Smartphone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

With the latest and greatest version of Windows Mobile finally starting to appear on the streets, I thought it would be a good time to go back through my complaint bin and see if anything has changed. First up, Call Display.


The look of days gone by. The incoming call screen from Windows Mobile 2003 was nothing fancy. At least it showed you the number, right? ;)

For those that might not recall, I've written two previous articles on the subject - the first one related to Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition devices, and the second one was focused on Windows Mobile 5 devices (Of course, this is on the Smartphone side only). The end result is that Microsoft chose a poor template to use as the default, expecting that the carrier or device manufacturer would customize this setting. In the end, I don't think any carrier ever touched it - beyond changing the colors.

So, has anything changed? Does Windows Mobile 6 have a better template? Let's take a look at the before and after images.

Windows Mobile 5 was the first release where Microsoft had added in support for Contact pictures that are stored in your Outlook contacts. Until now, caller ID was only available as a third party add-on.


Six months later we started to see devices with landscape screens hit the streets. These devices didn't make any better use of the space available for displaying a picture.


Which brings us to today. In my opinion, Windows Mobile 6 is a significant improvement. The pictures are larger and the screen space is used in a much better fashion.



While I will give credit to Microsoft for improving the default template, there is still lots of room for improvement, like adding user customizable (via XML) caller ID screens. Or maybe just a couple templates that we can choose between. I'm sure those ideas are years away making it onto our phones. For now, I am happy that there is a more realistic caller ID layout.





For the record, I did have some problems getting the image sized just right. I took the picture using the camera on the device and found that it wasn't sized or aligned very well at all. So I had to transfer the image over to my PC and crop/resize it down to 77x106 and then load it into my Contact card in Outlook. Complete the sync and then everything was working nicely. It would be nice if there was a built in tool that would allow me to zoom and crop the picture I just took so that it would fit nicely in the Outlook contacts field.

Back in mid-December of 2005 I wrote this post about the total uselessness of the built-in Caller ID template on Windows Mobile 5 based Smartphones. While it's great that they finally added the ability to use the Outlook contact picture, when it is actually displayed on the phone, it's of no value at all.

In the discussion that followed on that post, we had some answers provided to us by Neil Enns from Microsoft (who was actually involved in the development on that piece of functionality.) It turns out that the default template was just meant as a place holder and the carrier and/or the device manufacturer were meant to customize this. Unfortunately, no one did.

So, why the post now? Windows Mobile 5 has been available to ODMs for over a year now. I can understand that the early devices like i-mate SP5m and the Cingular 2125 might not have had the time to customize, or perhaps didn't realize that it could be done. What I can't understand is why devices like the Q or the StarTrek are still shipping without an improved template? I'm not looking for a fix from Microsoft, but surely the carriers and the manufacturers could have dropped in a nicer template by now. Take a look at the Caller ID on the new Motorola Q.


Look at all that wasted space! A simple tweak to show a slightly larger picture would have made a world of difference.

Microsoft needs to learn that the default should at least be usable and realistic. If I took the time to test the cache limit size on the latest batch of Smartphones, I'm pretty sure that we would see the same results - Carriers and Manufacturers have failed to set something reasonable, leaving Microsoft's default value that will allow IE Mobile to fill all the available space on your device with it's cache. :evil:

I've used most of the Caller ID packages on the market, and for the most part, they are pretty good. However, they all suffer from the same flaw - difficulty of attaching a picture to a contact. Ideally, this should be something that could be easily managed on the desktop and then transfered over. Further more, they really should be managed through Outlook. After all, it's where your contacts are in the first place, and the contact card even has a place for a picture. The lack of integration between Caller ID and Outlook is something that I have complained about a number of times in the past.

If you had a Windows Mobile 2003 SE based device, then you had Caller ID built-in. This was thanks to HTC's purchase of IA Style, which saved you having to buy an application. But it still didn't do Caller ID the right way. Thankfully, it's all changed. In Windows Mobile 5, Caller ID is baked into the OS and it is integrated with Outlook. It will display the picture that you have associated with a given contact using Outlook. :clap: You can assign a picture from your desktop or using the phone. What you can't do, is change the template that is used when that contact calls you. At least I haven't found a way to tell it to display a larger picture, or to display it in a different location.


It's a good thing that I know who is in that picture, because there is no way that anyone else in the world will be able to identify them. Not from this picture! (The name and number has been removed to protect the innocent. ;) )

While I have to applaud Microsoft for integrating Caller ID with Outlook Contacts, I feel they have more than dropped the ball when it comes to displaying that picture on incoming calls. The template/design is utterly useless and the picture ends up being no bigger than my fingernail. Just look at all the free space available below the callers telephone number, why not place a larger version of the picture here? :?
I've been told that this is just the default template for incoming calls and that Microsoft expects the device manufacturer to customize this screen. They had no answer for why the default screen wasn't more useful, especially when we routinely see these type of issues being over looked by the manufacturer. There was also no answer when asked if this is something that we could customize in the same fashion as the home screen.

All in all, this ends up being one step forward followed by a couple massive steps backwards. It really makes you wonder what Microsoft was thinking when they made the default template so useless. :evil:

"Maury County E-911 dispatchers watched in fascination as their global positioning satellite system tracked a series of false calls Thursday afternoon � to a 14-year-old student on a school bus. ''When we saw a pattern to the calls, we started watching where they were being made from,'' said E-911 Director Freddie Rich. ''We could see the route the vehicle was taking, and we heard kids laughing in the background, so I called the school transportation department and asked if they had a bus near Theta Pike and Highway 43..."

Not the most productive, life-saving use of this technology, but hey, you have to start somewhere. :lol:

Good news for MPx200 and i600 owners fighting with caller ID problems! Photo Contacts 2.0 was *just* released and, as we posted previously, gets around the issue of the built in caller ID not displaying the name of a caller if you have a large number of contacts.

Here's the full list of improvements in 2.0:

• 2 new Photo Caller ID modes (SIMPLE mode displays a smaller photo, THEMED mode displays a medium sized photo)
  
• Awesome new photo adjust engine lets you crop and adjust contact photographs on the Smartphone
  
• Photo image browser lets you easily assign photos to contacts on the phone (great for camera phones). SmartName is still the preferred option for assigning many contact photos at once.
  
• SMS/MMS/Email support facilitates easy message sending through Photo Contacts
  
• Contact photos can now be sent via MMS, Email and Infrared (via PhotoBeam)
  
• Caller ID Name Override feature fixes the Caller ID bug in US based Smartphones (i600, MPX-200)
  
• Option to enable continuous ring-tones
  
• Ability to sort contacts by Company Name
  
• Photo ZOOM feature (just press * to display a large photograph of the selected contact)
  
• Incoming Call forwarding info is shown in Themed Photo Caller ID (support varies by network)
  
• Enhanced call dialog remembers the last selected number for each contact for Talk-Talk functionality
  
• Automatic auto-run at startup loads Photo Contacts in the background
  
• Enhanced support for memory cards
  
• Performance improvements across the board (everything is faster!)

Photo Contacts was a great app in 1.0 and now it looks like a must-have for American users. To make the deal even better, 2.0 is a free upgrade for anyone who purchased the previous version! You can pick this up NOW for $19.99 in our affiliate store.

Update: The free trial download has not yet been updated to version 2.0. You can use it to try out the 1.0 features, but it does not include the things listed above. We have been told that a free trial for 2.0 should be available by tomorrow.

Here are some screenshots of Photo Contacts 2.0: