Thank you.

Nick White over at the Windows Vista Team Blog sends news that Microsoft will soon be releasing a beta version of Windows Mobile Device Center, free for download sometime next week. Huzzah!

Link: Vista Team Blog

For the past two years NewsGator Online has been my favorite online RSS aggregator, for its intuitive layout and ease of use. Now the company is introducing a new product that brings this outstanding service to Windows Mobile devices. NewsGator Go! automatically syncs with your existing NewsGator Online account, simply by entering your username and password. No importing OPML files necessary. Just click and sync.

If you're a NewsGator subscriber, and Windows Mobile user, I encourage you to try out this software...it's fantastic! A free trial version is available for download, with a full licensed copy priced at $29.95.

Source: NewsGator Go!

Virtual Scrabble has posted a simple but clever How To guide to enabling Windows Mobile Device Center in Windows Vista RC1 and later builds. According to the author this "hack" does indeed work. Those among you desperately waiting for WMDC support, your salvation may be at hand.

Virtual Scrabble guide.

What little we know about the 680 indicates a low-end PalmOS-based smartphone. It has to be low-cost because PalmOS (Garnet) doesn't support 3G broadband networks, which makes the 680 little more than a paperweight thanks to its brain dead operating system. In terms of specs we can most likely look forward to the usual accoutrements PalmOS Treos have featured in the past such as a luscious 320x320 display, with the possibility of 64MB of RAM. An affordable yet unexciting device to be sure. But when you're immobilized by an obsolete mobile platform, this is the last and only card you can play.

Meanwhile the Windows Mobile based 750 will be making its US debut via Cingular. This model likely won't be cheap, and most likely won't offer built-in WiFi either. However it will finally bring a GSM compatible Windows Mobile Treo to North American users, and that in itself is reason to take notice.

Happy as I am to have these two phones in the offing, I still need to point out that these products are painfully inadequate compared to more innovative devices such as the Motorola Q and upcoming Samsung smartphones. With Treo sales already tanking, I question whether or not Palm can regain its edge. Both the 680 and 750 appear to me to be too little, too late. We shall see.

The problem for Palm is they have very little IP (intellectual property) to offer any company involved in the mobile device market. They do not own rights to PalmOS, the legacy platform that powers most of their product line. They certainly don't own Windows Mobile. And they aren't an ODM (original device manufacturer), so they have very little to offer a handset maker such as Motorola or Samsung, since they aren't technically a "hardware company". On paper, Palm is an odd duck of a company. In many ways they are more accurately classified as a VAR (value added reseller). Palm takes hardware manufactured by Asian contract manufacturers and only co-developed by Palm itself, powered by mobile operating systems developed and owned by PalmSource and Microsoft. So what is Palm's value in this product matrix? Very little it seems. Palm's secret sauce lies in its ability to create customizations to other platforms that build a user experience. Unfortunately it's difficult to bottle that talent and build a business model around "tweaking".

In the hardware business, Palm is being malled to death by more nimble and innovative competitors who are rapidly outpacing Palm in the market. Two years ago the Treo 650/700 form factor was state of the art, and represented absolute cutting edge design. Today that is no longer the case, as Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung are introducing a wave of Windows Mobile smartphones that are sleeker, slimmer, and in some cases more functional..all at lower price points no less. On the horizon a new even more potentially lethal threat is emerging; Asian hardware vendors are revealing new devices that are the answer to nearly every smartphone users dreams. Hardware that combines Windows Mobile Pocket PC with designs that mimic the Motorola Q. Slim and stylish Windows Mobile Pocket PC phones that make Palm's Treo 700 and 750v look like a brick.

How can Palm compete against such compelling products from companies with enormously more brand recognition? The answer of course is they can't make it in this market as an independant firm. Hence the buyout.

It seems the pace of rumors surrounding Cingular's upcoming fall line is advancing, as yet another coveted smartphone, in this case Samsung's i607, is released into the wild. This quad-band (GSM / GPRS / EDGE / HSDP) smartphone is targeted squarely at the Motorola Q, which is currently the hottest smartphone in North America. Can Samsung steal the crown with this sleek new phone? I remain skeptical.

Read the full story at Engadget.

According to various sources, including this post on Howard Forums, Cingular is quietly beginning to stock its much anticipated Pocket PC smartphone offering based on the HTC Hermes, a device to branded as the Cingular 8525. This model will succeed the current HTC-based smartphone offered by the carrier, known as the 8125. No indication as to an exact launch date is given, but judging from the arrival of hardware in the supply chain, I would say any minute now.

