Smartphone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Ok� It looks like it's finally here. The false-start in December where the SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition folks pulled the downloads has past. Also, me jumping the gun last week and posting the download URLs before the "official" release is over. I checked with the SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition folks on Friday to confirm that it was OK to post the links today (15-January-2007) and they said today is the official release so I should feel free to post the links. So after all that, SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition and all of the related tools are "live and in color". Enjoy it. The added desktop support now gives us a lightweight, in-process (no server process) database for both desktop and Windows Mobile. Just as important, the database format is compatible so moving a database between a desktop computer and a Windows Mobile device is a simple file copy."



SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition enables the developers to have a compact embedded database for their mobile applications for tablet PCs, Pocket PCs, Smartphones and also regular Windows desktops. Check out the official Microsoft home page for SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition over here for more information.

"Global revenues from mobile data services surpassed US$ 100 billion for the first time last year according to data sourced from the latest edition of Informa Telecoms & Media's World Cellular Data Metrics. The figure of US$ 102.1 billion is equal to US$ 52.9 per every mobile subscription throughout the year or US$ 4.4 per month. Putting the 2005 figure into perspective, it is on a par with the combined fees paid so far by European operators for 3G licenses (US$ 102.3 billion according to Informa Telecom & Media's World Cellular Information Service). Or put another way, it is greater than the entire GDP for New Zealand in 2005 (US$ 94.6 billion according to the CIA World Factbook)."



US$ 100 billion! That figure is insane! That is a one with eleven zeros after it! I'm flabbergasted! 8O

"Microsoft Embedded MVP Maarten Struys shows how to create an application for a Windows Mobile 5.0 device using Visual Studio 2005. Learn how Visual Studio 2005 helps you to create user interfaces that will run on different devices with different display orientation modes and form factors."



Another helpful video to learn Windows Mobile 5.0 application development. If you want to learn more about display resolutions and how to adapt your application then check out this post.

"Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition (SQL Server Everywhere) is designed for developers who need light weight, in process relational database solution for their applications that can be developed and deployed on desktop as well as on mobile devices. The SQL Server Everywhere CTP contains the runtime bits that can be used to develop and deploy applications on desktop only. The RTW of SQL Server Everywhere will contain the device support for developing and deploying applications on mobile devices. SQL Server Everywhere CTP is a powerful tool that makes it easy to develop desktop applications by supporting familiar Structured Query Language (SQL) syntax and providing a development model and API consistent with SQL Server."



Microsoft is announcing the availability of the Community Technical Preview of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition just before Tech�Ed 2006, the largest annual customer conference for IT Pros and developers. The Everywhere Edition is the new version of a feature rich compact database that was previously called SQL Server CE. The new edition provides a reliable and better performing database engine, it offers improved synchronization, and integrates with SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005. To learn the details of what's new in this edition and how to use this new mobile database, download the SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition Books Online from here. Developers who are eager to get cracking on the mobile database will have to wait a bit longer to test it on their mobile devices, because the current CTP version supports the database on only the Windows Desktop, the mobile version is not available in this CTP release. :?

In celebration of MEDC, this weeks Gigantic Giveaway Event item is Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition. If you're not a developer or you have no interest in developing, then this is not the prize for you. ;) We've got one copy to giveaway and to win it all you need to do is reply to this thread and let us know why you should win this prize. :) You have until 11:59pm (PST) on Monday May 15th to enter. Winners will be randomly selected from the responses and announced on the following Wednesday.



"Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition is a comprehensive, high productivity professional development environment (for devs working alone or in small teams) for building high performance, multi-tier applications for Windows, the Web, and mobile devices. With Visual Studio 2005, professional developers can:

� Create multi-tier Windows, Web, SmartPhone, and Pocket PC based applications
� Integrated Visual Database Tools for designing databases, tables, stored procedures, and more
� Integrated database report designer and viewer
� Design, debug, and deploy multi-tier applications
� Integrated XSLT debugging"

"By now, every developer, in some way, has experienced the productivity enhancements that the modern rapid application development environment offers. Developers use these environments to build different applications for different reasons. Some applications are structured only for the internal use of business. Some applications are sold commercially. Yet other applications are developed and freely distributed by hobbyists that enjoy contributing to the software community. No matter what the intent, the basic building blocks of each application's user interface are the elemental pieces referred to as controls. ... When a developer uses Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 to create custom controls for smart device applications the process is tedious and error-prone. Creating a custom control that functions solely at run time almost seems trivial. Unfortunately, getting that custom control to properly integrate with the designer can be frustrating for Visual C# developers, and it is not possible for Visual Basic developers. But that was then; now, Visual Studio 2005 has changed the way that developers build design-time support for custom controls."



