RSS MAD

QiGi i6 Does Android and Windows Mobile

Chinese company, QiGi, is offering consumers one thing so many of its competitors don't: choice. The i6 officially supports Android and Windows Mobile. Unfortunately, dual-boot isn't an option - you have to pick one OS and stick with it until you choose to install the other. OSes aside, it packs a Marvell 624MHz processor, 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM, a 2.8" QVGA (240 x 320) touch screen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a 2.0-megapixel camera. Of course, you're probably never going to see this one outside of China. Still, if you had such a device, which OS would you choose and why?

Motorola's Alexander and Attila Shipments Postponed

"Compal Communications has received orders for two Windows Mobile-based PDA phones, codenamed the Alexander and Attila, from Motorola, according to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report. While both PDA phones are supporting 3.5G and Wi-Fi technologies, the Alexander features a sliding-out QWERTY keyboard and the Attila features an iPhone-like touch panel, said the paper, which also noted that shipments of the two PDA phones are now set in the first quarter of 2009 instead of the fourth quarter of 2008 as originally planned."

According to a Commercial Times report, Motorola's Alexander and Attila won't make an appearance until Q1 2009. Leaks suggest the two aren't blessed with amazing features, so unless there are some hidden extras, Motorola will probably have a tough time pitting these against the competition.

O2 Xda Zest Reviewed

"I'm not going to beat about the bush here, I'll just come right out with it. I just love the O2 XDA Zest. I am fortunate as a WM reviewer to have a good selection of the latest devices to hand and the Zest is my device of the moment. I have an HTC Touch Pro, an HTC Touch Diamond and several other high spec devices sat gathering dust on my shelf while the Zest goes in my pocket every morning and back on charge every night. I've been trying to figure out just why I find the Zest better than the smaller flashier Diamond for example and I think it all comes down to O2 and ASUS having found the perfect balance of hardware and software. On paper the Zest is not the best device in stores at the moment, and it's not the prettiest, but it's just so easy to use (once you replace the SIP keyboard that is). It’s complete. The fact that O2 have launched the Zest as their first PAYG XDA as well is utterly amazing. £250 for what in my opinion is the most usable device on the market today? That's just a bargain, and to be frank, you should all go and buy two today (everyone needs a spare!)."

4WinMobile has reviewed the ASUS-built Xda Zest and given it a whopping 91%. If you're looking for a device that hasn't been touched by the hands of HTC, this may fit the bill.

Vaja Releases ivolution Case for Samsung Omnia

Vaja is now offering an ivolution for all those Omnia owners out there that want to have a very nice case for their new friend. And with more Omnia owners on the way thanks to the news earlier this week regarding Verizon adding the Omnia, I suspect more and more people will be interested in this stylish case.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I wanted to take a second to wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving! Even if you do not live in the United States and do not celebrate Thanksgiving, today is as good a day as any to take a step back and reflect on all of the things we are thankful for. Also it is a good day to recharge the old batteries so you can wake up early and brave those horrifying Black Friday lines. As always please remember to be safe out there! Oh and just to shake things up a bit I thought it might be fun if everyone snapped some pictures of their giant turkey buffets with their Windows Mobile devices and posted them up on the forums. I for one have always enjoyed looking at tables full of food :)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Expansys Black Friday Deals

Our affiliate store partner Expansys has a few Black Friday deals I thought were worth briefly pointing out:

• Palm Treo Pro: $100 off after instant rebate, $494.99 USD final price
• HTC Touch Diamond 3G: $75 off after instant rebate, $524.99 USD final price
• Celio REDFLY C8: $20 off after instant rebate, $179 USD final price
• Pharos Traveler 117 Pocket PC: $25 off after instant rebate, $454.99 USD final price

ASUSTeK Aims for 10 New Models In 2009

"Asustek Computer's handset business has fallen short of expectations in 2008, but the company is strengthening its R&D to offer up to 10 new models, almost all supporting 3G and a touch user interface, in 2009, in a bid to compete with its main rival High Tech Computer (HTC), according to industry sources in Taiwan. Asustek shifted its handset development focus entirely to smartphones in 2007 and set some goals for 2008, the sources indicated. But mainly due to transitioning 3G chip platforms as well as the appropriation of R&D efforts to develop handsets based on Google's Android platform and Nuvifone handsets on an ODM basis for Garmin, Asustek has only launched seven new smartphones so far in 2008, much fewer than its initial target of 13-15, the sources pointed out."

