November 24th, 2009

Review: Who needs a PND when you have CoPilot Live 8 on an HTC HD2?

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 4:51 am

Categories: HTC, Microsoft, Mobile services, Mobile software, Review, Windows Mobile

Tags: Software, High Tech Computer Corp., Map, Voice, Wireless, Safety View, Weather Data, ClearTurn, GPS, Tools & Techniques

Earlier this summer I posted on the release of CoPilot Live 8 for Google Android and loaded it up on my T-Mobile G1 to evaluate for a full review. A ton of new devices came shooting across my desk and I never had the chance to finish my review of this excellent GPS navigation solution, although I did use it successfully for a couple of road trips and found it to be an excellent solution on the Android platform. Last week I received an HTC HD2 device to evaluate and found that CoPilot Live 8 was preloaded on the device. The software was loaded with a 14-day trial and I quickly learned I could transfer the review license from my G1 to the HD2 and quickly set up the account on the HD2 and downloaded the 31MB map for Washington State. As you can see in my image gallery containing screenshots of the application and video of CoPilot Live 8 in action (thanks to my new teenage daughter taking the wheel), the software is fantastic and with that large, fabulous 4.3 inch 800×480 pixel resolution display you can’t find a much better portable GPS navigation/mapping solution available.

	Image Gallery:Check out a few screenshots of CoPilot Live 8 running on the HTC HD2.

I’ll try to cover some of the primary aspects and my favorite features of CoPilot Live 8 and give you my impressions of the usability and capability of the software, but as you can see on the Features page there is an amazing list of functions available to you in the software. As you can see in my video below the software screams on the HTC HD2 with 1GHz Snapdragon processor and all I need now is a proper car mount for the device to have a super in-car navigation system. As you will read below, CoPilot Live 8 also meets the needs for your out-of-car experiences, which is quite important for me personally.

Start up and walk around the interface

When you first launch CoPilot you need to select the region you want maps for, the language you want to use, and then enter registration information (if you want to purchase or enter your activation code) or select a trial. One thing I love about CoPilot 8 compared to a few other GPS navigation solutions I have tried is that Read the rest of this entry »

November 23rd, 2009

Did HTC address Windows Mobile 6.5's initial shortcomings?

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 7:17 am

Categories: HTC, Microsoft, Mobile software, Windows Mobile

Tags: High Tech Computer Corp., Screen, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Start, Microsoft Windows, Mobile Operating Systems, Operating Systems, Mobile Applications, Handhelds, Wireless And Mobility

I understood that Windows Mobile 6.5 was going to be a fairly minor update to bridge the gap between WM 6.1 and 7, but as I stated in my Windows Mobile 6.5 review I found too many things still missing from the update that I expected to see even with this understanding. Given the experiences I had with 6.5, I was expecting the same issues on the HTC HD2. I was pleased to discover that HTC didn’t just settle for Windows Mobile 6.5.0 and took it to the next level with several optimizations to make the experience better. There are still a couple of issues I want to see addressed in an update prior to Windows Mobile 7, but HTC did a great job with the HD2 and we may see updates to address these issues too.

Issues solved by HTC

Home/Today screen: As I mentioned in my 6.5 article, I find the default Windows Mobile Home/Today screen to be way too limiting. The WM 6.5 Today screen (accessed by pressing the Home button) is like the WM 6.1 Standard (non-touch screen) Home screen where quick access to your information is provided by scrolling up and down through the different sections. The trouble with it is that you cannot move anything around in the list, remove an item you never use from the list, or switch some of the topics to different applications you use. There just really is NO customizability with this new Home/Today screen. You can still use this same Home/Today screen by turning off the HTC Sense option in the Today screen settings.

HTC addresses the limitations with WM 6.5 Home/Today by enabling HTC Sense by default out of the box. Before trying out the HTC HD2 I though that I would see the same Sense UI experience I have seen on devices like the HTC Hero Google Android smartphone. The Sense UI in Android includes widget support, different social network and data integration, and more. HTC Sense on Windows Mobile 6.5 is really the latest version of TouchFLO 3D taken to the next level. Unfortunately, there are no widgets available like we have seen on HTC Android devices, this may be an operating system issue, so the Sense displays are not completely customizable.

Sense UI on the HD2 is quite slick with a TouchFLO 3D experience that I actually plan to use rather than installing Spb Mobile Shell right away like I did on my T-Mobile Touch Pro2. I like the weather animations, music player, photo viewer, and more. HTC integrates your friends’ Facebook data into your contacts and their People application is very helpful. You will also find HTC has new messaging utilities for text/media messages. The one issue I have with the HTC Sense email utility is that I cannot mark as read, delete or reply to the email right from the Today screen and have to jump into Messaging to take any action.

