This tallies well with what we know already, but Engadget have just received confirmation of the HD2 being announced (if not released) on March the 16th. Most sources point to a release on the 24th.
Anyone going to get the T-Mobile version of the HD2, or are people going to wait for WP7 to turn up?
Via Engadget.
Wen Update: Coincidentally a reader pointed out that this event is the day after MIX. hmmm.
Since this seems to be a slow news Sunday, I thought I’d post some more of my Pure/Turtle findings.
Perhaps the most intriguing is mention of “Pride” as a third device. There are a series of settings which include Pure, Turtle, and then Pride. I know nothing more about this, but there could be three Project Pink devices at launch.
The devices are also likely to be packed with sensors, I found mention of the following:
And, as a final thing, I’m fairly sure these are based of an NVIDIA APX chipset, when things like “[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\NVDDI]” are present.
Since Pink seems to be the most popular thing right now, I decided to go for a little dig.
Most places seem to be putting both the Turtle and the Pure as CDMA only devices. Why then, would they have these files
The files contain network configuration for numerous GSM networks (there are a lot more than the above config files). However, I think the devices are likely to first ship with CDMA only, and there may be global, GSM devices released afterwards.
The Pure and Turtle are running on an OS based off of Windows CE6 (for the moment anyway), and will probably be running on some kind of NVIDIA chipset.
One thing is for certain, these aren’t smartphones!
Fanfare have just published the results of a survey of users of smartphones (interestingly, their definition of smartphone is “"a mobile phone that combines voice services with applications including e-mail and/or internet access"” - a far more common set of features than the conventional view of smartphones).
Smartphone performance – Over half of respondents (57%) are disappointed with the overall performance of their smartphone. Streaming media, web browsers, and social networking applications are causing the most problems for smartphone users. Nearly a third (29%) experience “continual” problems with newly acquired applications, and 64% of respondents have required some form of software patching to fix issues on their smartphone.
Placing blame – 55% of respondents cannot tell whether individual problems stem from the handset or the mobile network and, as a result, 53% instinctively blame the smartphone manufacturer whenever an issue arises.
Voicing concerns – Smartphone owners are most likely to vocalize their dissatisfaction through social networking sites (58%) and to friends and family (57%). At the same time, the purchasing decisions of 76% are influenced by criticisms from friends and family, and 64% will take heed of criticisms received via social media.
This is good news for mobile operators (who often get the blame for bad services) but very bad news for OEMs such as HTC, as it appears end users would prefer to change handset than to change network.
The research shows that smartphone owners are regularly experiencing problems such as application glitches, compatibility issues, crashing, and freezing, yet are unclear as to whether these can be attributed to the handset, network, or individual applications. More than half the respondents (53%) are likely to blame individual handset manufacturers for problems and 58% would not hesitate to publicize their dissatisfaction first via social media.
Would you blame the handset, the operator or the software, or does it depend on the exact circumstances?
Fanfare Software, via Reg Hardware.
Opera recently released Opera Mini 5, which brings many of the benefits of Opera Mini 4.2 to a native program for Windows Mobile.
In the two videos below, Opera Mini 5 is compared to 4.2, and Opera Mobile 10 is compared to 9.7 (in page load times).
What’s interesting is how close the older versions of the browser are to the newer ones. Mini 4.2 is actually faster than Mini 5 at loading WMPowerUser.com, taking 26 seconds, whilst Mini 5 takes 33 seconds. The timings between Mini and Mobile are surprisingly small, with Mobile 9.7 taking 28 seconds, and Mobile 10 taking just 27 seconds (this is with Opera Turbo turned off). Opera Mini 4.2 is (in my opinion) absolutely useless, with continuous “this is unsigned”, “are you sure” type errors, though I guess that stems from it being Java based.
The user interface on Mobile 10 and Mini 5 is pretty much the same, though I personally prefer that of 9.7.
The between Mini and Mobile is as much down to personal preference as anything else. Opera Mini is faster than Mobile at loading and rendering pages (everything is done on a remote server) but the page format isn’t as good, and it feels a little strange. I also received a few connection errors with Opera Mini, when Opera Mobile would very happily load the page.
Which do you prefer, Mobile or Mini?
As Steve Ballmer clearly indicates, developers are what’s important. Developers are also the main reason Windows as a desktop OS is so popular.
Wired.com have asked lots of developers what they think of WP7, and it’s well worth a read.
The major complaint of existing WM seems to be the variety of handsets (making it difficult for developers to cover all devices). What’s interesting, is that to me that’s not a huge issue. Yes, you have to make your software resolution aware, but that’s no different to a desktop OS.
The only thing we can really do with regards to WP7 is wait for MIX10, and not have developers bickering about a lack of anything until it’s confirmed!
We mentioned this before, but LMT, built by noname81 of XDA-Developers and I has recently had an update.
It now supports things like single touch gestures, as well as customisation of what’s launched,.
0.4 is the currently available version, and 0.5 should be out shortly.
We’re also looking to help developers use multitouch, so if there are any about who could help with “what features do you want?”, that would be great!
Download it from here.
Chainfire has recently published a GSensor emulator. This allows you to use much of the software developed for the HTC GSensor, but on your LG eXpo.
Due to excessive nagging primarily from jug6ernaut but also a few others, I’ve attempted to make a HTC GSensor Emulator for the LG Expo GSensor.
Only the basic GSensor calls are supported (polling), none of the advanced HTCSensorSDK stuff. This means that while some apps will work, some will not. Boing and Diamond Hologram do work, though!
Support Chainfire to keep things like this coming!
Download and more info.
Whilst this may only affect a small proportion of our readers, it is definitely of interest to those based in the UK.