According to industry sources, ASUSTeK's total shipments in 2008 amounted to a mere 3% of HTC's. They have a steep hill to climb if they're to improve on that in 2009, and the improvement would have to be pretty significant to grab HTC's attention. Whatever happens, competition is healthy; one can only hope it will prompt both companies to introduce new and exciting technologies into their handsets.

Touch Pro and Omnia Appear on Verizon Wireless

The two devices currently vying for my "daily driver" position - the Samsung Omnia and the HTC Touch Pro will soon be options on Verizon Wireless. VZW announced the Omnia and Touch Pro this past week, and it looks like Verizon-ites will have a chance to snag a great device when they make their appearence in stores. Now if I could just pick between the two!

HP iPAQ 910 Business Messenger Unboxing and First Impressions

This is an unboxing and first impressions video of the HP iPAQ 910 Business Messenger, a Windows Mobile Professional smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1. This is a 2.46 inch touch-screen phone (320 x 240 resolution) that also features a front-facing QWERTY keyboard, so it's a bit different than some of the phones I'm used to looking at.

The iPAQ 910 uses a Marvell PXA270 Processor at 416 Mhz, has quad-band GSM/GPRS and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA, meaning it's a true world-phone that can get 3G anywhere it's available. It also has a 3 megapixel camera, USB 2.0, 128 MB of RAM and 256 MB of ROM. Impressively, it boasts a 1940 mAh battery, so it should have solid battery life. Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11b/g round out the offering.

Our star reviewer, Don Tolson, will be taking a look at this device and giving it a full review in the coming weeks.

The HP Magic Giveaway: $6000 in Hardware & Software to One Winner, Who Will Share It!

Remember that awesome 31 Days of the Dragon giveaway contest Digital Home Thoughts was a part of earlier this year? Well this new contest from HP that we've been invited to partake in dwarfs that one on a number of levels. First, the prize pack is even bigger: $6000 in total prizes, consisting of one desktop PC, three laptops, a Media Center extender, a printer, and some software and accessories. Whew! There's some awesome hardware here. The scope is bigger too: there are 50 different blogs involved, and they range from tech blogs like this one, to women's blogs, to student blogs, to Spanish and Portuguese blogs. The complete list is further on in this post. If you do the math, that's $300,000 USD in total prizes, thanks to HP and Microsoft's Windows Live team.

The HP Magic Giveaway is designed around the idea of the magic of sharing, so it's not a coincidence that it's happening as we lead up to the Christmas & holiday season. Each blog is running their own type of contest (and you can enter all of them), but the idea that many of us are focusing on is sharing. One person probably doesn't need four computers all to themselves, so when I kick off my contest later on, it will include some sort of prize-sharing element. Start thinking of who and how you'd share this with others. A contest like this is even more timely when you look around at the financial markets world-wide, and even in your neighbourhood. Stay tuned for more details on my contest.

So what's included in this huge giveaway? Here's the full list:

Hardware
• HP TouchSmart IQ816 PC
• HP HDX 18 series Premium Notebook PC
• HP MediaSmart Connect
• HP Pavilion dv4 series Entertainment Notebook PC (with Windows Live)
• HP Mini 1000 (with XP)

Accessories
• HP Photosmart C6380 Wireless AIO (printer)
• HP 564 Photo Value Pak [thanks for the PDF Gear Diary!]

