As the Android market continues to explode, SPB has provided a very handy way of allowing people to move between platforms. This tool isn’t for everyone – if you already have contacts sync’ed with the cloud, then it’s a fairly high price to pay just to move your bookmarks and text messages.

The full press release is available after the break, and if you’re looking to get started with SPB Migration tool just visit http://mgrt.spb.com

January 12th, 2011 – SPB Software, a leading mobile software developer announces the release of SPB Migration Tool – a solution that helps you to migrate your personal data from old Windows Mobile or Symbian devices to a new Android smartphone.

To buy a new phone is always fun. But every change can cause the number of inconveniences at the beginning. Ask yourself a question: do you always save all of the important phone numbers to the contact list or maybe some of them are kept in the call history? When moving to the new phone these unsaved numbers can be lost without any opportunity to restore. Will you remember all of your favorite links without your old phone? Won’t it be frustrating to lose the text messages with valuable information or cherished messages from the beloved ones?

SPB Migration Tool comes as a complete solution, which allows copying your personal information like call history, text messages, contacts, and bookmarks to a new Android smartphone. What makes SPB Migration Tool unique is an easy-to-use and convenient interface. The migration can be made in several simple steps and it doesn’t require desktop to save the data on it.

Android platform is the fastest-growing mobile platform. According to IDC, 4 of top 10 Android-based smartphone vendors recorded year-on-year growth rate upwards of 100% and growing presence of Android-based smartphone suppliers. SPB Survey results show that the users tend to choose the smartphone with Android OS as their next device. The need for the handy tool that helps to migrate to Android platform grows rapidly with the amount of Android devices being sold every day.

SPB Migration Tool gives the opportunity to choose between two possible data transfer ways. One is more convenient for users who have a MicroSD card and another one is easier for those who prefer to use mobile internet on both devices. Migration can be done easily by means of inserting the MicroSD card into the old device and copying all the information there. In case when the MicroSD card is missing the online migration mode can be used instead.

The user can download the application from the mobile migration site: http://mgrt.spb.com.

The data is encrypted and deleted from the server completely after 12 hours. The detailed instructions on how to use the SPB Migration Tool can be found on the service web site: http://www.migratetoandroid.com.

“SPB Survey 2010 showed the tendency of migrating from all other platforms to Android and SPB is happy to support its customers with the right solution for it. It is much easier to get used to the new smartphone when all the favorite contacts, important text messages, recent call logs and bookmarks are kept on it. So we did our best to create the tool that facilitates the migration to the new device by making it really smooth and convenient. With SPB Migration Tool it won’t take any effort to move to the new phone,” says SPB Software CEO, Sebastian-Justus Schmidt.

Jason Dunn had a chance to sit down with Andrew Brown – the Program Manager for Windows Phone Update, to talk about how updates will work under Windows Phone 7. I think you’re going to like what Andrew has to say. Check out Windows Phone Thoughts for all the details.

HOME SCREEN

Both Windows Mobile and Android have very flexible home screens.

Android has lots of widgets to choose from and you can link to pretty much anything on your phone from one of multiple home pages. I find the Android home screen to be highly functional. However it seems to be missing a professional, well put together, look. It actually looks a bit amateur.  If we look to third party and carrier overlays then things start to look up. HTC have their ever popular Sense UI, which brings it up a notch or two. The Android version of Sense isn’t nearly as full featured or as cool as the Windows Mobile version.  Sony Ericsson has their latest UI on the X10 which looks very polished, slick, and functional.

Windows Mobile probably has the most choices. First there is the old classic Windows Mobile home screen with tons of plugins , allowing for endless different looks. Its biggest problem is that it is not finger friendly at all. Next is the latest WM6.5 UI. At first glance it doesn’t seem too bad, but when you start to use it, it seems that you are forever scrolling back and forth, and up and down. Officially there are few possibilities for tweaking it. However, thanks to the enthusiast community there are a couple of apps , and tutorials enabling some tweaking. Next we have third party apps like SPB Shell which give a very high degree of flexibility combined with smooth operation and looks. Then we have OEM overlays such as HTC Sense. In my opinion Sense 2.5 on Windows Mobile is an excellent interface.

Overall I think Windows Mobile get the nod here, because of the wide choices and slick looks of most of the UI possibilities.

INTERNET

Android seems to have rather limited choices for internet browsers at the moment, but I don’t think that is such a bad thing because they are good choices. The stock internet explorer on an Android phone is Chrome, or at least a mobile version of it. It works pretty well for a mobile browser. Opera also has a version of its Opera Mini for Android and I personally like it as a mobile browser.

Windows Mobile has lots of choices for browsers, too many to list them all. There are some good ones and some not so good. Opera once again have versions for Windows Mobile which are very popular. The stock explorer on Windows Mobile is a mobile version of Internet Explorer. Although it has seen many updates over the years, it still isn’t all that good. Most people opt for a third party explorer.