Do want to learn how to create custom controls for your mobile applications? Then this article might help you out. :)

"Unlike other platforms, overall ASP for Windows Mobile Smartphone content declined, dropping from $15.06 in 2004 to $13.59 in 2005. Specific categories bucked this trend, however; Hobbies made a strong showing at $28.70, while Business & Professional and Productivity increased year over year to $22.87 and $18.39, respectively. The top ten devices adding content included newcomers like the i-mate SP3 and SP3i. Looking at sales by category, Utilities, Document Management and Productivity accounted for 54 percent of total sales."

Handango has released their summary for the 2005 calendar year. I don't think it's much of a surprise to see the average selling price drop a little. As the market grows and more products become available, price will become an increasing factor on whether or not you buy the application. The full press release can be found here along with the summary for all the different platforms - not just the Windows Mobile Smartphone platform. ;)

"The .NET Compact Framework represents a major step forward in providing you with the tools and platform library support for building the next generation of smart device applications. Given that smart devices are expected to proliferate broadly over the next three years, this remains a critical area of development. Key areas of improvement in the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 are enhanced abilities for building user interfaces, a new mobile database engine and associated tools for creating data-centric applications more easily and significantly improved testing and deployment capabilities. In addition there are substantial emulator improvements, new core framework enhancements, and better COM Interop support and Managed Interfaces to D3D."



Microsoft has posted a guided tour of the Visual Studio 2005 based .NET Compact Framework 2.0 development on MSDN. The guide includes a video overview of the enhanced features in .NET CF 2.0, it can be viewed over here.

The year 2005 will be remembered as the year in which the Smartphone grew out of its traditional mold. The Smartphone manufacturers added exciting new features and enhancements. It was no longer just the Windows Mobile OS version that mattered. Features like built-in Wi-Fi, EDGE, QVGA screen, 3GB microdrive, jog dial, functional external screen and last but not the least, the "hump" (bigger antenna) made the Smartphones unique. Kudos to the manufacturers for seeing technology beyond Bluetooth and 1 Mega Pixel camera. :) So before we head into 2006, let us vote on the best new Smartphone feature of the year. As always I have only included features that we have in our hands today; cool features or innovations like push E-Mail, stereo Bluetooth profile, Moto Q's RAZR styling and QWERTY keypad have been left out. I am sure I have forgotten to include some of the other cool innovations/improvements of the year, so feel free to post them and comment upon them in this thread.

This is an easy topic. We all know the winner. It is undoubtedly the Taiwan based High Tech Computer Corporation (HTC). They continued their trend of releasing the base Smartphone product platform and then having the carriers and the vendors re-brand them in various styles and under different names. The most notable product from HTC this year is the HTC Tornado, the Wi-Fi enabled Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone with QVGA screen and EDGE support. Equally notable is the HTC Faraday, the non Wi-Fi and hump-enabled cousin of HTC Tornado, marketed in the US as the Cingular 2125. :lol: It amazes me how HTC fulfills our gadget dreams, when other other established cell phone manufacturers like Samsung and Motorola take forever to launch their products. And when they do ship them, it is either outdated or buggy or in some cases both. :roll: My question to our readers is - who should be tagged as the worst Smartphone manufacturer and why? You will notice that I have included Microsoft/Flextronics as an option in the polls for the worst manufacturer. Microsoft and Flextronics earlier in the year had announced the Peabody platform which was supposed to be the low-cost Smartphone for the masses which never materialized, hence they get a seat in this poll. ;-)

Folks, 2005 is soon going to be history. Before we say bye-bye, let us vote on the best and the worst Smartphones of 2005. I think i-mate SP5/Qtek 8310 with its awesome black and silver styling, and features like Wi-Fi, EDGE, QVGA and Windows Mobile 5.0, is undoubtedly the Best Smartphone of 2005. When it comes to the Worst Smartphone of 2005, I don't think there is a clear loser. But we do have two Smartphones that launched this year with Windows Mobile 2003 SE. :? Samsung i300 and Nextel i930 are not necessarily the worst Smartphones, but lack of key features moves them closer to the worst side of the list. And I am sure some of you might want to add the recently launched Cingular 2125 on the worst list as well. ;-) So please share your thoughts and comments on the best and the worst Smartphone of the year. And remember we would like to consider only the Smartphones that are available in the market. Cingular 2125 � i-mate SP5 / Qtek 8310 � i-mate SPm / Qtek 8300� Orange C600 � Orange C550� Nextel i930 � Samsung i300

I wrote this off and on during the sessions at the recent Mobius 2005 conference. It's a bit stream-of-consciousness, so you'll have to forgive me if it tends to ramble a bit, or switches tense. I had hoped to have this published sooner, but after my flight home was delayed by 5 hours which got me into bed by 3:30 AM, the next few days were a bit of groggy write-off as I tried to dig myself out of a mound of email and tasks. I didn't write about every session - I took bits of pieces of what I found interesting and relevant.