Software & Entertainment
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate/Home Premium or Microsoft Windows XP pre-installed on all units (Mini 1000 runs XP)
• Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007 (Student-Teacher Edition) – 1 DVD with 3 licenses
• Microsoft Windows Live
• Corel VideoStudio X2
• Kung Fu Panda (2 widescreen DVDs; 1 widescreen Blu-ray disc)

The complete list of sites involved, in no particular order, are as follows:

Gotta Be Mobile
Barb's Connected World
Geek.com
Gear Live
Neowin
Small Biz Vista
JK On the Run
BostonPocketPC
Notebooks.com
Geekzone
I Started Something
Bleeping Computer
The Gadgeteer
Planet x64
Digital Home Thoughts (YO! REPRESENT!)
Digital Inspiration
Geeks!
MediaBlab
Geek News Central
The Digital Lifestyle
GearDiary
Last 100
Geeks To Go!
Liliputing
OSNN
Slashdot Review
SlashGear
Gadgetell
Windows Connected
Techie Diva
One Day, One Job
Student Bloggers
Study Hacks - Demystifying College Success
HackCollege
Noticias Tech
Eliax
La Bitácora de Erwin Ried
Carlos Alberto
InfoWester
GeeksRoom
CíberPrensa
Unión de Bloggers Hispanos
Living - In Theory
Moosh in Indy
Morningside Mom
Thoughts on poetics & tech
Techmamas
Stop, Drop & Blog
Down-to-Earth Mama
merlot mom

And since I'm a visual person, here are some images of these wonderful prizes...
Above: The HP TouchSmart IQ816 PC

Above: The HP HDX 18 series Premium Notebook PC

Above: The HP MediaSmart Connect

Above: The HP Mini 1000 (with XP)

Above: The HP Pavilion dv4 Entertainment Notebook PC (with Windows Live)

Above: The HP Photosmart C6380 Wireless AIO Multi-Function Printer

Above: Corel's VideoStudio X2

Above: Kung-Fu Panda

Above: The HP 564 Photo Value Pack

WebIS Rolls Out Pocket Informant 8.5

"First, we have the announcement that Pocket Informant 8.5 was released today with many improvements in Smartphone and Pocket PC editions. We have some major improvements in the Calendar, Tasks View, Missions, and Contacts and it is now available as a free upgrade to all Pocket Informant 8.x owners. Version 8.5 of Pocket Informant is a mature PIM on Windows Mobile and most of our major improvements have been focusing on ease of use, improving the basic usability in finger touch modes, stylus, and one-handed usage scenarios. We don't want just cram more features in. Some areas like Journal and Events Views received a lot of attention."

The folks at WebIS have released Pocket Informant 8.5 as a free upgrade to all Pocket Informant 8.x owners. If you're in that boat, head over to WebIS for the installer. If you're not, and you're interested in trying or buying, head over to our affiliate software store (Classic/Professional [Pocket PC]; Standard [Smartphone]). It's on sale for $16.95, down from the regular price of $29.95. But if you want to take advantage of the offer, you'll have to be quick as it ends on November 30.

Send Text Messages To Email Accounts

"txtForward automatically forwards SMS text messages you send or receive on your BlackBerry or Windows Mobile smartphone to any email address you supply. Using txtForward to send your incoming text messages to email can be useful in a number of different ways... "



At first I didn't really see the point of this software, but one use would be to forward a text to your email account for archival purposes. The site has other recommended uses for it as well. It costs $7.95 and has a trial version available. It only specifies Windows Mobile, so I am not sure if it work on both Pro and Standard.

Rampant Rumour: The Microsoft Phone, Powered by Nvidia?

