Windows Mobile Pocket PC & Symbian Smartphone software and freeware, reviews, tips & tricks

Feb 03 Goodbye from Smartphones for PDA
Published by Vesselin Nerdeff in:Mobile News, Smartphone,

Relentless growth of converged devices such as Symbian S60 smart phones is contrasting sharply with plummeting sales of traditional handheld mobile devices, for example PDAs, research from IDC reveals. According to IDC, the Western European mobile device market – including stand-alone handhelds and converged devices – grew 26pc year on year in the final quarter of 2005. Total shipments reached 4.5 million in the fourth quarter as the relentless growth of Symbian S60 throughout 2005 was maintained to drive total mobile device shipments of 13.9 million units for the year

Compared with 8.9m in 2004, it's representing year-on-year growth of 56pc.


However, while record S60 shipments contributed significantly towards market performance in the fourth quarter of 2005, final quarter growth represented the most disappointing year-on-year volume increases of all quarters in 2005 for both converged and handheld device categories.

“With intense competition from rival consumer electronics over the festive period contributing to an abrupt halt in the growth witnessed by the handheld category in 2005, growth was highly reliant on a converged device segment in the fourth quarter of 2005 that itself witnessed disappointing growth outside the consumer-centric Symbian S60 platform,” said Jean-Philippe Bouchard, senior research analyst, IDC European Mobile Devices.

Most significantly, despite growing 31pc sequentially the standalone handheld segment suffered negative year-on-year growth of -17pc as shipments reached just 839,000 units compared to volumes in excess of a million in the corresponding quarter of 2004.

“Disappointing growth for handhelds in the high-volume final quarter has reinforced the belief that global positioning system [GPS] bundling in isolation could not maintain positive growth indefinitely despite portfolio refreshes and aggressive price cuts by leading vendors such as Hewlett-Packard [HP] and Palm,” said Geoff Blaber, research analyst, IDC European Mobile Devices.

“The multi-application superiority of converged devices and heavily subsidized price points, combined with aggressively-priced dedicated GPS systems, triggered the decline in the fourth quarter of 2005, presenting a bleak outlook for the market in 2006.”

With the exception of Acer and Medion, all top five handheld vendors suffered negative growth in the fourth quarter of 2005. However, substantial price cuts by HP and Palm to counter the competitive threat from Acer and other low-cost Windows Mobile vendors fuelled rejuvenation in market share from previous quarters. Palm led the market for the first time since the first quarter of 2004, with 23pc, and was followed by HP, proving that despite a dominant European preference for Microsoft's OS, demand remains for Palm OS devices positioned in specific segments at competitive price points.

In contrast to handhelds, converged devices exhibited market growth of 42pc, driving shipments of 3.6 million units to push total shipments for 2005 to just under 11 million units, representing year-on-year growth of 80pc.

However, growth fell below expectations in the final quarter as major vendors such as Motorola and Sony Ericsson saw a substantial slowdown in shipments as devices such as the MPx220, A1000, and P910i reached the end of their life cycles and the channel was cleared for new launches in the opening quarter of 2006. As a consequence, the market continued to be dominated by Nokia S60 shipments as the launch of the N70 further invigorated demand, assisted by extensive 3G service/content promotion by operators in anticipation of the Christmas period.

The Finnish vendor consolidated a 76pc market share, followed by RIM, which maintained momentum to ship 215,000 units. The prolonged absence of the push email capability for Windows Mobile 5.0 platform combined with the launch of RIM's EDGE-capable 8700 device presents a positive outlook for the Canadian vendor in year 2006.

“The release of Windows Mobile 5.0 and the influx of new devices that is fueling promises to invigorate the market in 2006, particularly within the enterprise space,” said Andrew Brown, program manager, European Mobile Devices and Computing.

“However, Symbian’s positioning as an OS and flexibility to enable low-cost implementation in multimedia or enterprise-centric devices means Microsoft faces a significant challenge to rival the dominance that Symbian has established to date.”