The Office of Fair Trading had previously paused the merger of T-Mobile and Orange, wanting time to investigate the deal. They have now withdrawn that, and allowed the merger to take place.
T-Mobile Orange have had to give up a quarter of the 1800MHz bands they own (30MHz of 120MHz) freeing up some space for potential 3G or LTE.
This now leaves the UK with a dominant (and as yet unnamed) mobile operator (about 36% of the market) whilst Vodafone and O2 have 27% and 25% respectively.
I for one hope we’ll see better data plans on Orange (500MB is not Unlimited!) but maybe with the majority share we’ll see some price rises.
What do you think of this merger? Anyone still using T-Mobile or Orange with a smartphone?
Via The Register.
Clove have just published a few little snippets of information of the HTC HD mini.
- You can use it as a WiFi router
- The phone antenna is actually on the removable back cover
- HTC designed the inside to be as beautiful on the inside as it is outside
To me, it still doesn’t seem an attractive device. Yes, HTC call it “sensible” in size (clearly referring to the HD2), but HVGA? Is anyone genuinely excited by a screen resolution lower than that of the Diamond?
Given what wonderful things HTC can do with the HD2, is anyone else wondering why?
Clove blog.
Google Sync has recently been experiencing some reliability issues, and for now at least, it’s down.
he problem is reportedly caused by a data centre issue at Google, and only affects the Google Sync software. A manual sync, or any other synchronisation software (such as SEVEN beta) should be unaffected.
Hi everyone,
As many of you have noticed, Google Sync is having some difficulties due to an extended problem with one of our datacenters. This has been going on over the weekend, but it’s got significantly worse today, so I’m just letting everyone know what’s happening.
None of your information has been lost, and you will still be able to get your data through Sync, but you will find that Push isn’t working very well. This is because we’re batching up fetch requests to be able to cope with the traffic we’re seeing while this problem is ongoing. As soon as we’ve got the problem fixed, push should seamlessly start working properly again.
We’re working flat out to get this fixed, but unfortunately we don’t have an ETA at the moment. We’re doing everything we can to improve the situation in the meantime, and I’ll post here again when I have more news.
Finally, I want to apologise to everyone – we’re feeling your pain too, and we will get this sorted out as soon as we can.
DouglasUpdate:
I should add that this is affecting Google Sync for iPhone, Windows Mobile and S60 – if you’re using another way to sync with Google (the BlackBerry sync application, Android sync and so on) you should be unaffected by this problem.
Is anyone here using Google Sync affected by this?
Google, via the::unwired.
Whilst Microsoft may have previously said there were no current devices that were WP7 capable, they may well just have reversed that.
It’s early days yet, and that’s really for our hardware partners to think about.
This really doesn’t confirm much, but it does at least mean Microsoft won’t be blocking updates!
Cotulla, who worked on HardSPL for the HD2 has recently posted two videos demonstrating USB Host on the HD2!
It’s not a release version yet, and is very unstable, but does at least demonstrate some of the unused power in our devices.
As well as requiring drivers, the USB Host function also requires power to be supplied to the external device (which seems sensible given the small battery on the HD2).
Watch for more developments here.
The 2009 Omnia line of devices are (compared to their peers) fairly low on RAM.
This causes issues when software is closed to free up RAM, but luckily Chainfire has a solution!
The idea is a fairly simple one, alter the minimum free RAM that WM should allow.
By default the Omnia I8000 starts closing software when it has less than 30MB of RAM, and stops when 45MB of RAM are free. As Chainfire says, that’s not ideal when you only have 50MB of RAM available.
There’s more info (technical, and general) and a download on Chainfires blog here.
The 2009 Omnia line of devices are (compared to their peers) fairly low on RAM.
This causes issues when software is closed to free up RAM, but luckily Chainfire has a solution!
The idea is a fairly simple one, alter the minimum free RAM that WM should allow.
By default the Omnia I8000 starts closing software when it has less than 30MB of RAM, and stops when 45MB of RAM are free. As Chainfire says, that’s not ideal when you only have 50MB of RAM available.
There’s more info (technical, and general) and a download on Chainfires blog here.
Microsoft have just released an update to the Facebook application.
It had previously been hacked from a Smartphone only build by XDA-Developers.com.
It features the ability to comment, like, and numerous other additions and fixes.
Get it from Marketplace.
Via Fuze Mobility.
Some screenshots have just surface on XDA-Developers that are reportedly of Photon. As far as I can tell, they just look like WM6.5 with a new layer of paint on the top, and nothing as new as what we’ve actually got.
I for one prefer WP7 to “Photon” and from what I’ve seen, WM6.5.3 is also better to me than Photon. What do you think?
Edit: Here is a youtube video of the OS running on a HTC Universal.
From XDA-Developers.
In possibly the best move since it’s introduction, Marketplace has today seen an update.
This one enables picking the install location (storage card, main memory) which puts it ahead of Android which lacks that without third party software (such as Apps2SD) and also enables a picker for choosing with countries marketplace you want to use. This puts prices in the local currency, and from my limited testing works well!
You may need to uninstall and reinstall Marketplace to see the update though I guess it will be pushed out shortly.
These are just the ones mentioned in some of the documentation contained within the 6.5.3 DTK.
Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Mobile 6.5.3 contain significant enhancements from prior versions of Windows Mobile. Of special note are the Gesture APIs.
A new code sample is provided that uses the Mobile Mapping Framework
There is now support for native control theming.
Interestingly, there’s no mention of the HVGA resolution that seems to be becoming popular.
The emulator images are running build 23090, if that is of interest.
I will continue digging, see what else Microsoft have for us!
