile data)

Next month my 18 month contract comes to a end, and although I'd love to have the Android phone, I don't want to switch network to do so. Tmobile do have a simular data plan as Orange (I currently pay 6 pounds a month for unlimited evening and weekend data) but I think I have my head set on the rather big but futuristic HTC Touch HD. The only thing it doesn't support is a flash for the 5mpx camera and a large internal storage drive. But seriously thats being very picky.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

For all the talk about the Apple iTunes going DRM free, I do wonder if Apple will ever open its hardware up.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

In my Windows days I would use Hamachi for my VPN client and server. But when I switched to gnu/linux I attempted to stick with it but got fed up of the weird UI's and lack of stability I was experiencing. So I stopped using it and looked into openswan and other VPN clients/servers solutions. Problem is I never quite got on with those either although I did get as far as having the PTP/OpenSSL option in my networking

Well after months of not using any VPN options at all. I found the ideal Hamachi client for Linux and got Hamachi working on everything including my old download machine and even my phone! Yes you heard me right, I have the same powerful VPN technology on my Windows Mobile phone too. There's not much you can do right now but its working in 0.30 beta form. I found it because I was thinking they've had a Nokia 770 version for ages but why not Windows Mobile? I imagine Android won't be long behind the Symbian and Windows Mobile versions if things go well. Iphone version? Nahh I can't see Steve Jobs allowing that in the Apps store.

Some of you may say why do you need VPN for phones? Well at least with Hamachi, its a direct connection to my machines, so I'm able to for example see how a download is going at home (although to be fair I've also got a XMPP/Jabber bot which does this too). You can't do it yet, but imagine, being able to pull files back and forth over the network, sync and print to the remote printer. Actually these are possible if you've got some web front end on the remote machine right now. I can't even imagine the possibilities if you turn it the other way around and added some core phone API support. VPN into your phone and flip the goodbye forever switch if its stolen? Who knows…

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

HTC create the most advanced mobile devices in the world I would say. And i'm not the only one who would say this either thankfully. They've made Windows Mobile actually attractive and affordable enough. So if you replaced Windows Mobile with almost anything else and you will get one hell of a Geek phone. So great, a phone which the geeks and developers always wanted, but what's going to be the unique selling point for non-geeks? This is the question I pose to the Google's Mike Jennings at Google Developer Day last week.

His answer “Software” was less that satisfactory. I mean you got two phones which look exactly like, they do the same stuff, are priced about the same only one has windows on it and the other google. As a non-geek user which one which you pick? Seriously, which one? Google are going about this all too geek like. Yes developers and geeks will buy the Gphones but unless they put a bundle of goodies on the phone which you can't get anywhere else, there going to lose out. I mean simply putting Google maps, Gmail and Google Search on the device isn't going to cut it. My Windows mobile currently has all that plus thanks to the OpenGL drivers written by the community (no thanks to HTC for that) equalivent OpenGL support. Maybe a few years back when Windows Mobile weren't so open you could make the point that the Gphone software arguement would hold up. But recently I've seen everything including the dialer, mail client and gui replaced if required. For example PointUI's Home. It replaces most of windows mobile user interface with a custom one. I did show Mike Jennings the interface and he was very suprised how customised my windows mobile phone was. So I expect most of the apps which get built on the Gphone will be build on Windows Mobile too and vice-versa.

So what is the unique selling point going to be? I'm starting to think Google are happy with it just being a project thats on going – just an alternative. Never really going to be number one, but then again won't cost much to keep going. A bit like Chrome?

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Thanks to a friend who sent me this video link after reading I was interested in upgrading up to a Omnia phone. I was honestly expecting a standard unboxing not what I actually got. Good on Samsung or whoever for adding a little humour to this usually too over done part of product geeking.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Its getting around to that time of the year again, when I start thinking about which phone I should be getting next. The other good news is that Google Android is confirmed for HTC phones, so there's some serious changes in this space. But generally the hardware is

HTC Dream

HTC Dream which is meant to be the launch phone of the Google Android operating system. Although I don't really like the block on the right and the keyboard looks quite small.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1

Now this is a shock, Dark horse SonyEricsson creates a windows mobile phone which some interesting tweaks to the Windows mobile Gui. It also supports a 3inch touch screen with a resolution of 800×480 which is insane. Everything else is there including HSDPA, Bluetooth 2.0, Wifi but no GPS. Its also got a slight tilt which is useful plus the keyboard looks like a dream to type on. I've also heard on forums that it might have up to 16gig of memory which is great.

HTC Touch Pro

This is the natrual upgrade choice from my HTC Kaiser/Tilt. Its smaller, lighter and has a VGA screen. HTC have also included the new TouchFLO 3D interface (hopefully they turned on the ATI hardware drivers for this phone). Everything else is pretty much the same, HSDPA, Bluetooth 2.0, Wifi and GPS. The Keyboard is improved and the whole device just looks sharp and beautiful. It also seems like Orange will have this soon because they already have the HTC Touch Diamond.

Samsung Omnia i900

This is the other dark horse in the room. Samsung have made some news with the Blackjack windows mobile device but I've never really consider it because I don't like those blackberry type devices. Anyway, this is a looker and has the specs to go with the looks. 3.2 inch touchscreen supporting 400×240 resolution. Like everyone else, they've tweaked Windows mobile to include a couple of new features but once again HSDPA, Bluetoooth 2.0, Wifi and GPS. Its also got 16gig of memory in the box and unlike the rest a 5mpx auto focus camera which also supports VGA camcorder recording, the rest are 3mpx auto focus and QVGA recording. Samsung have gone one better by including FM radio, Geotagging ability, accelerometer and even TV out for playing back video. The only thing missing is the keyboard and its not quadband, so no 3g in north america. Suprisingly Orange have this phone already and its priced like a HTC phone, so actually affordable if you like WinMo phones.

Its amazing, things like USB, SD slot, Speakerphone, 3g, full spectrum HSDPA (up to 7.2meg down), Mp3 ringtones, replaceable batteries, etc, etc are just standard now. Shame the Samsung doesn't support Quadband like everyone else but to be honest, I'm unlikely to use 3G heavly when roaming in america, because I don't like big mobile phone bills. The keyboard will be missed a little and I'm not super keen that it has no stylus at all. But these are small issues really. I think I will get a Omnia in the end. I wonder if anyone will port Android over to it?

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]