Window Mobile Needs some Browser Love!

Its already been said many times but it bears repeating over and over until it happens. Windows Mobile needs a marquee browser!!

One of the most significant parts of the iPhone experience is the Safari browser. It is truly a very well down browser, based on the WebKit engine. While it lacks flash it renders pages quickly and accurately. With multitouch, zooming in and out is easy and almost fun. The only thing Mobile Safari doesn’t do well (other than that flash thingy I mentioned) is text reflowing; in other words automatically having the text on a page fit the screen based on it’s zoom level.

Actually, the just announced HTC Hero running the Android OS also has a WebKit based browser but it does what the iPhone doesn’t. HTC has made some wonderful modifications and the Hero’s browser will have both flash support and text reflow. But, like Mike I still have a hard time liking that “chin” on HTC’s Android devices. Lose it already! It isn’t a distinctive feature that adds…anything good to the phone!

Sorry, lost my head there.
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Disable the Sent TXT Message on Windows Mobile

As my SMS’ing has increased over the last little while I’m getting more and more annoyed with the message sent notification that shows up on after sending a text message on a Windows Mobile Smartphone. Yes, I know that it will actually go away by itself if you leave it alone, but I’m a mover and shaker and I want move along to another task. Having that message pop up is just annoying.  So, without further ado, here’s the registry hack you’ll need to do in order to stop that message from showing.  This should work on pretty much any Windows Mobile Standard / Smartphone (non-touch screen) device.

First thing is to fire up your favorite registry editor. Your phone doesn’t have one installed, so you’ll have to get one and install it first.  I recommend PHM - it’s good and it’s free. In your registry editor, go to HKLM \ Software \ Microsoft \ Inbox. Create a new key with the name of Settings. Then select that key and create a new String value (you should now be under the new key Settings, that you just created) and set the name as SMSNoSentMsg and the value as 1  Reboot your phone and that’s it.

Hard Resetting the Samsung BlackJack II

How can someone go about doing a hard reset on this device?  If you’re looking to wipe the device clean and return it to factory settings - that means removing all of your personal settings and data stored on the deivce, then the easiest way is to press Start \ Settings \ Security \ Reset and then follow the prompt to wipe the device and/or the storage card.

But what happens if you’ve managed to really mess things up and you can’t get the phone started?  No problem.  With the phone powered off, press and hold UP on the directional pad.  Then, turn on the device and continue to hold the UP key until you see a message on the screen.  You will be prompted to select 1 for reset or any other key to cancel. I recommend doing this with the device connected to power or with a fully charged battery. I can only imagine the mess that would result if the battery ran dry during the hard reset process.

Change the Default Home Page for IE Mobile on Windows Mobile

This post was originally posted on my personal blog a while back (long before Mobile Jaw came to exist). I’m re-posting / moving it here as my personal blog is about to get a fresh start and I felt that many people could still benefit from this information.

Please Note: The following information applies to Windows Mobile Standard 6.0 devices and older. If you’re device has a touch screen, or is running a newer version of Windows Mobile Standard, then this does not apply to you.

You wouldn’t think this was a hard task. After all, you can do it very easily on the Pocket PC. However, for some reason known only to the developers at Microsoft, it’s not an easy task for Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone / Non-Touchscreen) based devices. I know that some are you are wondering why anyone would want to change the default home page on IE mobile. To all of you I say "Why not?" and "UNLIMITED DATA".

So, let’s get down to how this is done.  First, you will need a good registry editor.  If you don’t already have one, grab a copy of PHM or even SOTI’s Pocket Controller - then you can edit from the desktop. Browse to the following location HKLM / Software / Microsoft / Internet Explorer / AboutURLs.  In this section you should see a number of entries labelled home_04xx that has a value of file://\windows\default_04xx.htm The trick here is to pick the correct entry.  For me, it’s home_0409, edit this and change the value to whatever you want to use for your home page - http://www.google.com I think the different entries are for different languages.  With a little testing and you should be able to figure out what page your device is loading.

I would be interested to hear what others find as their default home page and what language they are using on the device.  It would help others to figure out what entry they need to edit to get the same results.

That’s all there is to it.  Get going and change the your mobile home page.

