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Too Many resolutions = Nightmare for Windows Mobile developers

The year 2008 has been the best year for the Windows Mobile platform. In this year, we saw new handsets, better and innovative designs. We also saw Sony Ericsson finally getting into the Windows Mobile world. We saw Windows Mobile 6.1 too. With every version of Windows Mobile, plethora of new features are added. But, have we ever thought this from a developer perspective. Today, I received a long email from a Windows Mobile developer. I would like to keep his name anonymous to prevent him from getting into any kind of trouble.

The Apple iPhone as-well-as iPod Touch have fixed resolution of 480 x 320. This makes the life easier for the developers as all they need to do is to support two resolutions: 480 x 320 and 320 x 480.

Just look at the number of resolutions supported by the Windows Mobile!

  • 320 x 240
  • 240 x 320
  • 400 x 240
  • 240 x 400
  • 240 x 240
  • 320 x 320
  • 640 x 480
  • 480 x 640
  • 800 x 480
  • 480 x 800

Shocked? Well, the sad story does not ends there. Even making a free application for Windows Mobile can cost you a lot of money. On the other side of the coin, the development kit from Apple is free.

Continue reading “Too Many resolutions = Nightmare for Windows Mobile developers”

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SONY ERICSSON says NO to HTC for its next Windows Mobile based Smartphone

It is not a hidden truth that the HTC made the SONY ERICSSON XPERIA X1. But, due to some reasons SONY has decided to switch to some other partner “Mobinova” for it’s next windows mobile.

Although Sony Ericsson is believed to continue expanding its lineup of Windows Mobile-based smartphones, the company’s partnership with HTC will come to an end when the current production of Xperia X1 handsets completes its business circle, the paper quoted industry sources as indicating.

Rumor has it that the reason behind this is the HTC’s inability of making the XPERIA X1 available worldwide. Another reason is that the HTC itself is the direct competitor of Sony Ericsson in the market. According to me, they should have stayed with the HTC. HTC has vast amount of experience in the Windows Mobile world and they know exactly what the windows mobile market is all about.

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ASUS Eee PC Is Forbes Asia’s Product of the Year for 2008

ASUS Eee PC™ has been named Forbes Asia’s Product of the Year for 2008, right after being crowned Stuff Magazine’s Gadget of the Year and Computer of the Year. In justifying its selection, Forbes hailed the Eee PC™ for “its innovation and disruption”, and added that the “ultraportable” netbook had “changed the global PC industry”. This new addition to the Eee PC’s™ mantle joins numerous other awards chalked up in the media, design and industry circles over the past year, most notably NBC.com’s Best Travel Gadget and the prestigious G-Mark Award.

Since its official launch in October 2007, the Eee PC™ has garnered numerous international awards from the media, design and industry circles. Apart from receiving the Forbes Asia Product of the Year and Stuff Gadget of the Year/Computer of the Year honors, the Eee PC™ has also been named NBC.com’s Best Travel Gadget, Computer Shopper’s Best Netbook of 2008, PC Pro’s Hardware of the Year, PC World’s Best Netbook, and DIME magazine’s 2008 Trend Award Winner

It is truely another thing that the best selling netbook at the moment is the ACER Aspire One, but credit goes to ASUS for making the netbook concept reach the consumers properly.

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Gecko Installer – Finally an Application store for Windows Mobile?

Windows Mobile fans and users have all developed a habit of buying the software directly from the website of software houses or from places like handango.com or pocketgear.com. They have been deprived of something which Apple has provided to it’s users: Application Store, which the  Apple calls it App Store.

Now, there seems to be a ray of light for the Windows Mobile users. Has it come from Microsoft or HTC? NO. Is it fake one like Palm? NO

Well, let me introduce GECKO. So, what is it?

Gecko is an application installer and manager for Windows Mobile. It is inspired from the Apple AppStore and the Ubuntu Package Manager.

The concept of GECKO

Installing applications on your device is a complicated thing for most Windows Mobile users. You have CAB files, EXE files, MSI files, ZIP files… that’s a lot! iPhone users have the AppStore and Linux users have Package Managers. Now what would happen if we mixed both and made something for Windows Mobile? That’s the Gecko project, and it’s going to be great!

In addition, Gecko would incorporate previously unseen features such as application management, favorites, automatic updates, command line operations and app restore. The goal is to provide every Windows Mobile user a way to easily manage and install applications.

For developers

For developers, Gecko will offer unprecedented support. Adding your application to the database takes a few minutes. You applications will be hosted on the Gecko servers and will remain there, free of charge, as long as you notify us when your application is updated. Additionally, command line and APIs will allow you to add Gecko functionality to your applications.

