Smartphone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Microsoft is heavily into the "Live" world right now. There's Live Mail, Live Messenger, Live Alerts, Live Search, and that's just scratching the surface. There are plenty more Live ideas in the works. If that wasn't enough to make your head spin, Microsoft has managed to release 2 different Live Search applications for Windows Mobile and both applications do different things.



The first Live Search (pictured in the lower right of the image above) will provide you with Map, Directions, and Traffic information for a location you select. I used this before my vacation a couple weeks ago to check out the pool at the hotel I was planning on staying at in Las Vegas. A lot of people here have played with this in it's beta form over the last number of months. It was recently released to production and if you haven't tried it out, I suggest you do. It's really a great tool.

The other Live Search (pictured in the upper left corner of the image above) was announced as a part of the new Windows Live for Windows Mobile at 3GSM and will ship with Windows Mobile 6 devices. Windows Live for Windows Mobile offers a number of Live services for your Windows Mobile device like: Live Mail, Live Messenger, and Live Search. However, this Live Search is nothing like the other Live Search. Live Search that comes in Windows Live for Windows Mobile is nothing more than a shortcut to Live.com and a mobile proxy to help speed up and format your searches for display on your smaller than normal screen. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it's not as cool as the other Live Search and now we have 2 Live Search products for Windows Mobile devices. How many times did I just use the words Windows, Mobile, Live, and Search? Confused yet?

So whether it's Live Search you're looking for or just Live Search, Microsoft has the tool for you and your device. I think Microsoft needs to spend a little more time coming up with better names that describe the product and sound cool at the same time. Is that too much to ask for?

"HTC, the world's leading provider of Windows Mobile� devices, today launched the world's first tri-band 3G Windows Mobile Pocket PC [TyTN] and 3G smartphone [MTeoR] under the new HTC brand identity.
HTC will continue to support its operator-branded products and OEM partners as a key priority. At the same time, HTC will provide its new branded products to its existing Qtek channels, distributors, enterprise and operators, who do not carry operator-branded products. Migrating the Qtek brand to the new HTC brand identity will enable HTC to provide better direct support to those customers."



Oh Please! It's not enough that HTC copied the RAZR stylings for the StarTrek, but now they're going to copy Motorola's naming convention too - MTeoR? That's just plain silly. In case you're wondering, the MTeoR and the TyTN are better known as the HTC Hermes and the HTC Breeze respectively. I do like the new logo and their new site which can be found here.

This looks like a handy little application. It allows you to easily change the name your devices Bluetooth name and change the name of your ActiveSync profile without having to create a new connection. As well, you can use it to hide the GPRS icon from the title bar. Unfortunately, I can't read a single word on this website, other than "English version of program - download". If anyone gives this a try, please let us know your findings.

"UT Starcom today unveiled a new logo with the intent of making their brand known in the US. Although they purchased Audiovox some time ago, UT Starcom has continued to market devices in the US under the Audiovox name or as carrier-branded models. Like Pantech and BenQ, UT Starcom hopes to extend their brand recognition beyond Asia and into North America."



Personally, I think UTStarcom is not as nice a name as Audiovox is for the customer to remember. I guess we'll be watching the carriers this fall for the new UTStarcom Tornado. You see, it just doesn't flow. :? Oh well, as far as Smartphones are concerned, it doesn't really matter what name they go by, the phone is still just a re-branded HTC device and that's fine with me.

"O2's clearly not done yet for the year. Having surprised us with the delectable Xda Atom and Xda Mini Pro PDA-phones, it has unveiled the Orion. This smart phone, however, bears an almost uncanny similarity to the Dopod 577W, from the design right down to the dimensions. Features-wise, it almost apes the Dopod, offering quadband network support, onboard Wi-Fi connectivity and Windows Mobile 5.0."



It appears that the new HTC Tornado is going to be just as popular as the Typhoon was. We now have a Qtek, i-mate, Audiovox (rumored), O2, and Dopod version of the phone. It's great to see so many different carriers and ODM's carrying the HTC devices. 8)

Canary, Voyager, Magician, SPV, 8020, C500, C550, M500, SP3, Jam and SDA are all names belonging to the HTC product family. Have you ever had a break down over HTC product code names and model names? Now thanks to the awesome work done by the folks over at WindowsMobile.no you have an easy reference matrix. Not only have they taken time to create this matrix, but they also spent some time on creating a cool cartoon showing a puzzled man staring hopelessly at the HTC product name list. :lol: You must check out the cartoon. Oh! And the product matrix also. ;-)

"CoreCodec has announced the official name change of BetaPlayer to The Core Pocket Media Player. A new TCPMP for Palm OS, Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone devices is now available for download. The Core Pocket Media Player is a popular Open Source Media Player for mobile devices. It is designed to make it easy for the mobile media community to play all their digital media."

BetaPlayer is a popular media player for the Smartphones, it complements the Windows Mobile Media Player when it comes to playing video files. For the complete list of supported codecs and formats, check this page. And the latest version of the software can be downloaded from here.

"Today PPCW.Net was relaunched as the::unwired with a new domain a new logo, a brand new and sleek design and improved features but from the content side, the::unwired will stays the same what PPCW.Net was before: your place "where mobility meets wireless"."



Arne Hess has just relaunched PPCW.Net with a new look and a new name: the::unwired. In celebration of the changes, the::unwired is giving away a brand new i-mate JAM or SP3i. You can get all the details on how to qualify for this prize here. The new site looks great, and we wish our good friend Arne all the best with the relaunching.

"While SlashPhon e will continue to be dedicated to bringing its members and visitors the very latest information and reviews on the smartphone market and industry, we feel that the name of SmartFone.net is occasionally being confused with smartphone.net or smartphone.com. Our goal is to provide a quick easy access point for the smartphone marketplace, in which people can get the information they need as well as news, reviews and updates in the smartphone industry."

Congrats! I like the new look. :)

The following tweak involves editing your Smartphone's registry. Improperly editing values in the registry could cause unexpected behavior or cause the Smartphone to stop working. For more information on editing the registry, see this post.This tweak is provided as is, with no guarantees as to its effectiveness, or to the safety of using this tweak.

Change the name used to identify your Smartphone.
Instructions provided by Jonny Midnight

Purpose
The Smartphone's name is used by ActiveSync to establish and manage a partnership. Each device that establishes a partnership with a PC must have a unique name. If you synchronize multiple Smartphones with a single PC, it will be necessary to change the name of at least one of those devices. ActiveSync will prompt you to change a device name when attempting to connect to a Smartphone that has the same name as a device already partnered with that PC. If you do not change the device name in this manner, you will need to perform the following tweak.

Instructions

• Open the registry and find: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>Ident
• Select 'Values'
• Select 'Name'
• Change the value in the 'Name' key to the new name for your Smartphone

Note that there may be two 'Name' keys. Editing either of them will cause the device name to change.

Re-published with permission from Jonny Midnight.