Rogers’ iPhone Upgrades for Customers

I just received this email from Rogers about the details on their upgrade program for existing iPhone owners. If you have questions please comment at the bottom and we will ask our contacts at Rogers.

“Hello Darren,
We’ve just announced the details of special Hardware Upgrade savings for our existing iPhone customers and wanted to let you know.

There has been a lot of excitement around the new iPhone 3G S and we wanted to recognize the early adopters who helped make the iPhone the hottest-selling handset in Canadian wireless history. We will be discounting the price of the iPhone 3G S by between $250 and $500 to provide savings to many of our iPhone customers.

What this means is that eligible iPhone owners can acquire the iPhone 16GB 3G S for as low as $199 or the 32GB for as low as $299 until July 31, 2009.

For Fido customers, we’re offering the Fido Rewards iPhone 3G S promotion. This enables iPhone customers to redeem FidoDollars towards a new iPhone 3G S with an additional $100 top-up from Fido.
For customers who don’t qualify for these extra savings, we are pleased to offer Rogers Wireless customers the iPhone at our cost on rogers.com. This cost - $580 for the iPhone 3G, $680 for the iPhone 3G S 16GB and $780 for the iPhone 3G S 32GB – represents the price we pay for the device plus a nominal fee for the SIM card. Customers can access these devices at retail locations for just $19 more for the three devices.

We’re also happy to announce that Rogers and Fido are extending the 6GB/$30 data promotion until July 31. This offer is valid for customers on a new or existing iPhone plan or customers buying an Android-powered HTC Magic or HTC Dream.

Five ways to save

1) For Rogers Wireless customers who bought an iPhone 3G between July 11 and Sept. 30, 2008, and with an average monthly spend of at least $100, Rogers will provide $500 off the cost of an iPhone 3G S. This special offer expires July 31, 2009 and comes with the addition of a one-year term to the customer’s existing service agreement.
· 16GB 3GS $199
· 32GB 3GS $299

2) For Rogers Wireless customers who bought an iPhone between July 11 and Dec. 31, 2008, but aren’t eligible for the above offer, Rogers will provide $250 dollars off the purchase of an iPhone 3G S. This special offer expires July 31, 2009 and comes with the addition of a one-year term to the customer’s existing service agreement.
· 16GB 3GS $449
· 32GB 3GS $549

3) All Rogers Wireless customers can upgrade to the iPhone 3GS at our cost at Rogers.com, or for a suggested retail price of just $19 more than our cost through our retail channels.
· 8GB 3G $580/$599
· 16GB 3GS $680/$699
· 32GB 3GS $780/$799

4) Fido customers can take advantage of the Fido Rewards iPhone 3G S promotion:
· Use FidoDollars towards the purchase of a new iPhone 3G S
· Fido will top up the FidoDollars amount by $100
· This promotion does not include an extension or renewal of their service agreement.

5) New and existing iPhone customers can take advantage of a limited-time promotion of 6GB of data for $30, now extended until July 31. Other Rogers and Fido data plans will remain the same, including the only national standalone data plan at $25 per month for 500 MB. We know that this is the right plan for most Canadians – 93 per cent of current iPhone customers on a data plan use less than 500 MB of data per month.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Simple Solution Apple Should Have Used

One of the shortcomings that many feel was not addressed with the iPhone 3.0 update was multitasking. Apple made a decision to forgo multitasking in order to ensure optimal performance and battery life. Instead they opted to add Notifications that let you know when there has been a server change to the information you were accessing. This can certainly be handy for things such as IM clients, twitter, facebook and other services but it doesn’t address more basic advantages of multitasking. The crazy thing about this lack of multitasking is that Apple could have simulated multitasking quite easily on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

With multitasking environments you can have multiple programs running at the same time. Many mobile OS’ have been doing this for a while now and it makes so much sense to have. We are continually becoming more used to multitasking ourselves; especially while on the go. Having a multitasked OS means you can be in the middle of writing an email or editing a contact and jump over to the calendar to check on an appointment. When you jump back to the email or contact you are right where you left off, mid-edit; your cursor is in the same place and ready for you to continue. It makes for a MUCH more powerful and productive use of on-the-go time.

Apple could have easily simulated this without breaking from their decision to opt out of multitasking the iPhone. They could have had applications open up to exactly the state they were in when last closed, especially if you were mid-edit. That would mean you could be editing a contact and go to a webpage to copy their address and jump back to the contact to paste it in.