The application is still in it’s premature phase, but I can certainly see it happening finally. Here is a quick overview of the application:

Even though the application is still in Beta stage, it still performs very nicely. Just click on the application you want and then, you download the application OTA (over-the-air). The Gecko also tells the user the author of the application and his website.

Continue reading “Gecko Installer – Finally an Application store for Windows Mobile?”

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ASUS R50A review

ApoTheTech’s friend UMPCportal.com has recently published a huge review about the ASUS R50A, which is a premium category UMPC. Here are the specifications of R50A:

  • 5.6″ 1024×600 gloss touchscreen
  • 1.33GHz Atom Z520 CPU
  • 1GB of RAM
  • 32GB SSD
  • Windows Vista Ultimate
  • 3G HSDPA, Bluetooh/WLAN, GPS

As we can see, there is nothing spectacular about the specifications. True, is has 3G to offer, but I lost all the interest when you come to know that this UMPC retails at $1300+. No doubt, UMPCportal is also very disappointed with ASUS R50A.

Here is what they have to say about it:

I’ll start out by just saying that I’m disappointed in the R50A. It is hard for a product like this to really succeed though. When you think about it, the R50A tries to fill a niche within a niche. Unless you are specifically looking for a handheld device that can only be used as a slate, I couldn’t recommend the R50A to you. I can’t think of many situations where a full sized slate, or convertible Tablet PC wouldn’t be a much better alternative than the R50A.

Click here to read the full review at UMPCportal

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New COWON S9 Firmware V2.06

COWON has upgraded the firmware of their flagship media player, COWON S9. The new firmware now adds the support for the Bluetooth speakers and other minor improvements.

Improved Feature & Fixed Bugs

  • Added to display album arts by changing image file name to .jpg.
  • Support Bluetooth speakers.
  • Fixed to not appear ‘Invalid Resource’, which was appeared rarely, when reboot the device after safely remove hardware from PC.

Make sure to back up your data in case something wrong happens. Happy upgrading!

Download from here

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No EeePC Logo showed while booting?

So your EEE PC 1000H or 904HA does not show the EEE PC logo while booting. Well, the reason is that the boot booster has been enabled which reduces the boot time. If you want the splash screen saying EEE PC back, here is how to do it.

As-soon-as you start the device, keep pressing F2 until you enter BIOS. Then go into Boot–>Boot Booster [Disable]. That is it.

Keep in mind that it will take a while before you see your operating system booting up. This is because aforementioned steps disable quick+quite boot which makes system check every single component of 1000h.

So we do not recommend to it checked all the time. To enable Boot Booster again, go to BIOS again by pressing F2 key when your computer boots and turn boot booster on.

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SBSH Christmas Special – Free Icon Store Extension Packages

For this Christmas SBSH Mobile Software released today three new icon store packages available as free download to all SBSH users. The new icon store packages released include: SBSH Medical, SBSH Personal and SBSH Sports Icon Store packages. The new icon store packages extend the category icons store selection with the recently released SBSH Calendar Touch (WM Pocket PC) and SBSH Calendar (WM Smartphone).

SBSH IconStore packages are available as free download for both Windows Mobile Pro/Classic (touch devices) and Standard (non-touch) devices at the following links:

SBSH Medical IconStore: Windows Mobile Pro/Classic or Windows Mobile Standard
SBSH Personal IconStore: Windows Mobile Pro/Classic or Windows Mobile Standard
SBSH Sports IconStore: Windows Mobile Pro/Classic or Windows Mobile Standard

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Is this the T-Mobile Dash 2?


Remember the extremely popular T-Mobile Dash that made it’s debut a couple of years back? Well, here it comes again, but in new clothes. This new revised T-Mobile Dash is in all-black clothes and it is now looking good than the previous model. Changes include:

  • Removal of aluminum front piece
  • Windows Mobile 6.1 replacing the old Windows Mobile 5.0(which was later replaced by Windows Mobile 6.0 by a ROM upgrade)
  • Spaced-out keys

The bad part is that the RAM is same as before. They have not beefed up the RAM (still 64MB). Processor is same old horse (200MHz OMAP) and the same outdated 1.3MP camera.

via

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LG plans to introduce Solar Illuminated LCD screens in notebooks

LG is implementing a concept never used or heard before. LG has developed a type of LCD panel, which uses the sunlight to power the monitor, while it is used outside. It uses reflective plates in the backlight panels to reflect the sunlight so that you are able to use your device outdoors. Interesting point to note is that it consumes 1/4 th of energy compared to what is consumes when used indoors. This is due to the fact that it has to use backlight to light up the screen, which consumes a lot of energy.

There is no words when will be release for officially. However, LG has plans to debut it at CES 2009, which is going to be held next month.