I’ll give Android the nod here, based primarily on the fact that Google is likely to keep Android ahead of the game when it comes to integration with their ever expanding portfolio of internet wizardry.

MUSIC

Android lacks in this are quite badly. Yes there are players for Android, but it lacks in its ability to easily download legal music to your device. Google is reportedly working on a music service slated for sometime later this year, which will fill a large hole. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying it is impossible, it’s just not slick and easy.

Windows Mobile has its obvious onboard choice of Windows Media Player allowing for easy syncing of all types of media. Third party apps such as Kinoma which allow you to use iTunes Plus give Windows Mobile a clear edge here.

EMAIL

The lines are pretty blurry here. Microsoft has their ever popular and widely used Exchange service which is available on both WM and Android devices. Windows Mobile again has several third party apps to handle email. Gmail is available for both platforms but obviously Android phones enjoy much richer Gmail services then do Windows Mobile.

I’m tempted to call a tie in this area, but I’m leaning towards Android, simply because of the ease of using Gmail and its included services. To use it on an Android device you simply sign into your Gmail account, and your Gmail is pushed to your phone.  Whereas, with Exchange you need to go somewhere and open an Exchange account. Many offer free services, but for the full monty you have to pay a monthly fee.

GPS

There are many third party GPS applications for Windows Mobile. Many are very feature rich making the licence fee worthwhile. Both platforms are seeing a lot of growth in free GPS services. Google Maps being the leader. Here Android has a clear edge, at least at the moment. Recently Google released their latest version of Maps for Android devices, which included voice commands. The service doesn’t have a lot of features, for that you will have to get a third party application, and Windows Mobile rules in this area. I think for the average person Google Navigator does things well enough to get us there.

APP STORE

LOL. Android is the clear winner here….moving on.

APPLICATIONS

This is an entirely different situation. Truthfully, we have no idea of the number of applications there are for the Windows Mobile platform. They are available from hundreds of places on the internet, from freeware to enterprise applications selling single licences, to thousands at a time. They range from farting apps to complex applications written sometimes for specific professions and industries. Many are available directly from the developer, whether a single individual or a company with many employees.  I cannot stress enough here, the diversity and the vast collection of applications for Windows Mobile. I don’t think iPhone can even match what is currently available for Windows Mobile when you fully consider, quality, quantity, and diversity.

UPDATES

Once again Android is the clear winner here. Microsoft has always been severely criticized for its approach to updates. Their method of pushing out updates and leaving it entirely up to the carrier to decide if they will develop it for their customers has had less than stellar results. This is being fixed in Windows Phone 7. I’m just not sure I like the price that now must be paid to do that.

Android have been better, not perfect, in their update path. You may want to keep in mind that Google recently announce that with Android maturing, the need for updates is not as important as it once was, and will likely cut back to yearly upgrades to the platform.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

At this point in time both platforms have applications for all the mainstream social networks. I’m sure there are lots of people willing to argue that one or the other does one better than the other. In general terms either one gets the job done.

This will all change when Windows Phone 7 hits the shelves. It looks as though one of its biggest claims will be its integration with social networks. I don’t think there is a platform out there at present that will touch what Windows Phone 7 will do in this area. That may sound like I’m a big fan of WP7. I’m not. I think it will be a success, but they have an uphill battle ahead of them, I fear. They let WM6.5 swing in the breeze for too long causing it to slip drastically in the marketplace. In this time many carriers have filled the hole with other devices such as Android. They now have to force that door open to even begin the uphill battle. They are trying to do this with a new platform that is fashioned off the iPhone platform. The iPhone strategy was developed for a single device, with a single manufacturer. Now Microsoft is trying to take the same approach, only with many devices, and many manufacturers. It’s going to take a lot of octopuses reaching in many different directions simultaneously to keep everyone on side, and happy, with such a tightly controlled platform.  I think this is going to result in fewer carriers, and OEMs partnering up in the short term, making a long and winding road to any kind of widespread acceptance.  I’m one of the group that is very dishearten by the death grip they have put on their devices and platform, but all that is best left for another day.

In closing, I think Windows Mobile is capable of far more than Android. However, there are a couple of factors that must be considered. First is the obvious, Windows Mobile’s best before date is approaching rapidly. Secondly, Windows Mobile has had ten years to mature,  Android has only had a couple of years. Think where it could be in ten?

As a follow up to my post about how to hard reset the popular Samsung BlackJack, I figured I should share the steps to hard reset the Excalibur. The HTC Excalibur (also known as the T-Mobile Dash, HTC S620, and a couple other titles) is another hot QWERTY Smartphone. Excalibur sports a larger screen and WiFi – so it’s got a step up on the BlackJack.