By combining notifications with this little change to applications Apple would have a sort-of-multitasking environment without any of the performance hit they are worried about. With the new iPhone 3Gs being so fast this makes even more sense, as switching between apps is much faster.

I also think they should have a quick pop-up menu that shows the last 3 or 5 apps used so that you can jump to those apps quickly rather than having to go back to the application launcher every time.

Anyway, now that my idea is on the intertubes I can sue Apple if they implement it. Kthxbai

Competition is Creeping up on Rogers

Today I was reading that Telus is planning on a soft roll out of its GSM network in BC this year! Their plan is to be able to go live in February in time for the Winter Olympics.

I must say, I am plesently surprised by this news. Rogers has had a wonderful romp as the only GSM provider in Canada. They’ve flaunted and taken advantage of the fact. It is going to be fantastic to have some real choice.

Since Bell and Telus are joined at the hip these days (merge already!) Bell will probably be going live with GSM at around the same time. Perhaps they will soft roll out to the Toronto area. If so, I know someone that can test it out (pick me, pick me!)

Of course, the more public this GSM rollout becomes the more urgent is the need go live quickly. Delays will cause customer hesitation as they won’t want to buy CDMA phones. Plus, Rogers will miraculously become everyone’s friend by offering continually better incentives designed to lock subscribers in for 3 more long years.

Take our advice, wait for the GSM competition to heat up and then take advantage of the inevitable deals.

No matter how you look at it, all this new GSM goodness will be very refreshing. With how quickly Telus seems to be moving we aren’t going to have to wait too much longer.

Will the Pre be Palm’s Tonic?

I got thinking about the Palm Pre the other day and started wondering if it will be enough to save Palm.

First let me say that I think the Pre is great and is certainly going to be a successful product on its own but I would think it would have to be a smashing success to keep a whole company afloat. Yes, Palm still has the Treo Pro and Centro but those have not been anywhere near hot enough to get Palm out of its financial hole despite the number of units they have sold.

The argument of whether the Pre is going to be better than the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone or Nokia is not the question here. There is no doubt that many will prefer the Pre and as such will buy one. But the Pre would need to be a runaway commercial success and I don’t think that it will.

Most of the buzz for the Pre has been coming from people that know about mobile phones. They can see that much of what Palm has done has been a very nice evolutionary step for smartphones, especially for social networking smartphones. They understand how different those things are from current offerings and are able to decide whether they will buy one or not. Still, many of these mobile enthusiasts will just take a wait-and-see approach because they already have a smartphone that works just fine.

So, who will buy the Pre? Will it convert the faithful from the iPhone? Will it erode Windows Phone sales? Is the Blackberry is danger of losing some of its momentum? Or will it draw in an all new crowd of feature phone users that are ready to upgrade to the big time?

All of the above platforms are going to have some defectors, but again, Pre needs to be a very big success to keep Palm alive. Let’s take a look at each of the above.

First, iPhone: I highly doubt we are going to see a lot of people dropping their iPhones for the Pre. The iPhone will do most of what the Pre will do and the iPhone has some kind of Voodoo hold on its user’s minds. Most are white-knuckling their iPhones and will not let go for anything. Plus, with 3.0 coming out they have more functionality to play with. I just don’t think there will be a lot of people walking out of the iPhone camp.

Windows Mobile users: I can see Pre actually stealing a lot of the Windows Phone users. WM users tend to be less emotionally tied to the OS than iPhone users; it’s more about functionality. If the Pre can do everything WM can then it is not a hard decision. Unfortunately for the Palm they are really targeting consumers and not business users with the Pre. There are bound to be a lot of WM users that will consider the Pre to be only for social networking despite this not being the case. Plus, WM come in MANY different shapes and sizes while the Pre is only coming out in one form (unless the Palm Eos is real).

Blackberry: Nope. I just don’t see this affecting Blackberry sales much at all. Blackberry phones are like cockroaches (is it possible to mean that in a good way?), they can survive anything!

Feature and regular cellphone users: Sure, there will be a good number that decide to make the move up and get a Pre but I still doubt the numbers are going to be significant enough. Many just want their phone to be phones and don’t want the added expense of a data plan.