A Smartphone Thoughts reader posted a few photos of his recently acquired HTC S620, even going so far as to provide comparison shots with other mobile devices...particularly the Nokia E61. Based on what I'm seeing so far, S620 looks like an underground success. If widely adopted by carriers, this may well prove to be the hottest Windows Mobile phone yet.

Source.

Engadget's Boy Genius, a sort of mobile deep throat if you will, has managed to snag the recently announced HTC S620, formerly known by its product codename; Excalibur. The verdict? This Windows Mobile Smartphone may turn out to be the very best of its kind on the market today. Even besting Motorola's mighty Q phone.

Read on.

What do you get when you cross a PDA with a digital media player? Something that looks like the HP iPAQ rx4000 Mobile Media Companion, apparently. The name is a mouthful but the device looks genuinely intriguing. Could such a device rekindle interest in non-cellular mobile devices? I certainly hope so given the rate at which traditional PDAs are declining.

Link: MobilitySite

With great fanfare and little surprise, Sprint and Palm’s poorly guarded secret is secret no more. The veil has lifted, and the Sprint Treo 700wx now makes its public debut. The only question that remains is how well does this device perform, and is it the right device for your needs. Let’s find out together.

Upon first glance you might easily mistake the 700wx for Verizon’s 700w. But appearances are often misleading. There are in fact a number of changes under the hood, subtle though they may be, that set this device apart from it’s Verizon sibling. First off is a welcome increase in RAM, boosted from 32MB to 64MB, with a128MB overall. This is hardly dramatic, but the even the simple increase in RAM seems to boost system performance.

One other aspect that sets this device apart from Verizon is speed. In my tests I found the 700wx to perform noticeably snappier compared with the aforementioned model. Say what you will about Sprint or Windows Mobile, but the fact is this Treo is snappier. And responsiveness isn't the only advantage. This Treo seems significantly more stable than its Verizon cousin as well. Whether that is truly the case or not I can't say for certain until I put it through more stress tests, but so far it "feels" faster and more stable.

I won’t delve too far into overall system specs because they remain largely unchanged from previous Treo models. I will however take this opportunity to point out the Treo’s most glaring weakness; the lack of any internal WiFi radio. It should be duly noted that Palm makes this decision purely to appease wireless carries such as Sprint, who shun WiFi in order to protect their intellectual property from a free form of wireless communication medium known as VoIP or Voice Over IP. With VoIP enabled devices, consumers can use mobile phones to make free phone calls over public WiFi network, hence bypassing costly cellular networks. The last thing Sprint wants you doing is getting free WiFi calls, which undermines their business model.

For that reason, and that reason alone, Palm and other handset vendors which including giants such as Nokia and Motorola continue to lock down the hood on WiFi communication.

But I digress….

Sprint did a fantastic job of bundling good quality software with this model. Aside from the usual suspects of preinstalled software (such as Outlook, Word, Excel). Sprint include the highly coveted “GoodLink” mail exchange system. This alone will give many Sprint users reason to buy this phone.

I’m also please to see that Sprint included Good Technology’s fantastic GoodLink exchange software which enables users to sync email and contact information in similar fashion to Blackberry devices. A small but highly welcome touch.

After using the Treo 700wx for several days now I cannot help but become somewhat disappointed by the Treo’s overall design. A year ago the Treo was the hottest smartphone of the market; relatively sleek and smartly designed, sporting a chassis that represents a fantastic overall compromise between usability and style. Treo truly was king of the hill. Fast forward to today, and the landscape isn’t quite so cut and dry. Motorola and Nokia have each introduced models that pack the very best smartphone experiences into slimmer form factors and sleeker designs. My Nokia E61 is nearly half the thickness of the 700wx and yet combines nearly twice the functionality. With leaked images of the upcoming GSM Treo 750 depicting a device which packs the same hardware into a thinner design and internal antenna (as apposed to external ala CDMA) I can't help wondering who will even want the Verizon and Sprint Treo models.

On the other hand, the 700wx is faster, more functional (thanks to a robust multi-tasking OS) and offers a far richer software library than any other such product. Will that be enough to sway you from purchasing other smarpthone options? Maybe, but it might be a hard sell.

One troublesome aspect I encountered is Sprint’s appallingly poor coverage in my locale. Wherever I venture, just one or two bars of signal strength seem to await me. And that’s just on the road. At home I get ZERO bars! Not a good sign.