I'm down here in lovely downtown Seattle for Mobius, a conference that Microsoft puts on every 12-16 months for a mix of mobile device community leaders, journalists, and analysts. Full disclosure: it's an all-expenses paid trip (hotel + airfare) for most of us, though some people paid their own way, and we always end up getting some goodies to take home and play with. The real focus of Mobius is to bring together the leaders of the top mobile devices communities and Web sites, to show them what Microsoft is up to, and to have discussions with them about the mobile space.
Windows Mobile 5 & Applications
The first presenter was Ford Davidson. He spoke on a variety of topics, but I'll focus on the ones I felt most interesting. First up, we have an official unveiling of Office Mobile. Some of the details were sketchy - in fact, most of the details were sketchy. No firm date for launch. No word on pricing - maybe it will be free? They were a bit tongue-in-cheek when they were discussing it. I brought up the confusion of having an Office Mobile suite that was essentially a series of viewing tools, but having Word Mobile on the Pocket PC which had editing capabilities. They're in a bit of a branding nightmare here, and it will only get worse if they decide to remove the Word and Excel Mobile applications from the Pocket PC and somehow try and replace it with Office Mobile. They didn't mention they were planning on doing that, but they need to unite all these pieces somehow.


Figure 1: A table-top view of Mobius 2005

Ford also showed off Communicator Mobile, which interfaces with Live Communications Server (LCS). He talked about being able to do VOIP calls, but it required him to be on the Redmond LAN. LCS sounds interesting, but I'm sensing another massive disconnect between LCS and MSN Messenger, even worse than the whole Windows Messenger/MSN Messenger confusion. I know some Microsoft people that are using LCS and apparently they can't add MSN Messenger users to their contact lists - I have no idea if this is correct, or a permanent situation, but the single worst thing you can do in a situation like this is break people into two groups and not allow them to communicate with each other.

And I finally saw the Treo 700w. Ford did a bit of a demo, showing us the things that Palm added to the 700w to make it have the "Palm experience". The small, square screen looked pretty cramped, especially the today screen. I know they did 240 x 240 for performance and battery life reasons, but the Windows Mobile user interface is just too big for a 240 x 240 interface. When you press the talk button, you get a pop-up menu that shows the recently dialled numbers. There's also photo speed dial, allowing you to click on a photo to dial the number of that person - nice touch! There's a search toolbar on the today screen - you can type a term into the field and it will search Google (and presumably open the results in IE Mobile). Video caller ID has also been added - rather that being able to only select a photo, you can select a video that will play when a call from that person comes in. Seems a bit useless to me personally, but it's neat.

Next the Samsung i300 was shown - this Smartphone has a 3 GB hard drive built-in. Being able to use the keypad to automatically filter through hundreds of songs is very cool - you start typing the name of the artist, or the song, and it will filter through the content and show you what you want. Very cool! Of course Windows Media Player 10 mobile hasn't been improved much with Windows Mobile 5 - it still won't auto-discover new content without you telling it to, and it still picks up ring tones and other sound files instead of just music. I can't blame WMP10 Mobile too much though, because its desktop counterpart is equally dysfunctional in this regard.


Figure 2: The HTC Prophet. Full sized image.

Next he demoed the HTC Prophet. It's the same size as the I-Mate Jam, and has a good solid feel to it. I'm not sure what the casing is made of, but it looks great and doesn't show fingerprints like most black shells, so that's an improvement in my books.
Read more...

"Resco, a leading provider of advanced developer controls and tools for mobile devices, today announced availability of Resco MobileForms Toolkit 2005, a unique set of powerful components fully integrated with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and optimized for .NET Compact Framework 2.0. The MobileForms Toolkit 2005 is one of the largest component toolset dedicated to mobile application development. When designing and developing these components, Resco took account of the rapidly growing number of mobile application developers and lack of specific controls capable of efficient work in the environment of Windows Mobile-based devices that are small in screen size and have limited CPU performance."



If you are a Windows Mobile developer, you must check out the Resco MobileForms Toolkit. Check out the screen shots of the Resco controls like AdvancedList .NET, DetailView .NET, SmartGrid .NET, OutlookShortcutBar .NET and OutlookCalendar .NET. They look awesome. :-) Wish they had screen shots of those controls running on a Smartphone.

"In Visual Studio 2005, all device application development has been brought under the umbrella of a single IDE coupled with the latest pluggable compilers and an integrated debugger. Mixed solutions are supported. The debugger can attach to the running processes on the device or emulator, and the developer can select whether to debug managed or unmanaged code (although stepping from managed code to unmanaged code is not supported)."