The bottom line is that the Pre has a chance of keeping Palm alive but I think it is a pretty slim one. It’s going to be a fantastic phone but I doubt it is going to be enough for Palm’s ultimate survival. If Palm was to follow up the Pre with a number of new form factors they would potentially be able to create enough momentum to make it through but that takes money and erodes the profitability of the Pre itself.

Honestly, I hope I am wrong. I was a Palm user all the way back to the III and used to write a guide to sales software for Palm. I would love to see them survive and bring out more products like the Pre. I just can’t help but think that they will end up being bought out by someone else. That isn’t all bad as long as they can remain intact as a group in order to continue to advance the platform, but only time will tell if that future is autonomous for Palm.

Excuse Me, That’s a Nice Looking Phone

Over the weekend I spent some time at a birthday party for a friend’s son. Through all the noise and commotion I spotted another Dad playing a game on his i-mate device. It’s not uncommon to see parents with their face buried in their mobile device at these events. However, I don’t often see people with i-mate devices. I’m seeing more and more Windows Mobile, but not so much with i-mate. So I figured that this person was either a hardcore i-mate fan, or a Windows Mobile fan who just happens to have settled on the i-mate PDAL device. Either way, I decided to talk with him and see how he liked Windows Mobile and i-mate.

I asked him how he liked that phone because I don’t see many of those around here. I even pulled out my BlackJack II so he could see that I am also a Windows Mobile user and hopefully jump right into a nice geek conversation about mobility. Ha! What really surprised me was that he didn’t really understand that he was running Windows Mobile. In fact, he didn’t even know the name. Now, a lot of people don’t know the Windows Mobile name. But someone running i-mate hardware is typically more aware of the OS than the average user who picked out the device from the carriers line-up. This person went on to tell me how great it is because he can open Excel documents on his device. Which clearly tells me that he didn’t understand that my device, although different in looks, runs the same OS.

What I’ve been trying to figure out since then is if this was a problem with him not understanding that Windows Mobile runs on numerous different devices? Or was it more that my device looked too “BlackBerry-ish” so he took one look and figured I was using a BlackBerry based device and felt the need to tell me why his was so great? Both of these are growing problems. So much so, that Microsoft is now calling Windows Mobile devices “Windows Phones” (the actual OS name will still remain Windows Mobile) in hopes that people will better connect with the OS of the device. I’m not sure that this will help people better understand that their Moto Q is running the same OS as the BlackJack II, or that the HTC Diamond is running the same as the Samsung Omnia. Both HTC and Samsung are doing their part to build iconic devices. Microsoft needs to do their part to take their OS to a new level and educate the consumer about Windows Mobile. What do you say Microsoft? Are your product and marketing team up to the challenge?

Invasion of the Feature Phone!

Have you noticed the number of feature phones increasing lately? More importantly, have you noticed now capable some of these phones are? Its got me wondering about where smartphones and feature phones are going to intersect.

Feature phones include the Sidekick, Samsung Instinct and Impression, LG Xenon and Motorola Hint and they are really quite capable; there is really very little that separates these from smartphone.  What keeps feature phones from being considered "smart" would be third-party developers, customization, tethering and a few other things.  The newest Sidekick does stretch this definition though, as it already has dozens of apps in its app store.

This is exactly my point though.  If you look at using phones more or less out of the box there is very little difference between these two classes.  You can browse, email, listen to music, watch videos, etc.  Believe it or not, there are a LOT of users of iPhone, Windows Mobile and Blackberry that are actually out-of-the-box types that do little or no customization.

One of the biggest differences we see is in the cost of data.  In Canada you can get $10 unlimited mobile browsing (which really doesn’t differentiate between browsing and downloading data) but data costs (for smartphones) are astronomical.  From Bell you can get $10 unlimited internet on a feature phone but on Windows Mobile you pay $35 for 500mb.  Pretty darn nuts!

So, what is going to happen?  Will we see high priced data packages start being used on feature phones or much better flat rates for all phones?  Obviously I would hope that carriers just bite the bullet and make mobile data flat rate and cheap.  Maybe figure out some way to detect tethering or something, but devices should be FULLY usable.

Lets hope that competition makes cheap mobile data a reality.

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