Smartphone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"At GDC today, AMD announced a suite of tools for developing handheld gaming content for the company's next-generation mobile graphics parts. The suite includes Rendermonkey 1.7, a shader tool that will let game developers write graphics code for a range of devices that support the OpenVG 1.0, OpenGL 2.0, and Unified Shader Architecture technologies. ATI's Unified Shader Architecture in particular is one of the main selling points of the Xbox 360, and AMD will offer support for unified shaders on its next generation of mobile parts...The Imageon processor line, announced by AMD last month, is essentially a "GPU" for mobile devices. Imageon is more flexible than a desktop GPU, of course, since with a mobile device you want to save on cost and battery life by cramming as much of the phone onto one piece of silicon as you possibly can. So Imageon has support for 3D and 2D graphics, audio processing, digital still and video cameras, TV out, video recording with image stabilization, video transcoding, and various other multimedia features. All of this stuff is on a single chip that's separate from the phone's radio chip, so that the handset maker can upgrade to a new version of Imageon without having to go through the process of FCC qualification each time they add features."



We haven't seen a Windows Mobile device with an Imageon processor yet, but we can always hope. If the power requirements could be kept under control, a GPU could really help boost media processing on the device that's now currently done by the CPU - and we all know that once we start playing a game that uses up 100% of our CPU, battery life goes into the toilet along with overall device performance (your device will check email and the game will sputter). Before we see the software though, we need the hardware - developers need a platform with which to sell their wares. I wonder if we'll see any Windows Mobile devices with an Imageon processor out this year? i-Mate's Ultimate line would have seemed to be a good fit for something like this.

"Thought you couldn't use eVB to develop Smartphone 2002/2003/WM5 applications? Think again! After purchasing a new Samsung i600, I was eager to start writing some apps for it. Being a veteran VB programmer, I was disappointed that I could not use eVB for the task. But, I said to myself "Now I finally have a real reason to dive into .NET programming". What??? I can't even write apps for my Smartphone using the latest state-of-the-art VS2003.NETcf !!! Unacceptable, there's got to be another way..."

I am sure that everyone who loves Visual Basic development and the Smartphone platform has heard about John Cody and his eVB Smartphone Development Forum. In case you haven't, let me give you a quick introduction. Visual Basic is probably the favorite programming language for a lot of programmers, especially for those who write applications for fun, but Microsoft does not support Visual Basic development on the Smartphone platform and Microsoft's free Embedded Visual Basic development tool does not work with Smartphones. Microsoft wants the developers to use Visual Studio .NET which unlike eVB is not a free tool. This is where John Cody comes in to rescue the developers. Check out his development forum for more information. He even has an article on enabling eVB applications on the Windows Mobile 5.0 based devices; check it out over here.

Motorola has released a thirty page developer guide aimed at helping the developers find all the Moto Q related developer tips in one place. It is not a comprehensive document but is definitely a step in the right direction. It covers topics like emulator plug-in, Bluetooth programming, application signing and certification. The bulk of the document is focused on signing and certification, I wonder if Moto Q will be application locked. :? Looks like it will be. And I wish the document mentioned if the keys can be overridden programmatically.



So if you are a mobile application developer, head over to the MotoCoder web site, download the PDF based guide and register for updates.

"Learn how to use the great support of the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 for managed multithreaded applications�while avoiding much of the complexity that comes with multithreading�in this self-paced hands-on lab. You will learn how to properly create and terminate threads, how to deal with the challenges of updating user interface controls from inside worker threads, and which synchronization objects to use at different times. Upon completion of this lab, you will know how to use the multithreading capabilities of the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 to create well responsive applications targeting Windows CE 5.0 and Windows Mobile�based devices. This is a level 300 lab, and it should take you 45 minutes to complete."



Master the multithreading capabilities of the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework version 2.0 and create applications that are more responsive. In this step-by-step example a Pocket PC based application is used to demostrate the power of multithreading, but the same concepts can be applied to the Smartphone as well. :)

"This article explores the multithreading capabilities of the .NET Compact Framework. You will learn about underlying Windows CE concepts like processes and threads. You will also learn when it is necessary to create multithreaded applications. The managed classes available for multithreaded applications will be explored in great detail. In addition, you will learn about different methods to synchronize multiple threads."

This article (and the downloadable sample code) focuses on the Pocket PC arena. However, the principles and concepts explored in the article apply to the Smartphone platform too. It is worth the read for anyone doing .Net Compact Framework development and looking to step into the multi-threaded environment. :)

"Developing applications for Windows Mobile software for Smartphone is a reality today, and thanks to the .NET Compact Framework version 1.0 and the Visual Studio 2003 form designer, code editor, compilers, debuggers, and emulators, it's not more difficult than developing a typical desktop program. Visual Studio 2005 will improve the development experience even more, making it easier and more productive. This article covers the current features provided by Visual Studio .NET 2003, provides an overview of Visual Studio .NET 2005 by exploring the current beta 1 release, and anticipates the new APIs and components that will be introduced in a future version of Windows Mobile software."

This MSDN article covers off the current Smartphone development experience with Visual Studio 2003, and then it shows us what we can expect from the release of Visual Studio 2005, currently in Beta 2. It's pretty interesting to see all the changes, and how much easier it will be to develop for Windows Mobile once the new version of VS is released. :)

At PDC it was announced that future versions of Pocket PC and Smartphone would support higher resolution displays. In particular, Smartphone will be able to work with screens of 240x320 resolution (which is equivalent to today's Pocket PC displays). No, this does not mean that Smartphones will become the size of Pocket PCs - it means that the screens will simply be able to display more "dots per inch" (DPI). For users, this is awesome since you'll get sharper text and much more detailed graphics. For developers, this creates some new challenges and Microsoft has published a whitepaper describing what those are and how you will be able to handle them.

"Microsoft Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones will run at higher DPI resolutions in the future. Learn about the changes your applications will need to determine the DPI of the device and take advantage of high-DPI displays."

It is important to note that this only applies if you choose to create DPI-aware applications or modify existing apps to be DPI-aware. If a developer decides not to do this, their apps will still look fine on higher resolution displays since (as mentioned at PDC) the OS will automatically scale all applications that are not DPI-aware.

Not being a developer, I don't quite grasp why this is exciting, but the author of this article and long-time friend John Cody, was quite excited about it. So here you go:

"Thought you couldn't use eVB to develop Smartphone 2002 applications? Think again! NOTE: This article describes how I hacked eVB for Smartphone 2002 development. My efforts so far yielded 99% seamless, integrated functionality. I am hoping, through a collaborative effort with the readers of this article, to bring that up to 100%. So, if you have any comments or suggestions to achieve that goal, please contact me so I can add your tip (with credit) to this article."