Stylus needed for common tasks: The HTC HD2 is the first Windows Mobile device with capacitive touch screen so HTC needed to make sure there were no remaining areas where a stylus is needed. I thought Microsoft was going to address this in WM 6.5, but we see this is not the case even one level down. For example, you cannot even create a new appointment in WM 6.5 without using your fingernail or stylus to select a data and time. Not to even mention all of the areas in the settings where a stylus is still required in WM 6.5.

HTC went deep down into the OS and has introduced finger friendly drop downs and selectors in every single area where I had an issue with the default WM 6.5 OS. This includes new appointments, sounds & notifications, regional settings, and more. These same standard non-finger friendly areas are still present if you look in the right places, but HTC has Read the rest of this entry »

November 20th, 2009

Music, photos, and weather are beautiful, fluid experiences on the HTC HD2

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 6:07 am

Categories: HTC, Microsoft, Mobile software, Windows Mobile, iPhone

Tags: High Tech Computer Corp., Photograph, Music, Album Art, Matthew Miller

I posted a quick first impressions of the HTC HD2 yesterday, but as I was commuting home on the train I had a chance to spend more time with the media capabilities of the device and wanted to share a few thoughts and a video with you. As you can see the weather animations alone will turn you into a fan of tracking the weather, the photo viewer rivals the iPhone, and the HTC media player is awesome.

Weather

You can add locations around the world, but there are limits to the cities in the database so it won’t pick them up by area code and may not include your city. I understand there is a reg hack you can perform to enable more customized city selections, but my current cities are covered so I didn’t have to worry about this.

As you travel around the Home screen city will change to match your actual location, but then you can bounce over to the Weather tab and flip through different cities. The animations are simply fantastic and I particularly enjoy the snow and thunderstorms.

Photos

One reason I make it a point to carry the iPhone around to events where I will be bumping into family or friends I haven’t seen in a while is to share photos with a device that has an excellent photo experience. I am pleased to say the HTC HD2 beats the iPhone in fluidity and abilities with photo viewing. You can view photos in portrait, but the real magic happens when you rotate into landscape orientation and your photo thumbnails fly across the screen. You can pinch and zoom, scroll, and share those photos. You can switch quickly to other albums and then even enable the camera and capture photos with the 5 megapixel lens.

You can tap a single F icon and view you and your friends Facebook albums right from within the application. You can tap on a photo and share it via email, MMS, Facebook, or YouTube. There are a number of transitions and durations for enjoying photos in slideshow mode as well. With the multitasking capability of the OS you can have music playing in the background as you enjoy the slideshow too.

Music

When you first jump to the Music tab you might think it is the same as what we have seen before on TouchFLO 3D and there are a few options in portrait mode. I particularly liked the single tap to update album art for lots of music that I had from a CD with no album art attached to it. I now have album art for almost all my music.

Again, the real magic happens when you pop the device over on its side and switch to landscape orientation. Your album art turns into a cover flow experience and you can zip through all your albums in a flash. I especially like the left music icon that shifts the album art to the right and has the song order, titles, and times appear with album art on the right. You can use the right side arrows to jump up and down a song or simply tap or scroll right through the song list to quickly get to where you want. There is a play/pause button in the center of the two right selection arrows.

Did I also mention that the HD2 only has a single speaker that is LOUD? Listen to it in my video and you can hear it for yourself.

I plan to next try to convert some DVDs into a format for watching on the HD2. The Star Trek DVD package I bought yesterday comes with a digital copy so I will try that out first. I also plan to test out the still and video capabilities of the 5 megapixel camera this weekend. Do you have any other media related functions you want me to check out?

UPDATE: I figured out that Zune Pass subscription music plays perfectly on the HTC HD2. All you need to do is connect in ActiveSync mode to your Windows PC (I used my Windows 7 MSI Wind netbook) and then launch Windows Media Player and drag the songs you want onto your HD2 external storage card drive. With the awesome HTC media player application, the HD2 is turned into an awesome alternative to the Zune HD.