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Feb 02 New Treo 800p with wifi option out March 15th?
Published by root in:Devices, Palm, Treo, WiFi,

Rumors are spreading arround about an upcomming Treo 800p release in mid March this year.Current features in the new Treo 800p will include 128MB RAM (thats sweet:) , a WiFi option (not mentioned if it will be integrated), SD card, Bluetooth 2, EVDO, enhanced 320x320 screen, slimmer form factor and antenna, will use the same accessories as the 650 and of cource 3.2 MP camera. No pictures are available for now, stay tuned for updated !

via TreoCentral
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Feb 01 Backup data solutions for Windows Mobile 5.0
Published by Vesselin Nerdeff in:Tips, Software,

There are quite much reason to get you data deleted or lost - depleted batteries, system errors, etc... In these or some other cases you may need backup applications for the new operating system ( windows mobile 5.0 ), particularly if you often install new programs and/or use misbehaving applications that may irrecoverably crash your system, resulting in a need for a hard reset.

Right now, we can offer you three great applications that can do this job for You. These pocket pc programs with support for WM5 devices are : Spb Backup

Summary:Spb Backup is a utility for saving your Pocket PC content to a storage card for backup purposes. Spb Backup is based upon the proven cloning technology used in Spb Clone. Thousands of users in enterprise environments use Spb Clone to create exact copies of their "master" PDA devices. Spb Backup creates a self-restoring image file that can be restored even without installing the main Spb Backup application. The backup file can be compressed and password protected with strong 128-bit AES algorithm. Spb Backup offers an attractive and simple-to-use interface. Sprite Backup WM5 Beta

Summary: Backup your Pocket PC to a Storage Card, CF Card, host PC or Network Share. Fast, simple, reliable.

Detailed information about Sprite Backup Beta At our previous article

Beta version download links Non VGA CAB:
http://www.spritesoftware.com/downloads/SpriteBackup_WM2005_nonvga.CAB VGA CAB:
http://www.spritesoftware.com/downloads/SpriteBackup_WM2005-VGA.CAB



SunnySoft Backup Manager



Summary: Sunnysoft Backup Manager is a strong backup tool for your PDA.

Detailed Applications description and download links here

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Feb 01 i-teq BOND aka g-smart PPC phone from Gigabyte in English language
Published by Vesselin Nerdeff in:Devices,

This is the same device which was released in Taiwan during last December and it is known as Gigabyte g-smart. In West Countries and Middle East this device will be known as i-teq BOND and it will be released here in Dubai in February 15, 2006. This is the first Pocket PC Phone with built-in TV and it comes with FM radio as well. Exclusive software applications bundled with this device including Pocket Guide and Pocket Flight from Mobile Times and Imaginet Arabic software bundle.

Apart from ETEN and Quanta, now also Gigabyte - another Taiwanese company - is releasing fantastic Windows Mobile that is direct competition to HTC made phones.
Specifications

System information:

* Operating System: Windows Mobile 5.0
* Processor: Intel PXA 272 416 MHz
* Memory: 64 MBROM, 64MB RAM

Size:

* Dimensions (mm): 109 x 53.5 x 24 mm
* Weight (in grams): 153g

Batteries:

* Battery Capacity: 840 mAh Li-Ion Battery (1500 mAh optional)

Charging time:

* Charger: 2.5 hours

Display Characteristics:

* Type: 2.4 inch, 260K TFT LCD touch screen (Actual OS display 65K pixels)
* Resolution: 240 x 320

Band:

* GSM 900/1800/1900

Connectivity:

* Bluetooth: BT 1.2.1
* WLAN: 802.11b
* IR
* MMS
* GPRS: Class A/B, GPRS Uplink/Downlink Class 10
* WAP: 2.0
* CSD: Y
* Modem dial-up: Y
* USB: Mini USB 1.1
* Push e-mail