"What do you get if you take an iPhone, remove the clean UI, user friendliness, nice industrial design, battery life, cachet, functional OS, and in general everything else that makes it worthwhile? The new Microsoft phone, powered by Nvidia. Yeah, you heard it right, MS is going to make its own branded phone, after all, everyone kicking the company around the block has one, so it should too! If you were wondering why Nvidia never mentions the phrase Linux when talking Tegra, even though it is the most appropriate OS for the chip, now you know. NV appears to have sold Linux out to get the MS flagship deal, how nice of them"

This is easily the snarkiest, most acid-dripping hack job I've seen in months - and I was shocked until I saw that it's syndicated content from The Inquirer...then it all made sense to me. Putting aside the ridiculous excuse for journalism - it's really an editorial, not a news story - there are some interesting rumours. Is this the fabled Zune phone? Or some other phone-based project? I refuse to believe that Microsoft would sacrifice all their gains with Windows Mobile partners all over the world by releasing their own Windows Mobile phone - that's just not going to happen, despite some people believing that it's the only way we're going to get the "ultimate" Windows Mobile phone. Is this a Zune phone then? Possibly. When you consider that the third-generation Zune hardware is identical to the second-generation hardware other than a capacity bump, the Zune team has had to be working on something. If Microsoft did release a Zune phone, they'd cause major rifts with their Windows Mobile partners, and those partnerships are worth a lot more to Microsoft than the MP3 player partners they alienated when they released the Zune.

2009 is going to be a very interesting year, that's for sure!

UPDATE: CNBC says this phone is code-named "Pink", but doesn't have much else to say about it.

No Internet Explorer Mobile 6 For You...Unless You Buy a New Phone Next Year

"There has been a few rants posted over the last week or so about the statement that was made on a Microsoft Windows Mobile blog pertaining to the apparent lack of support for existing devices to support the upcoming Internet Explorer Mobile 6 web browser. James is one person not happy about it and echoes many of the comments made on the MSDN blog post. Brett is not happy either and made it a point to show how there are third party browsers that exceed anything Microsoft currently has with Internet Explorer Mobile and what it looks like Internet Explorer Mobile 6 may also support."

Matt Miller has written up a great article on this rather thorny subject. The whole thing is an unfortunate blow to the Windows Mobile platform, heaping insult upon injury. The insult is that Microsoft has had, literally, 5+ years to take the lead in creating a great mobile browsing experience, and they haven't. They stuck to their minimalist, "just barely renders HTML" strategy until the iPhone made desktop-like browsing a major factor in the eyes of consumers (not counting connection speed of course - 3G speeds where I am still suck!). Then, a year and a half later, with the iPhone being in its second generation, Microsoft starts to talk about IE Mobile 6 - and I think "OK, it's been a long wait, but maybe this will be worth it".

Now comes the injury: apparently Microsoft developers were unable to code something that would work on current generation hardware because it just didn't have enough grunt. The really "underpowered" HTC Touch Pro, with its 524 Mhz CPU and 288 MB of RAM, just couldn't handle this "monster" browser. I'm not a developer, but come on Microsoft - if mobile browsers like Opera Mobile and Skyfire can work on our devices today, why can't IE Mobile 6? This whole issue just makes my blood pressure raise - from the outside looking in, it looks like Microsoft just didn't realize that mobile browsing was important until it was too late.

Mobileyes Brings Free Traffic Cams to Windows Mobile

"Here's something that is sort of under the radar: evidently a company called Mobileyes has teamed up with various local news networks to release customized live Traffic cam apps. Available for for WM Pro and Standard devices, you can download the app for your region and then select via various sub-menus locality and specific highways."

Now this is a handy application. I remember when I was a kid we use to watch this mythical box called the TV that would show us pictures from various "eyes in the sky" so my parents could see how traffic was looking on our always backed up highways. Now you can pretty much do the exact same thing from your phone and a few traffic cams making the days of helicopters recording traffic a thing of the past.

eReader.com 45% Rebate Sale

"We've got a wide selection of books, including recent releases from most of the major publishing houses and also hard-to-find titles. You can read the latest selection from a publisher's front list or a classic from the public domain. Lose yourself in a science fiction bestseller, plan your next trip with a travel guide, or hone your presentation skills with a selection from our business titles. We're adding titles every day, so drop by often to see what's new. Shop at your convenience, 24 hours a day, at our web-based store as well as our on device store at mobile.ereader.com. You can browse by genre and search by author and title. You can read excerpts and reviews before making a secure purchase. After purchasing, download your books immediately and be reading within minutes!"

