Smartphone Thoughts: Mobile DevCon 2004 San Francisco

Day Three - SQL Keynote
The final keynote session concentrated on SQL Server and business intelligence. We were given a demonstration of SQL Reporting Services (available now for SQL 2000) and more detail of SQL 2005 (formerly known by its codename Yukon). Many enterprise mobile applications will talk to a backend server and these reporting services are tightly integrated directly with the database and the designer uses Visual Studio. Hopefully you can see the pattern emerging through the whole of this conference, Visual Studio is where it all happens!

SQL Server Mobile
The next generation of SQL Server CE will be known as SQL Server Mobile. This will run on a greater range of devices including Smartphone and Tablet PC. This version (effectively version 3.0 of the SQL Server CE product) supports multiple user access, stored proceedures and tight integration with Visual Studio so that you can connect to a SQL Mobile server remotely and populate it using desktop tools.

OpenNETCF.org
As a quick disclaimer, I am a member of the OpenNETCF.org board and have written a number of the code libraries so I�m somewhat biased, but I felt this was a really beneficial session for all developers who already use or are intending to use the .NET Compact Framework. OpenNETCF.org have created a framework on top of the firm foundation of .NET Compact Framework v1.0 � this makes a large portion of the v2.0 Compact Framework functionality available to use today. The great thing is, all the libraries are free and the source code is provided. Maarten Struys and Alex Feinman gave a detailed presentation culminating in a real life lending-library application using a whole range of features from barcode scanning, Web services and OpenNETCF.org forms controls.

Power Management
This is a topic which is critical to successful mobile device development. Although device specifications improve at an incredible rate, the evolution of battery technology is much slower, meaning we have to be ever more conscious of power conservation when designing applications. The platform has been designed to have a very low power consumption when idle and this was demonstrated with a sample application on an MPx 200 device wired up to a meter (don�t try this at home as this may invalidate your warranty :wink: ). We were shown how a badly behaving application failed to stop when the device was idle and continued to utilise the processor, hence drawing more power. Whenever your application is inactive you need to ensure that it stops processing animations and other processor-intensive tasks. We were also given some details on how future devices will be designed to improve power consumption � both Smartphone and Pocket PC devices will, in the future, use mainly flash storage and have only modest RAM on the device. When not being read or written to, flash storage requires no power to hold its data, however RAM requires a constant power source, even when idle, to maintain data. Microsoft is therefore suggesting that devices should avoid having more than 32Mb of RAM, instead opting for much larger areas of Flash memory. A side effect of this is that data won't be lost if the battery dies as all your vital data will be held in Flash. This is how existing Smartphones work, but the same will be true of future Pocket PCs.

An interesting question which came up during this session was support for alternative power and charging methods � Microsoft has no particular restrictions on device manufacturers so they could implement any type of power source as long as it can provide a minimum duration of usage. This means manufacturers could conceivably integrate solar recharging or even fuel cell technology as long as it was able to provide a specific standby time.

Windows Mobile's Future
Many of the sessions covered the newly released Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, however, we were also told a number of details about the next major release, further into the future. A key direction is tighter convergence between the Smartphone and Pocket PC form factors. There are quite a number of differences between these two platforms, although they are both based on the same operating system and share a large number of APIs.

Microsoft supports OEMs adding their own secondary displays to units - for example those placed on the outside of clamshell device. There are no specific APIs for using such a screen and it will be up to the manufacturer to provide an API which software developers can hook into. However, Microsoft will provide guidelines on issues such as the icons used. Microsoft is also supportive of separate pendant devices which provide remote control functionality and external screens for devices. We were shown some very simple mock-ups of a keychain or pendant in line with a headset, such as you might find on high level personal stereos.
One of these convergence features will be a unified today/home-screen architecture for all Windows Mobile devices. Secondly, there will be a single installer architecture combining the best aspects of the existing Pocket PC and Smartphone approaches.

The platform will have a single point of catching events on the device called the Notifications Broker. This will be a single point of interaction for power, messaging, connectivity and other system events which will have a managed API for .NET Compact Framework developers. The need for applications to poll the device for changes periodically, something that eats into the battery life of the unit, is thus avoided. There will also be new APIs for Location, Cameras, and the entire Pocket Outlook and Messaging systems will have a unified managed API.

Summary
MDC was an inspiring event both for learning about the current mobility landscape and also getting a glimpse into future generations of Windows Mobile. I thought I ought to end with a �Call to Action� like most of the conference sessions. Developers should definitely get the developer tools for Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition and ensure their applications work well on the new version. Be sure to make use of the new screen sizes and orientations. As an application developer, consider submitting your application to the Mobile2Market contest where you can receive free logo certification testing and the chance to win $25,000. If you are an MSDN subscriber you should definitely consider downloading the Visual Studio 2005 preview � there are some great new features coming for device developers, although as this is a pre-Beta release you shouldn�t run this on a machine you use for everyday development.

Useful Links

• Bill Gates Keynote Transcript
• Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition Developer Resources
  
• Mobile2Market Application Contest