Image:

* Format: JPEG, GIF, Animated GIF files, PNG, BMP

Audio:

* Format: WMA, MP3, 3GP, MID, AMR, WAV

Camera:

* 2.1 Megapixel Camera (CMOS)

Others:

* Mini-SD card slot
* 3D stereo speaker
* FM Radio built-in
* TV tuner built-in
* Stereo audio over Bluetooth

Previous article about Gigabyte's g-smart ppc phone here

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Feb 01 ARM Processor & Physical IP Deliver 750 MHz ARM11 Implementation
Published by Vesselin Nerdeff in:Hardware,

Combination of ARM1176JZF-S processor, plus ARM Artisan Advantage libraries and memories achieves more than 750 MHz performance for next-generation digital home products and high-end consumer devices. ARM today unveiled a groundbreaking high performance implementation of the ARM1176JZF-S processor, enhanced with the ARM Artisan Advantage cell library and memories, which achieves a frequency of more than 750 MHz in a high-performance 90nm foundry process while occupying only 2.4 mm2 of silicon area. This represents a significant performance increase through a combination of collaborative design, advanced physical IP and process technology. The optimized implementation delivers an industry-leading performance of more than 920 Dhrystone MIPS for existing applications and operating systems without the need for expensive software re-design or re-compilation.

"The industry leading combination of the ARM processor business and the Physical IP business acquired from Artisan a year ago is delivering technically as well as commercially," said Mike Inglis EVP Marketing and Business Development. "Our combined engineering teams have worked together to create a best-in-class 90nm design for semiconductor Partners serving the high volume digital consumer market."

The high-performance design is a fully routed, reference layout of the ARM1176JZF-S processor including 16KB instruction cache, 16KB data cache, 4x high-performance AMBA 3 AXI interconnect interfaces to speed instruction and data access, and a vectorized floating-point unit (VFP). Based on the award winning ARM11 family, the ARM1176JZF-S processor has been widely adopted for next generation consumer applications due to its high-end performance, energy efficiency and rich feature set.

The ARM Advantage family of cell libraries and memories delivers high-performance and low-power, and provides an out-of-the-box solution for demanding digital home, entertainment, and other high-end applications. The ARM Advantage family reinforces the powerful synergy between ARM's processor and physical IP products. Combined, these complementary technologies enable ARM to offer the industry's broadest portfolio of system-on-chip (SoC) IP, and deliver performance and power optimized processor implementations for deep sub-micron silicon design.

"The new 750 MHz implementation of the ARM1176JZF-S processor illustrates the benefits of combining a complete range of ARM technology, in terms of performance, compatibility, lower risk and time-to-market," said John Cornish, VP Marketing, Processors Division, ARM. "The ARM Advantage library and memories combined with the ARM1176JZF-S processor highlights our commitment to providing leading-edge solutions for applications which need a higher level of performance with full software compatibility. This is the latest of several targeted implementations that combine our industry-leading processor and physical IP, to demonstrate high performance in a low cost and power footprint."

The ARM1176JZF-S synthesizable processor is targeted at consumer and wireless devices such as digital TVs, set-top-boxes, games consoles, and mobile phones. The processor incorporates ARM Jazelle technology for Java acceleration, ARM TrustZone technology, a key enabling technology, targeted specifically at securing consumer products running open Operating Systems (OS), such as Symbian OS, Linux and Windows CE, and a Vector Floating-Point (VFP) coprocessor to provide powerful acceleration for embedded 3D graphics.
Availability

The high speed ARM1176JZF-S processor implementation with 16K Instruction and Data caches will run at more than 750MHz, with a die size of only 2.4mm2 and less than 500mW of power including caches. The ARM1176JZF-S processor, and the Advantage cell library and memories for the TSMC 90GT process, are available now. For further information contact your local ARM office or visit www.arm.com