Ok, I admit it, I'm hooked on ebooks now. I love that I can have the latest books at my disposal. I currently have 12 books on my device and room for hundreds more. But now I'm really in trouble because eReader.com is having a 45% off all books rebate sale. So if I buy a bestselling book that's $20.00, I earn a rebate of $9.00 off my next book which works out great since they have a ton of books under $10.00. I'll admit one more thing, I just purchased three books before writing this post, one of them was free and I still have a $3.39 credit in my account. Do any of you read ebooks on your mobile device? For all Windows Mobile users the ereader pro software is free from their site. There's also a Windows, Iphone, and Palm version too. Don't wait too long though, the sale ends November 30th. 

Black Friday Deals at Amazon.com

For all of our American readers, this is a big week - Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, and Thanksgiving, perhaps the biggest holiday of the year. Since Black Friday usually involves long lines and blood pressure numbers that are scary-high, I thought I'd do one simple post pointing everyone to Amazon.com's Black Friday Deals [Affiliate]. Amazon.com typically has some impressive deals, and they run the gamut from electronics to clothes, DVDs to jewelry. They're running six days of deals, with new deals every day, so it's worth checking the Black Friday home page every morning. Your purchases also go to help support our Web sites, so everybody wins. Happy shopping everyone!

HTC Touch Pro Unboxing and First Impressions

This is an unboxing and first impressions video of the HTC Touch Pro. This devices was given to me on loan by Expansys, and it currently (Nov 2008) retails for $799 USD. The HTC Touch pro is an evolution from the HTC TyTn, AT&T Tilt, etc. It packs a lot of functionality into a package that feels surprisingly good in your hand.

The HTC Touch Pro uses a Qualcomm MSM7201A CPU at 528 MHz, runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, and has 512 MB of storage ROM and 288 MB of system RAM. It is 102mm tall, 51mm wide, and 18.05mm thick. It weighs 165 grams with its 1340 mAh battery. It has a 2.8 inch VGA screen, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11 b/g, and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It's a quad-band GSM phone (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), and this model is set up for Europe/Asia 3G with 900/2100 MHz band coverage for HSPD/WCDMA for up to 2 mbps upstream and 7.2 mbps downstream. The main camera is a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash, and there's a front-facing VGA camera for video calling. It also has a microSDHC card slot and supports high-capacity cards, which are currently up to 16 GB in size.

As a side note, I'm still experimenting with Motionbox, so if you see any problems please report them over in this thread. It turns out the day I asked for everyone to test their service, they were doing some back-end networking changes that was the cause of some of the issues people reported. Let me know how it plays back for you today (make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed first), including what browser you're using. I'm seeing something strange in Firefox where the video won't start playing, but if I manually click somewhere on the timeline, it starts working just fine. Anyone else seeing that?

MWg Zinc II Now Only $299 from Expansys

I was looking for something on Expansys this morning in our affiliate store, and I noticed that the MWg Zinc II has undergone another price drop - it's now only $299 USD. If you watched my unboxing or review videos, you'll know that I found this device to be a solid, capable Pocket PC - nothing terribly revolutionary, and not a real power user device with only 64 MB of RAM, but capable enough for most people. I felt that the initial price of $749 USD was just too expensive though because it put the Zinc II in close competition with the HTC Touch devices. But at $299 USD? This device is in a class all it's own - I can't think of any device that performs better on a price/performance ratio. And unlike every new device that HTC is cranking out lately, the Zinc II actually has 3G that will work in Europe, Asia, and North America because it covers the 850/1900/2100 Mhz bands. This is definitely a device worth considering at this price.