HTC HD2 reviews from around the Internet

As I continue to work on my full review, I found several very good reviews of the HTC HD2 that can occupy you all weekend so check these out:

• 4WinMobile has all the benchmarks
• TechRadar has 7 pages in their review
• MoDaCo has an almost 45 minute video
• MobilityMinded devoted 3 people to this review task
• Pocketnow awarded the HD2 a rare 5 out of 5 rating

November 19th, 2009

Hands-on with the HTC HD2, most impressive Windows Mobile device to date

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 9:38 am

Categories: HTC, Microsoft, Mobile software, Review, Windows Mobile

Tags: High Tech Computer Corp., Device, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mobile, HTC HD2, TouchFLO 3D, Mult-touch, WorldCard Mobile Application, Microsoft Windows, Mobile Operating Systems

We wrapped up the Mobius 2009 event last night and since we spent most of the time talking about topics under NDA there isn’t much of anything I can share with your at this time. I recommend you check out Jason Dunn’s post on his new Windows Phone Thoughts site for coverage of what could be shared. HTC was kind enough to give each attendee an HTC HD2 device to evaluate so I wanted to post some first thoughts after spending the full day with it as my main device. I posted a video on YouTube with a short walk around the device and will post a full review early next week after a few more days with it. There is a ton of excitement about this device and after showing it to an iPhone owner here at work he said, “So this is what the next generation iPhone may look like.” HTC pushed Windows Mobile to the extreme with this device and it shows in an amazing product.

Hardware

Without even turning on the device you can tell there is something special about the HTC HD2. The device is a large black slab, but is thin at only about 3/8ths of an inch. It feels dense and a bit hefty, but like I have mentioned before I personally like devices that have good heft and density to them. The back metal battery cover is sleek and feels cool to the touch. It is surrounded by Read the rest of this entry »

November 18th, 2009

Office Mobile 2010 beta for Windows Mobile available now for free

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 12:15 pm

Categories: Microsoft, Mobile software, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mobile, Microsoft Office, Beta, Advertising & Promotion, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Marketing, Software, Matthew Miller

Good news for enterprise users of Windows Mobile devices comes to us today at the Mobius 2009 event. Microsoft announced the beta release of Office Mobile 2010 that is available now in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. I just downloaded it on my new HTC HD2 and will put together a walk through of the beta software in the next day or two. The beta is available now for touchscreen devices and requires Windows Mobile 6.5.

This beta will be disable on 5 April 2010 so you can get almost 6 months of usage out of this free beta. A few of the features listed on the Marketplace are:

• View and edit your Microsoft® Office® documents with confidence.
• Stay connected to work from anywhere with SharePoint Workspace Mobile.
• Stay connected to work from anywhere with SharePoint Workspace Mobile.
• Use PowerPoint Mobile as a presentation aid.

I particularly like to see the presentation aid support in PowerPoint Mobile. The presenter here at Mobius used this to run his presentation and it worked well.

November 18th, 2009

Opera Mobile 10 beta for Windows Mobile now available

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 6:31 am

Categories: Microsoft, Mobile services, Mobile software, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mobile, Opera Software ASA, Beta, Opera Mobile, Mobile Operating Systems, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Mobile Applications, Handhelds

I was a bit surprised when Opera launched the public beta of Opera Mobile 10 first for Symbian devices since we have seen this browser always launch on Windows Mobile touchscreen devices in the past. Good news for all of you touchscreen Windows Mobile owners though as Opera announced the release of the Opera Mobile 10 for Windows Mobile today.

Opera Mobile 10 for Windows Mobile has the following features:

• Opera Turbo support so you can use their servers to reduce bandwidth and increase speed
• Speed Dial for faster access to your favorite sites
• Password manager
• Tabbed browsing
• Kinetic scrolling
• Auto-rotation
• Adaptive zoom

I prefer Opera Mobile on my WM devices because it gives me a full web experience and has more power and functionality than Internet Explorer Mobile. Opera Mobile is even more powerful than the Safari browser on the iPhone. Opera Mobile 10 beta works on both Classic and Professional editions of Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows Mobile 6.1, Windows Mobile 6.0 and on Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC. If you have a Symbian device you can also try out Opera Mobile 10 beta.

November 18th, 2009

eReader for Google Android now available

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 5:13 am

Categories: Android, Google, Mobile software

Tags: Google Inc., Google Android, eReader, E-books, Personal Technology, Matthew Miller

I am an ebook fan and like to have the same software across multiple platforms, which is why my preferred reader has been Mobipocket for a couple of years. eReader has been expanding on devices and just launched their Google Android software so now I am going to go all in with eReader. I have been using Shortcovers on my G1, but it requires a data connection to download pages as you read. eReader lets you read content stored right on your device so you can read while on an airplane, traveling in a tunnel, etc. This launch comes on the heels of the Motorola DROID launch and I think that device would be an amazing ebook reader with the beautiful large display.

You won’t yet find eReader in the Android Market so you must install it via the web browser. Visit www.ereader.com/android to download the installation file and get it up and running on your Android device.

Features of the current release include the following:

• Connect to eReader.com or Fictionwise.com bookshelf for wireless download. Optional automatic download of new purchases.
• Basic reading features: forward page, back page, table of contents, change font size, landscape vs. portrait rotation views. Compatible with all eReader (PDB) content.
• Advanced reading features: bookmarks, highlights, notes, dictionary lookup when a compatible dictionary is installed.