HTC has long included a hard reset utility on their devices. It’s typically found in the Start / Accessories folder under the name “Clear Storage“.  Don’t let the name fool you, it’s nothing to do with your storage card. This application will wipe your device and return it to factory configuration.

If you can’t start the device, then you’ll need to hard reset the manual way.  No worries, it’s not hard to do.  When the device is powered off, press and hold the two softkeys. Then press and hold the power button for about 1-2 seconds. Relase the softkeys and the device should start into the hard reset mode.  It can be a little tricky to get the release timing correct, so don’t give up too quickly.

Disclaimer – I don’t have an Excalibur, yet.  So I can’t confirm that these steps will work 100%.  If anyone does do this, please post back and let me know if there is any other steps that need to be outlined.  I will give this a try once my phone arrives sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Cingular’s hot new Smartphone – the Samsung Blackjack SGH-i607, is fast becoming the one of the best and most popular Smartphones we’ve seen in a while. It’s easily one of the best Windows Mobile devices that I have used to date.

If you’ve picked up a used device and you want to clear out all the crap from the previous owner, then you’re going to be looking to hard reset the device.  This will set it back to the factory image, removing all programs, settings and files that the previous owner might have changed or added. If the device was SIM card unlocked, a factory reset will not change this.

So how do you reset the device? There are 2 different ways to do this. The first is the more common way – Start / Settings / (more) / Security / (more) / Reset  – and enter the password.  Which should be ’1234′ – unless it’s been changed under the ‘Change Reset Password’ option in the Security menu. Using this method means you have to know the password to reset, and the device has to be able to boot. So what happens if you can’t boot the device? Well, then you need to kick in the manual hard reset method. It’s not hard to do – When the device is powered off, press and hold the up button on the control pad (joystick – circle thingy) and then turn on the device.  Keep pressing up and it should kick off a hard reset process.  When the reset is done, you’ve got a brand new device to play around with again, at least on the inside.

On a side note, make sure you have a full battery, or that it’s plugged into the wall when you’re doing a reset.  You wouldn’t want it to run out of juice in the middle of the reset!

Running low on memory with your Smartphone? Well, you’re not alone.  This is one of the most commons problems people seem to have with their device.  So what’s the cause? Well, for whatever reason, Microsoft didn’t put a limit on the maximum size for IE Mobiles cache files. This means that after a little surfing, you’ll start seeing errors about running low on memory.

There are a couple things you can do to minimize this problem.  The first, is to clear your IE Mobile cache files.  Just launch IE Mobile and the push Menu / Options / Memory – then select Temporary Files and press Clear.  You might also want to clear Cookies and History, but they don’t tend to add up to much at all.

Once it’s cleared, I would suggest moving it out of main system memory and onto the storage card. This will allow it to grow and not interfere with the devices day to day operation. To do this create 3 folders on your storage card: \Storage Card\Temp\Temporary Internet Files and \Storage Card\Temp\Cookies and \Storage Card\Temp\History Once you have these created, open your handy-dandy registry editor and browse toHKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders and modify the key values to match the new folders you’ve just created.

Another thing you can do is to move the storage of email and attachments out of main memory and on to the storage card. This change involves making changes to the registry, so you’ll want to be extra safe when making this change. First thing you need to do is create a couple folders on your storage card. The first folder should be \Storage Card\Mail\ and the second folder should be\Storage Card\Mail\Attachments\ You can call them whatever you want, but I would recommend using the standard names. Once these are created, you’ll need to edit your registry.  Open your favourite Windows Mobile registry editor and browse to HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\MAPI and create 2 new string values.  The first should be called PropertyPath and should have a value matching the mail folder you created.  The second should be called AttachPath and should have a value matchings the attachments folder you created.  So PropertyPath = \Storage Card\Mail and AttachPath = \Storage Card\Mail\Attachments

It’s too bad that Microsoft couldn’t have better management of IE Mobiles temp files.  If they could keep those under control, then you wouldn’t need to do any of these hacks. I hope these tips help make your Windows Mobile experience more lovable.

David Wurster does a great job of describing where you’ll find ruggedized devices and what they are being used for. He continues on in a post over at the official Microsoft blog to describe the future of Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded. While you may not be aware of these devices, a great number of them are powered by some form of Windows, like Windows CE, Windows Mobile, or even Windows Embedded.

In the past the Windows Embedded Business (WEB) has controlled Windows CE and all the embedded efforts. Windows Mobile was part of the Mobile Communication Business (MCB) at Microsoft. Moving forward, Windows Mobile will be brought under the WEB group. The MCB will be left to control the more consumer products like Windows Phone 7, while WEB will continue to provide solutions for industrial devices. 