ARM designs the technology that lies at the heart of advanced digital products, from wireless, networking and consumer entertainment solutions to imaging, automotive, security and storage devices. ARM's comprehensive product offering includes 16/32-bit RISC microprocessors, data engines, 3D processors, digital libraries, embedded memories, peripherals, software and development tools, as well as analog functions and high-speed connectivity products. Combined with the company's broad Partner community, they provide a total system solution that offers a fast, reliable path to market for leading electronics companies. More information on ARM is available at http://www.arm.com

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Feb 01 vBar 2.2 - world's smallest task manager
Published by root in:Software, Pocket PC, Freeware,

vBar 2.2 has been recently released and it's still the world's smallest and fastest Pocket PC Task Manager. vBar is 100% free and we recommend it to every Pocket PC user.It's simplicity makes it very powerfull and usefull in any situation. The new vBar 2.2 supports Windows Mobile 5 QVGA & VGA.

here is the changelog:
Release 2.2

• With yet another major contribution from Jonathan Misurda, vBar now supports Windows Mobile 5 QVGA & VGA icons automatically.
• Fix task list overlapping in Windows Mobile 5 QVGA.
• Provide Tap & Hold option for CLOSE. The default behavior is still CLOSE, not MINIMIZE.
• Battery indicator now looks a bit like battery for easier recognization.

free download is available here


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Feb 01 Motorola's Second iTunes Phone Hits the Street
Published by root in:Devices,

Motorola Inc. and Cingular Wireless LLC are out with their second cell phone with Apple Computer Corp.'s iTunes music service.The new phone, the SLVR L7, is a thin non-folding phone, styled similarly to Motorola's best-selling RAZR clamshell phone. Cingular is selling it for $199.99 with a two-year contract.

The first phone that allowed owners to transfer music from their computer's iTunes library, the Motorola ROKR E1, launched in September.

"It kind of came out of the chute with some real flaws in it," said Neil Strother, wireless analyst at research firm In-Stat. "I wouldn't say it was a complete disaster but they clearly had some real problems."

Strother estimates that 84,000 ROKRs were sold last year, compared to tens of millions of RAZRs. Chief among reviewer complaints was that the ROKR would hold at most 100 iTunes songs, regardless of memory capacity, and that transferring songs took too long.

The SLVR L7 doesn't address those issues: it has the same storage limitation for iTunes files and uses the same USB technology to connect to the computer. It lacks some of the music-oriented features of the ROKR, like external stereo speakers and a dedicated headphone jack. Instead, the headphones plug into the charging jack via an adapter.

"The L7 is really in what we call our 'self-expression portfolio,' where design and style is the key premise behind the product," said Steve Lalla, vice president and general manager for mass-market products at Motorola.

The SLVR has already been on sale overseas, but without iTunes.

A second version of the ROKR is expect this year, with a faster transfer speed. However, it is not yet clear if it will feature iTunes or another music service.

Also Tuesday, T-Mobile USA became the first carrier to sell another new Motorola design, a small egg-shaped clamshell phone called PEBL. It sells for $299.99 with a one-year contract.

via WirelessNewsFactor


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Feb 01 PopupClock 1.0 released by VITO for Pocket PC & Smartphone
Published by Vesselin Nerdeff in:Software,

VITO PopupClock is easy to use clock for your Pocket PC. It is the best variant if you have a mobile lifestyle - always ready to show you the precise time. It is sure to save your eyesight and time - you won't miss it on the screen! Have the precise time with you on the go just at hand!

Main Features:

# VITO PopupClock is a tiny applet that brings a clock on the screen.
# Large-scale and clear-cut image ensures you will know the correct time
# It is very useful to assign PopupClock to a hardware button and know the precise time at any moment.
# There are plenty of skins available to customize your PopupClock.
# Press the assigned button to bring PopupClock on top of the screen.
# Press any button or tap somewhere around it on the screen to close PopupClock after you've started it.

