Windows Mobile

The main reason I bought a T-Mobile HTC Touch Pro2 back in August was the promise that the Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade would be available for it shortly after 6.5's introduction. Windows Mobile 6.5 was launched on October 6. Here it is November 18 and T-Mobile USA shows no sign or hint of when or even if an upgrade will be made available.

You can find an appreciable amount of venting by TP2 owners over on the...

T-Mobile Forums focused on the Touch Pro2

There is one bit of speculation in that forum area that an update "might" be available in December. If it is, you will probably be able to find the upgrade information and link where other T-Mobile USA Windows Mobile upgrade files are linked...

http://www.t-mobile.com/wmupgrade/

As usual, Microsoft and the phone's manufacturer, HTC, appear to have nothing to say either. It is a good thing I have an iPhone and Droid to keep me busy.

T-Mobile USA seems to have no plans to provide the Windows Mobile 6.5 update for my HTC Touch Pro2 any time soon. So, I'm stuck with ol' version 6.1. This meant I couldn't use the horribly named "Windows Marketplace for Mobile" (say that 5 times fast) on my recently purchased phone (August 2009)... until now...

Windows Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1

Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 phone users can point their browsers at...

http://mp.windowsphone.com/

...to download...get this...an installer for the Windows Marketplace for Mobile app for Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1. The installer seems to do a quick job of it. But, my experience following this seems to indicate the app is as buggy as an ant hill. Here's what happened to me after installing the marketplace app on my Touch Pro2.

The appeared to have installed fine. But, wow, who chose that gigantic typeface? Could it get any bigger? What a waste of screen real estate? FYI: If you switch to landscape viewing mode, you'll find that there are more app icons in the horizontal bar at the top. There doesn't appear to be any way to scroll it when viewing it in portrait mode.

I decided to install the AP Mobile news app first since it was free and I think the iPhone app is reasonably good (though a bit slow these days). The installation progress bar got stuck at about the 80% mark that you see in the screenshot above. After waiting about 5 minutes with no further progress, I took a look at the Programs window and found the app had installed and launched properly. But, here's another issue: At no point was I asked if I wanted to install the app to my SD storage card instead of wasting system memory. So, I tried installing another free app (Weather Bug). This time the marketplace app froze entirely and I had to stop it manually using the TP2's Task Manager. Restarting marketplace, I found it knew where it left off and, again, installed the app in system memory without asking if I wanted to install it on the SD card.

My current thinking is to stop using the marketplace app until an update is available for it.

From ZDNet UK based on on Gartner Research data...

Windows Mobile loses nearly a third of market share

That's a drop from an 11% market share in Q3 2008 to 7.9% in Q3 2009. Symbian (mostly Nokia), RIM (BlackBerry), and Apple are far ahead of Microsoft with 44.6% (dropping from 49.7%), 20.8%, and 17.1% of the smartphone market, respectively. Interestingly, the Android (3.9%), webOS (1.1%) and other Linux based phones (4.7%) own 9.7% of the market meaning that Windows Mobile might be considered in dead last in smartphone platforms.

The iPhone and Android-based phones play nicely with Exchange Server now (I had my Droid talking to my office Exchange Server in under a minute), Windows Mobile's Exchange support aspect is not as important as it was a year or two ago.

Windows Mobile 6.5 doesn't appear to have generated much excitement. So, Microsof thas everything riding on Windows Mobile 7 which, if we believe various reports, will not be delivered until late 2010.

Will Windows Marketplace for Windows Mobile help? Stay tuned for my next blog item...

From the Windows Mobile Developer Blog...

Announcing New Features in Windows Marketplace for Mobile

So, just what are these new "features"?

- Stronger anti-piracy protection. Hmm. Developers deserve to make a decent return on their hard work. But, everytime I read something like this, I expect to hear horror stories from customers being treated as criminals by these automated processes

-Browse and buy applications from a PC. Um. Huh? Yes, Microsoft has apparently rediscovered (or more likely been yelled at by customers) that it is good to have a choice of purchasing an app from a Windows Phone or a desktop/notebook.