There's a new article up on MSDN from Alex Feinman of the OpenNETCF team about debugging and troubleshooting your applications. It's well worth the read if you're doing any sort of device development on Visual Studio 2005. :)

"Full integration of SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition with SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 provides a platform for developers to rapidly build applications that extend enterprise data management capabilities to mobile devices."



Developing applications that revolve around databases is now easy thanks to the new SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition. Visit the SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition page on MSDN. You will find resources to quickly develop mobile applications that can manage data on the go. If you are not familiar with the SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition, then check out this page. :-) This database engine is a big improvement over the previous version, the SQL Server CE. And it is supported on Pocket PC 2003, Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC and Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone.

"The Best Software Awards helps users select software that best suit their Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone needs. We do so by honoring companies that produce outstanding software. Winners were determined by the 80 members of Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine�s Board of Experts. You may read complete details about the Winners in the 2006 Buyers Guide, available early November 2005, mailed free to Pocket PC magazine subscribers."

Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine has posted the winners for their Best mobile Software awards. For a complete list of the hottest Smartphone, Pocket PC, and Developer software, check out their website, or buy a copy at your local news stand. :D

"Learn how to reuse your existing Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft .NET Framework skills to develop a line-of-business (LOB) application for a Windows Mobile�based device in this self-pace, hands-on lab. You will begin with the basics of building, deploying, and debugging a Windows Mobile application by using Visual Studio 2005. By using the .NET Compact Framework and Windows Mobile SDK, you will then be led through the steps of developing the application to effectively address LOB business needs on a mobile device. You will complete the application by using SQL Mobile to provide persistent storage and query capabilities."

Are you looking to get started in the world of Mobile development using the latest and greatest tools? If so, the latest article on MSDN is your friend. Work your way through this 56 page step by step guide and you'll be off and running in the wonderful world of Windows Mobile development. :D

"Earlier today, we shipped Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0! This is by far the best Visual Studio and .NET Framework release that we have ever done. I am very proud to be a part of the team that did a phenomenal job of delivering this fantastic product. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the community and early adopter customers for their incredible help and invaluable contributions in helping us ship the right product. Later in the day, the final bits will be up on MSDN for our MSDN subscribers around the world to get access to the product. I am looking forward to the product launch on November 7th and all the subsequent launch events around the world."



S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, is excited about the release of the RTM version of Visual Studio 2005 and the availability of the .NET Framework 2.0 for download. Visual Studio 2005 RTM can be downloaded by MSDN subscribers from here and if you want to buy this developer software, check out this site. I wish the Express edition supported mobile development. :twisted: Developers will have to buy the more expensive Standard or Professional edition package for writing Windows Mobile 5.0 based applications. Anyone can download the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 from here. And as a reminder I have included the compatibility matrix posted by Robert Levy over at Windows Mobile Team blog.

Microsoft has released the video recordings of the PDC 2005 presentations. Microsoft had earlier released the presentation slides. Now you can watch the presenters walk you through demonstrations and listen to their comments. I believe that this is the first time that Microsoft has made the conference presentations available for free, instead of the conference DVDs, which you had to buy. :-)



Following is the list of Windows Mobile related presentations.

� Putting a Conference In Your Pocket: By Marcus Perryman
� .NET Compact Framework 2.0: Optimizing for Performance: By Roman Batoukov � Extending Virtual Earth for Windows Mobile Devices: By Steve Lombardi
� Windows Mobile: New Emulation Technology for Building Mobile Applications with Visual Studio 2005: By Amit Chopra and Barry Bonds
� How Microsoft Gathers Expense Reports on Windows Mobile Devices: by Mark Brown
� 10 Tips for Extending Your System to Windows Mobile Devices: By Andy Sjostrom from the:unwired

The complete set of presentations can be downloaded from here.

"Come and hear where mobile device hardware is going from technology experts within Microsoft and industry partners. Ask your burning questions on battery technology, screen innovations, wireless networks, and much more."



What would you ask if you were in front of a panel of mobile experts from Microsoft, Motorola, HP and Lenovo? Would you ask them about the Bluetooth eye glasses that can help you read the tiny Smartphone screen without squinting? Or would you ask them about speech recognition? Or maybe you would like to know whether a RAZR based on Windows Mobile is in the works or not? The attendees in this PDC 2005 panel discussion asked these and some other interesting questions. This discussion recording is 1 hour 27 minutes long, I would recommend viewing it over the weekend. :-) And do let us know your thoughts and comments. I will post mine later. ;-) All I will say for now is that, I was pretty amazed when I heard the Motorola representative praise HTC for doing a fine job with Windows Mobile.