Since Windows Phone 7 was announced, there has been some uncertainty in the rugged space about what will be powering the next generation of devices, because Windows Phone 7 is much to consumer and lacks the development freedom that Windows Mobile and CE have provided. David’s post helps to clear that up and define what we can expect in the coming months. 

The first thing you’ll need to do is find a tool that allow you to set the file permissions on the device. There are a number of tools out there, find one that allows you to toggle the read-only setting of files. If your Windows Mobile 6.5 device is from HTC and is sporting HTC Sense interface, you’ll need to turn that off. If you’re not sure how, check out my post from last week for details.

You need to browse to the Windows folder on your device and locate a file called Titanium_***x***.cpr, where ***x*** is the screen resolution of your device. In the case of the HD2, it’s Titanium_480x800.cpr. Once you’ve located the file, right click and select properties and then disable the read-only setting. Copy the file to your computer and make a backup. Open the file using any text editor you have available to you.

For every row on the Today screen there is an expanded and condensed section – ClockExpanded, ClockCondensed / CalendarExpanded, CalendarCondensed / etc…  The condensed settings are used when the item is not selected, and expanded is used for when you highlight the item.

To make the changes in the images above, I only changed a couple settings. I focused on the condensed sections for each item. Here are the changes I made to the PluginLabel element within the condensed section:

• Added – HorizontalAlignment="Center"
• Reduced font from 18 to 12

Once you’ve made your changes, save the file and copy it back to your device and then reload the template. To do this, I simply select another item as my today screen and OK my way back to the today screen and then browse back into settings / Today and select Windows Default to have it load your new settings. If it doesn’t work, copy your backup file onto the device.

With those 2 simple changes, I gave new life to the Today screen.  The best part, it doesn’t stop with just the today screen. XML powers the lock screen (LS_LockScene_***x***.cpr), the call answer screen (LS_PhoneCallScene_***x***.cpr), alerts (LS_PhoneAlertScene_***x***.cpr), and more. So get hacking! I’m looking forward to seeing what cool and amazing things the community can produce.

Just like everyone else, I have been pining for something new in Windows Mobile, anything new! Windows 6.1 is certainly quite old and at this point 6.5 is a facelift that didn’t quite work out. Actually, a ‘facelift’ is a perfect analogy for explaining what 6.5 is to 6.1, the only difference being that people are not shy about pointing out how obvious it is.

Windows Phone 7 Series (that name cries for a comma!) certainly looks fantastic and I can’t wait to get my hands on it! It is new and different – if you haven’t seen Zune HD – and is a great move by Microsoft to get back into the fight. It’s a UI that addresses the uniqueness of using a phone rather than previous iteration’s insistence on digging a PC-in-your-phone trench. I’m all for WP7S and feel like I can brag about Windows Mobile/Phone all over again.

Despite all this euphoria I still feel like I’ll miss Windows Mobile 6.x. There are a TON of applications available for it, a huge number of designs to cater to your phone preferences and the ability to change the look and feel in many ways.

Windows Phone 7 Series will not have much customizing, at least not anything that’s been announced yet. The user experience will be basically the same across all manufacturers and devices. I am not sure how much I am going to like that. Maybe I won’t mind at all because the UI will just be that good. Perhaps changing backgrounds twice a day will keep me interested. Sigh, I just am not sure.

With Windows Mobile 6.x you can use the default start page, third-party UI’s such as my favourite, SPB Mobile Shell or the UI skin that comes from manufacturers such as HTC’s Sense UI or LG’s S-Class UI. These can drastically change the look and feel of Windows Mobile since they can go fairly deep into the OS itself. I love having this kind of flexibility and it’s the reason I keep going back to Windows Mobile.

Perhaps I’ll need to start a support group (no, not technical support) to help us hangers-on with the transition away from our blankies…er, Windows Mobile.

One thing is for sure, prices for the Starter Edition phones will probably be relatively low, and a bunch of used units will flood eBay. It should be a hay-day for those of us that use our money on mundane things like paying bills, feeding our kids, heating the house…

The HTC Mini is based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and brings the experience of the HD2 to a smaller footprint. The HD2 experience is truly something special. If HTC can make this into a smaller device, it will be interesting to see and use. The single best thing on the HD2 is the screen. If they can pack the processor and power into a smaller footprint, will the device be as attractive? It’s a hard question to answer. With a smaller screen, they will need to make sure that the smaller screen is just as brilliant as it’s larger brother or it won’t succeed.

The HTC Legend and Desire are both Android based devices. The Legend is like version 2 of the Hero, adding a AMOLED screen LED Flash, optical trackball, a faster processor – 600MHz, and some more memory.  The Desire is HTC’s version of their Nexus One phone, but with an optical trackball and an extra button.

You can read check out the press release over at MobilityMinded – HTC Mini, and HTC Legend, Desire. And then let us know what you think of HTC’s latest devices.