You can navigate via the trackball, keyboard, or touchscreen. There is also a mobile optimized site for eReader so you can browse, purchase, and install titles right from your Google Android smartphone.

November 16th, 2009

Windows Marketplace for Mobile available for 6.1/6.0 devices

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 3:32 pm

Categories: Microsoft, Mobile software, Windows Mobile

Tags: Device, Mobile, Microsoft Windows, Advertising & Promotion, Operating Systems, Software, Marketing, Matthew Miller

It was just last week that we learned Microsoft opened up the Windows Marketplace for Mobile to PC access and in that release they said a version for WM 6.0 and 6.1 devices would be coming soon. I have to say I didn’t expect the announcement this soon, but am very pleased it is now official. This release now has the potential to put the Marketplace on 30 million devices worldwide.

As Microsoft stated, to get Marketplace for a Windows Mobile 6.0 or 6.1 based device, customers can simply point their phone’s browser to http://mp.windowsphone.com to start the download process; from the Web, customers can visit http://windowsphone.com/getmarketplace.

There are now over 800 applications in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which is more than three times what they had at launch. Apps are still priced higher than the iPhone App Store, but many seem fair to me and if the app meets a need then there isn’t much of an issue.

November 14th, 2009

Who needs an Office app? Google Docs, Calendar & more all work on Nokia N900

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 9:20 am

Categories: Google, Linux, Mobile services, Mobile software, Nokia, Review, T-Mobile

Tags: Google Inc., Google Docs, Nokia Corp., Mobile, Microsoft Office, Web Browser, Web Browsers, Advertising & Promotion, Internet, Marketing

I have had a Nokia N900 for about a month now (see my in-depth coverage) and have concluded that it is a great compact mobile computer, but needs some more work to be a really good cell phone. If mobile data is your focus, then the N900 is a device to consider and one question I have received quite a bit is whether or not Google Docs and other Google services were supported on the N900. The web browser on the N900 is the BEST of any mobile device when it comes to giving you a full desktop experience and as you can see in my video below Google Documents, Calendar, Google Wave, and more all work just fine on the Nokia N900.

The N900 comes with the Documents To Go viewers, but no means to create Office documents on the device yet. However, with full access to Google services via the Mozilla-based web browser you can create, edit, share, etc. your documents without needing any other application. That is one thing that I am finding about the N900, you don’t need apps to do things related to the Internet because the devices lets you do them all within the browser. Granted, it is handy to have some apps for faster access and there are quite a few helpful apps available with more coming, but it sure is refreshing not to feel limited by the web browser at all.

November 12th, 2009

Shop at the Windows Marketplace for Mobile from your desktop browser

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 7:12 am

Categories: Microsoft, Mobile software, Windows Mobile

Tags: Desktop, Phone, Mobile, Desktop Browser, Microsoft Windows Live, Web Browser, App, Microsoft Windows, Telecom & Utilities, Advertising & Promotion

Every mobile operating system now has their own on device application store, thanks to the initiative of Apple with the iPhone and the App Store. You can buy apps through all of them on your phone, but not all of them support buying apps from your desktop PC. According to WM Experts Microsoft just kicked off phase II of the Windows Marketplace for Mobile by providing the capability to browse and purchase apps from your web browser. Simple visit http://marketplace.windowsphone.com from your browser to check out the store.

You can still only officially get to the Marketplace on a Windows Mobile 6.5 device, but there is a CAB file available so you can put the store on your 6.0 or 6.1 device and it works just fine on my T-Mobile Touch Pro2.

You use your Windows Live ID to sign into the online store and you should see your purchase history made from your device. You need to have a device registered with the store before you can buy apps. You register your device by signing into the Marketplace from your Windows Phone and once that is done you will see the Buy button activated online. I tried to make a purchase, but the card associated with my Windows Live account is old and the system wouldn’t recognize my new card so I will have to wait for everything to work through the system before I can test out this new capability.

I was thinking this web access would download the file locally and then require you to ActiveSync to get it on your phone, but Microsoft makes the process much easier by sending you a notification (via text) that an application is ready to download. You follow the link and download right to your phone. There is no mechanism to backup and save purchased apps on your PC so like the other mobile application stores you have to rely on the company to provide access to your account and purchased apps if needed. Microsoft clearly states you will be able to reinstall by signing into your account on your phone so redownloads are not an issue like they were with the Nokia Ovi store.

As a mobile enthusiast, I was also pleased to see Microsoft has a policy similar to Apple where you can have up to 5 phones associated with your Windows Live ID account. As long as the apps you purchased are compatible with your new phone, you’ll be able to download and install them from the My Applications page on the new phone.