FYI: You can find the marketplace at:

http://marketplace.windowsphone.com/

As for me? T-Mobile USA shows no signs of providing a Windows Mobile 6.5 update for my HTC Touch Pro2 to turn it into a "Windows Phone". So, I'm sitting out of this. And, yes, I know I could wander over to XDA-Developers and...

The Bing blog (kind of has a ring to it, huh?) announced...

Bing for mobile now live at m.bing.com

I was, to be perfectly honest, confused by this title. I thought it meant their Windows Mobile app had been updated. Instead, it means that the mobile-friendly site found at...

m.bing.com

...was updated to add NFL game inforamtion, flight status, and localized information for movies. But, here's the thing that annoyed me. The Microsoft Bing team (and it is important to note that Bing is a Microsoft product) said:

Great news for you touch phone owners in the U.S.: we have a new version of Bing just for high-resolution touch devices.

So, I thought, "Hey, that's great. I have a relatively new HTC Touch Pro2. That must be a high-resolution touch device!" Right? Wrong... This feature is reserved for the iPhone, Zune HD, T-Mobile G1, Verizon Imagio, or Samsung Omnia. If you have a Microsoft Windows Mobile based HTC Touch Pro2 with what I consider to be a high resolution touch device, you don't see these touch features. Instead, you can use the touch-confused Bing app for Windows Mobile (initial screens are touch friendly but detailed screens after drilling down are not). The Microsoft folks in the Bing group should really pay attention to the Microsoft Windows Mobile smartphones a bit more.

If you are curious about what it is like to take a Windows Mobile software development project from inception to market, keep track of Chris Tacke (an independent developer who was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional designation) in a blog series named...

Project Resistance

The code for this project will eventually be availble from Microsoft's Codeplex code repository site...

http://resistance.codeplex.com/

The project is defined as:

Project Resistance is intended to be a fully transparent view into the process of conceiving, developing and selling an application for Windows Mobile. The idea here is that anyone will be able to look at how sausage gets made.

We're going to start by creating a production-quality application, following best practices for coding, etc. etc. All of the source code will be published here, and we will blog about the process, the thoughts we have, and the hurdles we encounter. Bear in mind that Alex and I are already experienced WinMo/Win CE developers, so it's not going to be a beginner's How-to type of process. We're not here to teach you how to wire up an event.

And, the Windows Mobile application itself is described like this:

The application is going to be very simple, but something that's actually functional. It will allow you to select color bands on a resistor and it will tell you the resistance. Alternately you will be able to give it a resistance and the application will tell you what the color bands will be. If you have no idea what any of that means, take a look at the Wikipedia entry on resistors. Essentially a resistor has stripes on it and the stripes correlate to numbers, which tell you the resistance in ohms.

My T-Mobile HTC Touch Pro2 is still running Windows Mobile 6.1. So, I haven't even tried 6.5 yet (hey, T-Mobile, what is up with that?). However, Pocket Now claims they have Windows Mobile 7 screenshots to share with us...

Windows Mobile 7 Exclusive Screenshots and Analysis!

PocketNow provides pairs of screenshots (top & bottom instead of left-right for some reason) that compares screens from the current Windows Mobile 6.5 to 7. You might want to open a second window to their screenshots using the link above to follow along with my commentary that assumes the screens shown are early version of what Windows Mobile 7 will look like

1. Calendar view: It seems to show roughly 25% of what can be shown today in the name of finger friendliness. People who want to see as much useful calendar information as possible in a glance (like me) will not like the 7 calendar view.

2. Dailer: The buttons on the 7 screen are label-less. Personally, I prefer the labels or the option to choose.

3. PocketNow mixed up the comparison for the Contacts app. They show a 6.5 Contacts screen with a 7 Inbox screen.

4. Inbox (email): Again, the 7 version loses a lot of information compared to what 6.5 provides now. The 7 Inbox does not have time/date information, size, or even a message count (total + unread).