Yet despite those issues, the 700wx really is a fantastic smartphone solution, particularly for those upgrading from a PalmOS Treo, which is now obsolete and brain-dead compared with Windows Mobile and Symbian.

I’ll have much more to come in my full review. Until then, if you’re wondering whether this Treo is for you, the short answer is…if you have longed for a Windows Mobile based Treo, and you’re a Sprint customer, then yes the 700wx is an absolutely compelling smartphone, and one that I endorse.

Disgruntled Nokia 770 user Mike Cane sent me his initial impressions of the latest software update from Nokia. In a nutshell...he's less than satisfied. Click the link below to continue reading.

Initial impressions from today, Day One:

1) The designers of the UI changes, of Themes, and of
Backgrounds, should be replaced. This is some of the
*ugliest* stuff I've ever seen. It's garish and
cartoonish. A horrible mashup of Mac Aqua and XP.
The scrollbar and clock are also illegible outdoors
with some Themes.

2) I spent over an hour calling up site after site
while having Opera, Notes, and RSS open. With OS
2005, this was a recipe for a crash. No crashes this
time, but I *still* had a few browser windows go
*dead*.

3) My bete noir, News Reader, is now RSS feed reader
(no caps!). It's finally been improved. The entire
display engine was changed. Past entries were plain
text. Now it's full HTML with attributes like bold,
italic, and in-line links. Apparently, it can now
display *images* too -- but only when *connected
live*! Offline, no soup for you! Grrrr!

4) No longer do I have to copy and paste a feed's URL
into the RSS reader to subscribe. Most of the time,
tapping on a site's feed icon will launch the RSS
reader and ask if I want to add that feed. FINALLY it
works as it SHOULD have! But notice I said "Most of
the time." Maddeningly, with some sites, I get a
*download dialog box* asking if I want to Save the
.XML file. This has so far stymied me and has
prevented me from reacquiring several critical feeds!

5) A bugger of an irritation and someone should be
fired for this botch: Shifting single-quote (') on the
standard soft keyboard no longer sensibly gives a
double-quote ("), it gives a pound/hash sign (#)!
Double-quote is now a *shifted 2*!! Who did this and
who approved this?

6) It might be my imagination or it just might be due
to the upgrade zeroing-out the 770 memory, but most
web pages seemed to render noticeably faster than
before the upgrade. But that also seemed to be the
case with the prior 2005 update. As I continued to
use the 770, it.. ju.. st ... g o t sl o w
e r.

7) I guess Google Talk VOIP is in here now too.
There's a new Internet Call menu item. Having
recently fallen to pressure and gotten a Tracfone
cellphone, I see no need for this and probably will
never even try it. There's also an IM app too. Bah.
What would excite me is SMS. *FREE* SMS (someone I've
been SMSing just got hit with a US$50 bill for SMS
alone; being charged US$0.10 to send and *receive* --
highway robbery!!).

8) Notes is still buggy. While I had it, Opera, and
RSS open, I was suddenly hit with an Updating dialog
and my double-spaced text in Notes became
*quadruple-spaced*. This is one of the annoying and
inexplicable bugs added in the prior 2005 update.
Yep, it's still there... amazing!

9) The Bookmark manager is now faster. Thank you!

10) Screen brightness control has been recalibrated.
Lowest setting seems dimmer than before -- and also
introduces flicker.

11) There's a new full-finger on-screen keyboard
that's interesting to use. It has a new
word-completion method too. I'll have to play around
with this. I've gotten used to tap-tap-tapping with
the stylus, though, so it will be hard to change.

12) In a silent admission that the 770's RAM has
*always been insufficient*, Virtual Memory is now
offered! The VM uses the RS-MMC (the 770 ships with
an included 64MB card). I've allocated 8MB for VM.

13) Last item to note in these first impressions of
Tablet OS 2006 is that Select All *still* has not
been added to the soft keyboard edit menu.

I'll continue to bang on Tablet OS 2006 and see what
develops. But no matter how improved the OS may be,
it's time for a *hardware* upgrade. Say a 400MHz CPU
and 512MB of RAM for a start!"

--- Mike Cane

Motorola's recent pea and shell game of releasing software updates, then pulling them, seems to have come to an end. Much the joy of Q users, who can now download this much coveted update which provides full push email functionality to the Q.

Nice. Hey Moto...you don't happen to have a software patch thats adds WiFi, do you? I thought not.

Download the software here.

Yes, Windows may be full of holes, but at the end of the day, so is any other OS developed outside Fortress Redmond. Link