Category: Windows Phone

The Skype has released 2.5 beta for the windows mobile professional(touch-screen) and standard(non touch-screen) devices. ApoTheTech gave this new beta a spin on the HTC Diamond.

I have been using the official version from quite some time. It is rock solid and does the job well.

This is what the skype says about the 2.5 beta

Based on feedback from you guys, our Mobile team have overhauled Skype for Windows Mobile and released Beta 2.5. It features improved sound quality, better stability and a more familiar user interface.

Lets see what has actually changed. This newer version lets you connect via activesync too. Previous versions didn’t let you do this. I cannot say how useful is this, but it is nice to know that it is there.

The dialer has undergone a revamp Continue reading “Skype 2.5 beta for Windows Mobile released and reviewed”

Since a long time,  I have been looking for a PIM that would be efficient enough to store all my tasks and appointments but would be simple enough so that anyone can easily use it. My dream came true with SBSH Calendar Touch. This superbly designed application follows the latest trend: making everything finger-friendly so that you don’t have to take the stylus out ever while using it. Thus, appropriately using the suffix “Touch”

INSTALLATION AND REGISTRATION

Calendar Touch can be installed through your PC with the ‘exe’ or you can directly download the cab to your Windows Mobile device. This application takes up around 2.5 Mb of storage. It comes with a fully functional 12 day trial.

Right after installation, you are asked if you would like to assign the Calender Touch to one of the Today’s soft keys

Usage Continue reading “SBSH Calendar Touch review”

update: review has updated as-well-as screenshots according to the changes made in new version (0.0.16.0)

As far as my knowledge goes, there is not a single windows mobile application that lets you download or view videos directly EXCEPT this one: WEB VIDEO DOWNLOADER.

Since the application is still in beta stage, the developer(Jm81) has a elegant interface with the buttons at the bottom. Clicking on the magnifying glass brings up a new window containing the list of websites. Note that all the screenshots are in VGA. Just click on them to see full size screenshot.

It supports a variety of video websites including the little naughty ones :!: Yes, you read it right. The videos can be displayed in “Grid View” or in “List View”

You can download the video by clicking on the button shown in the following screenshot. You can also stream the video directly. Also, you can download the video by selecting download from the Action menu. Whenever you click on the view or download button, it also asks you if you would like to download/view the normal quality(flv) version or high quality(mp4) version.

It also provides a bunch of options when downloading a video like where you wish to save the video including the name of the folder. You also have the option to the save the file or just download the M3U and PLS.

Now, let us take a quick glance at the configurable options of WVD. If you don’t like porn, you can tell the WVD not to enlist the porn sites. There is also a new feature called “invisible scroller”. This feature lets you scroll just by dragging your fingers up and down.

Final verdict

The WVD is the only way to directly download videos from various websites. The WVD is easy to use for anyone thanks to it’s simple interface and rich featuers. The best part of WVD is that the author has made it available for free.

You can also donate to the application developer to support him. His paypal link is given in his signature.

For many of the Pocket PC users, the feature they most frequently use is the Personal Information Management (PIM). But the Pocket Outlook has many unsolved issues. That’s where the third-party applications like Pocket Informant come really handy.

INSTALLATION AND REGISTRATION

Pocket Informant, like any other application can be installed on to the device through Activesync, or you can directly download the cab file to your device. It takes up around 4 MB of storage memory.

Continue reading “Pocket Informant Review (version 8.5)”

With the Microsoft dragging their feet in vamping up the windows mobile operating system interface, other companies as-well-as individuals are finding ways to spruce that old interface. Companies are making what they call “shells”. They are the applications that run on top on the windows interface and give it a new look. Some are the famous ones that are made by HTC  including the Touchflo 3D and Touchflo 2D

A popular shell that has come about is by a company called Vito Technology. This company has numerous types of shell applications that run on windows mobile. They have made their own shell called WinterFace.

Installation

The installation can be done either via a CAB or via EXE. CAB is meant to be run on the device itself. EXE has to be run on the desktop. The installation went fine on my HTC Touch Pro.

Continue reading “Vito Winterface version 1.2 review – VGA screenshots”

The application “XperiaTweak” lets you tweak your Xperia X1 without using the registry editors. While editing registry by the pro-users is not a big thing, but it can be a daunting task for the newbies. XperiaTweak lets you  tweak various features of the Xpearia in a safe and fast manner.

Download XperiaTweak

Enter the mobile world where you can have 800 x 480 pixels screen, 3″ display, a sexy, yet bold exterior, a slide-out keyboard, BT 2.0, WiFi, GPS, push-email, FM radio, 3G, HSDPA and most important of all, the brand name: SONY ERICSSON

History

SONY is not new to the PDA world. It had it’s own very popular and dedicated range of handhelds few years back, called “CLIÉ”. Due to numerous reasons, the whole “CLIÉ” range was brought to hault. Who at that time had thought that after few years, Sony would come out with a WIndows Mobile phone! Well, enough history. The Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 may not be the ultimate phone in the market, but surely it is the best you can get, if you want windows mobile.

Looks, Build, Design

Most of the casing is made from metal, which looks very nice and attractive. Well, there is nothing to get surprised here as it is made by HTC, the leading manufacturer of Windows Mobile devices. Looks like, Sony Ericsson didn’t want to make any compromises on build-quality. It looks pretty nice in black with silver stipes around the sides.

The Xperia is not bitten by the Touch bug. It has a lot of buttons in the front unlike Touch HD (reviewed here) and Touch Pro (reviewed here). It is a micro-SD card hidden under the battery door, which can be mounted as a mass-storage device, if required.

The power button is on the top along with the 3.5mm audio jack.