5. Text Message interface: More finger friendly on-screen keyboard. Of course, this only matters for devices without a physical keyboard.

6. Settings: Tabs seems to have disappeared in 7. And, the big buttons leave less room for actual settings to toggle. It looks like Windows Mobile 7 users may have to go through many taps and screens to make simple settings changes. This can be done in a single window with tabs right now.

Based on what I see, the Windows Mobile 7 screens are prettier but much less functional that what we have now. I hope these shots are either a fake or early UI designs that are going to be dramatically changed for the better by the time Windows Mobile 7 is finally released in late 2010 (if you believe the rumors).

YouTube video courtesy of spbsoftware

I am not happy with the fragmentation going on with the Windows Mobile graphical user interface (GUI). We have HTC's TouchFlo 3D (which I've turned off on my Touch Pro2), Sony's Panels, VITO's Winterface, and Spb Software's latest update to their alternative Windows Mobile GUI...

Spb Mobile Shell 3.5

Spb Mobile Shell 3.5 lets you have up to 5 home screens (sort of like the iPhone) and the ability to use widgets that provide various functions. Like TouchFLO 3D, Mobile Shell also provides prettier interfaces for email and contacts. However, prettier does not necessarily make something more functional. I, for example, found that HTC's TouchFLO 3D's prettier interfaces got in my way and slowed me down. In fact, even after turning off TouchFLO 3D, I found that HTC's UI modifications makes the Touch Pro2 look quite a bit different from other Windows Mobile 6.1 device interfaces. The nice thing about add-ons like Spb's and VITO's is that they can be completely turned off if necessary returning you to Microsoft's native GUI.

Spb Mobile Shell 3.5 is priced at $29.95.

Someday someone will write a case study about Microsoft missed mobile opportunities to tie in their own products to Windows Mobile. Microsoft bought and had Hotmail up and running many years before Google's Gmail. The same goes for a web-based calendar, contacts, and even Exchange Server ActiveSync. Then, there's the half-hearted attempts like the travesty that was Access for the Handheld PC back in the 1990s and OneNote Mobile during Office 2007's development period. I was excited about OneNote Mobile (see my 2005 blog item below)...

Microsoft OneNote Mobile 12 Beta-1 for Windows Mobile Smartphones

...until I actually tried it. Even, then, in the pre-Evernote mobile days, OneNote Mobile seemed to have promise until it deleted my entire OneNote notes collection (I had a backup though). Since then, I've moved to Evernote and never looked back.

According to ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft is taking another crack at OneNote Mobile and adding some kind of SharePoint integration for Windows Mobile...

Microsoft to add OneNote and SharePoint clients to next Office Mobile release?

But, why would anyone want to use OneNote with Windows Mobile when Evernote already does a good job of synching Windows Mobile smarpthones with their cloud service? I haven't seen anyone using OneNote in years. And, if SharePoint Mobile requires ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) to sync with a SharePoint server, you will always have stale data on your Windows Mobile smartphone. I hope Microsoft bypasses ActiveSync and WMDC on the client in favor of OTA (Over The Air).

Windows Mobile And Bing Navigation from Michael Gannotti on Vimeo.

From Microsoft's Windows Phone Blog...

Video: Windows Mobile And Bing Navigation

The somewhat long (about 7 minute) video tells a story of landing at Atlanta's airport at night and navigating to a hotel using only Bing Mobile's navigation features. Michael Gannotti's smooth delivery (almost no "ums", very few pauses) has an infomercial quality to it which almost put me off. I tend to expect people like me stumbling through these little video demos.

Nice story. Here's the problem though. I just downloaded and installed the latest Bing Mobile on my HTC Touch Pro2. It didn't seem to be able to use the TP2's GPS at all. It placed me about 20 miles north of my actual location when I tested it outside under a clear sky. The free GPSToday was able to located me within about 50 meters of my actual location. So, I know the GPS was getting validate satellite data. So, I don't think I would trust Bing Mobile to navigate me from an airport to a hotel at night.