Skins

Follow these easy steps to install the skin you like:
1. Download appropriate ZIP file.
2. Extract the archive to a folder on your desktop PC using WinZipR or other unpacking software.
3. Insert your Pocket PC into the craddle and check if ActiveSync is connected.
4. Run the extracted desktop installation file (the one that has .exe extension) to start installation and follow the on-screen instructions.



Requirements

# MIPS, ARM or XScale based Pocket PC
# Operation System up from Windows mobile 2003

Be awared that smartphone operating systems are designed to "sleep" and wake up immediately when it is requested to do something. An application with animation running constantly means the application never allows the OS to sleep, and so it stays "on" and depleating power much faster than if the device is allowed to "sleep."

Purchase VITO Popup Clock for $4.95 here

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Feb 01 Resco Pocket Radio Updated to v1.50
Published by Vesselin Nerdeff in:Software,

One of the favorite pocket pc user streaming radio software for the Pocket PC has been updated to 1.50. Resco, a PDA software developer that makes quality programs like Resco Explorer and Resco Photo Viewer has blessed us with yet another quality product--something that I have never seen before. Enter Resco Pocket Radio, a program for the Pocket PC that allows you to stream live online radio feeds in real time! Why pay XM or Sirius Radio for music when you can get it for free ?

Features

* player for internet streaming radio broadcasting in

o MP3 format
o OGG Vorbis format
o AAC, AACplus format

* recorder for MP3, AAC and AACplus streams capable of recording to a storage card
* skin enabled, easy-to-use user interface with 10 preset buttons for fast radio tuning
* scheduler for recording of regular radio programs
* extensive list of 150 predefined radio stations with the most popular stations from all over the world
* optimized for Windows Mobile 5.0 with full QVGA/VGA portrait/landscape/square screen size support

Resco Radio also comes included with a vast directory of internet radio stations ready to listen to. Resco Radio not only lets you add categories and radio stations but it also lets you import M3U or PLS files that you downloaded from your radio station websites.

What's new (v1.50)

* great new skin
* support of AAC and AACplus formats
* new AAC and AACplus radio stations added
* server redirects supported

User interface
The skin enabled user interface provides an easy way to listen to your favorite radio stations. Just choose your favourite 9 radio stations and assign them to the 9 preset buttons. Whenever you want to tune in, tap a button and you're ready to jam! Buttons are large enough to be controlled just by fingers without the need to use the stylus.



Extensive list of radios

A predefined list of radio stations with numerous music genres. You can be sure to find your favorite station.

Easy radio importing

If you are unable find a radio stations that you cannot live without, it is very simple to add it to the list in Resco Pocket Radio. You can do it manually by entering the stream's URL, title, bitrate and other parameters... ...or you can use easy import from a M3U or PLS file. Just visit the radio's webpage, find the link to a M3U or PLS file, download the file, copy it to your Pocket PC and import it to Resco Pocket Radio.

Scheduled recording

This feature lets you record broadcasting while you are away, or when the program runs late at night.

Go to Resco Pocket Radio Product here

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Feb 01 WiFiFoFum 2 for Pocket PC released with .NET Features
Published by Vesselin Nerdeff in:Software,

This version makes use of the latest features of .NET CF to give you the highest performance for war driving. With this version you can be confident your GPS logged coordinates for the networks you find are highly accurate, and can rely on a smooth user interface experience. WiFiFofum is developed by Aspecto Software - they specialise in developing wireless, ad-hoc, network applications.

WiFiFoFum version 2 brings full support for WM5, VGA displays, portrait and landscape orientations. An "aggressive" scanning mode has been included so you can collect more APs than ever before. A German language file has been included so if your PDA is set to German you will see the translated version automatically. There is a partial Greek file too.

WiFiFoFum is still freeware so please donate to developers if you would like to support further development. You can now download the latest version of WiFiFoFum, the best WiFi scanner and war driving software for Pocket PC 2003 and Windows Mobile 5, at developer's site.
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