Display, screen

The screen as mentioned before, is 3″ in size. It sports WVGA (800 x 480) resolution (same as sported by ASUS EEE 700 series!) and everything looks very crisp including text and images. The display is not flushed to the body like the Touch Diamond, Touch HD and Touch Pro, but it still looks very fine.

The touchscreen is quite responsive. There is no finger friendly keyboard from SE unlike HTC, but it can easily be cured by installing one of the great soft keyboards (SPB keyboard, Resco keyboard etc).

Great Keyboard

The Sony Ericsson X1 has goen with an arc-slider design for the keyboard. It has 4 row keyboard whose keys provides just a bit of travel. It is not the best keyboard out there, but not the worst too. It is quite usable for doing some short emails, messaging, entering URLs etc. Just like other slider QWERTY keyboard windows mobile phones, the display auto-switches to landscape orientation as-soon-as you slide out the keyboard.

Panels

The Sony Ericsson has highlighted the panels a lot in their promotional videos and other advertisements. Panels provide new way of looking at the today screen. Pressing the hardware panel button brings you to the panel screen from where you can select a particular panel, which actually changes the way your today screen looks. So, depending the type of task required, you can change the panel as needed.

Selecting the SPB mobile shell panel makes the phone all of a sudden very finger friendly due to excellent interface provided by Mobile Shell. The best part of it is that it is absolutely free! There is a facebook panel too.

It fairly takes 2 seconds to change the panel. You cannot disable the panels.

Web-Browsing

Decent web browsing has become a must-have feature for any premium mobile phone. Sony Ericsson has bundled the excellent Opera Mobile 9.5 browser which does an excellent job of rendering the web pages.

Camera

The camera on the SE XPERIA X1 is 3.2MP. Why SE didn’t go with the 5MP one is beyond me. The Xperia is one expensive device and it should have come with 5MP camera. It has ‘touch focus’ feature that lets you select focal point on the picture you are taking by touching the screen.

It also has a ‘flash’

As a phone

The call quality is pretty nice. You don’t have to put the earpiece volume maximum to hear the other party. The X1 has nice cell radio. It even catches signals where other windows mobiles cannot even pick up signals.

Final verdict

So, do we have a winner? By winner, if you mean an iPhone killer, then no. If you mean, the best windows mobile device so far, then yes.

—

Pros

• 3″ WVGA display
• Excellent panel concept
• Solid construction
• Good looks
• Fast
• Ample RAM
• Built in keyboard
• Mass-storage device support

Cons

• No bundled finger friendly keyboard
• Not much tactile feedback from keyboard
• No 5MP camera
• Expensive

$799, unlocked at SonyStyle.com

In the past week, we reviewed Skyfire. We also published that the upcoming version of the Opera will let you view youtube videos inside the browser window itself. This clearly shows how powerful the web browsers are becoming every day.

History

Few years back, Netfront was the only viable Internet Explorer mobile(then, Pocket Internet Explorer) alternative that offered more features than the Internet Explorer mobile. With the introduction of iPhone last year, which offered very robust internet experience forced other internet software houses to make their products better.

Heavy emphasis started to be given on:

• finger friendly UI
• desktop class rendering
• access to desktop sites from the mobile device

Opera Mobile 9.5 paved the way for providing great mobile internet experience to the Windows mobile users. It has been a great success for the windows mobile users as-well-as for the windows mobile brand. Netfront used to be the user’s choice during the non-opera days. After the Opera mobile was launched, it started giving tough competition to the Netfront. It nearly took the whole game away from the Netfront after the release of revolutionary Opera Mobile 9.5.

We all thought Netfront by access was dead as the last official version of Netfront(version 3.3) was released nearly 3 years back! Access did released a couple of betas. Now, after a long period of time, they have come up with Concept version of Netfront browser v3.5. So, does this newly release concept version promises to give users the ultimate mobile experience. Does the Netfront browser holds any chance of regaining it’s lost market share? Read on to find out

Installation

I installed the just released Netfront v3.5 concept version from their official site(link here). The installation went ok and the Access site suggests to install it in the main memory as it may cause instability issues if installed in the storage card. Even I have always advised the users to install browsers and today plugins in the main memory.

Internet Experience

So, how does the browser performs? Well, it behaves the opposite way most of the current slew of web browsers behave. When you open a web page on the netfront, it opens the page in zoom-in mode. This is unlike Opera mobile(on windows mobile) and Safari(on Apple iPhone and iPod Touch), which open the web page in zoom-out mode. The user then taps into the required section and then the web browser zooms in to that section.

The netfront opens the web page in the zoom out mode. The text is wrapped around the window for easy reading just like Opera Mobile.

Double tapping into any region would pop up a little window which shows you the overview of the page. Then, you can use your finger to move around the various parts of the page.

Whenever you do scrolling, you can also see that the pageMap thumbnail appears on the top-left corner. This lets you scroll up and down.

Browsing speed

I did notice some speed improvements over its previous official version, but I found it to be little slow when compared to Opera Mobile. Skyfire seemed to be the fastest, but it follows a totally different approach (processes data at its Skyfire server)

Bookmarks

The way the bookmarks are implemented in the new version is simply fantastic. Dragging your finger/stylus in clockwise/anti clockwise direction will take you to the adjacent bookmark. Very nicely done!

What I look out for in the final build?

I’m definitely looking forward to the final version to provide native viewing of youtube videos inside the browser window. You cannot use plugins in the concept version. Also, I would want netfront folks to make the whole UI more finger-friendly. Are they not aware that it is the era of touch-friendly devices? They have made no changes to the UI when compared to the version 3.3.

Also, there is no progress bar which shows the user the progress of the page that has loaded so far.

You can download the latest Netfront v3.5 Concept version (for free right now) from the following link:

http://www.access-company.com/products/mobile_solutions/netfrontmobile/browser/35_wm_tp.html