E@zyVG’s Vichar::World Connected

Last year, the TouchFLO interface proved to be the most prominent feature of all found in the Touch handset by HTC. Being quite ordinary on the hardware side, the model offers a totally revamped application launcher serving as a perfect compromise between the complexity of the Microsoft platform and the simplicity of those who don’t want go too far in exploring its capabilities, as well as serving as an easy introduction to Windows Mobile to the users who have previously had no clear notion about the peculiarities of the Microsoft interface at all. As a result of the innovative approach, mass users ready to embrace WM 6.1 emerge in thousands, no longer confused by the complexity of the default interface. Moreover, the TouchFLO bears the ‘3D’ label, standing for an extremely easy-to-use and friendly user interface only requiring a few taps of the finger to reach the goal.

HTC’s TouchFLO 3D features a new Start-screen which includes a clock, information about missed calls and about the next appointments. Furthermore it includes a smart-dial list which is customizable and where you can add you favorite contacts. Next is a SMS and MMS overview followed by an E-Mail overview. Photos and Videos is the next screen and finally, TouchFLO 3D is also able to play videos without opening Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. Next to it is the Music screen which shows all your available tracks with cover-art followed by a shortcut to the Internet which either starts Opera Mobile or predefined favorites. Next is the Weather information which now shows a forecast of up to 10 selectable cities, followed by Settings and the Programs menu which is also partly customizable as well as gives a direct link to all available applications without using the Pocket PC typical Windows Mobile flag anymore.

Horace Luke, Chief Innovation Officer for HTC, presents their new Touch Flow 3D User Interface:

And here is a complete walk through of the UI on HTC Diamond by pocketnow.com:

This is definitely a killer UI for Windows Mobile phones, and I find it better than that of on iPhone (I consider iPhone the best multimedia phone on market). Most will appreciate the TouchFLO’s user friendliness compared to the default Win Mobile, as it is much better than looking at a Windows desktop on your cell phone, and even more productive.

I’d really like to own the HTC Touch Pro “Raphael”, as it will be a major update from my HTC Artemis (running WM 6.1 Pro ROM), skipping the Kaiser, which I found expensive and very bulky for me.

HTC Touch Pro comes packed with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, 512 MB flash, 288 MB RAM memory, SD 2.0 compatible microSD memory card expansion slot, and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g which provides HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA wireless connectivity. Like any other modern handset, the PRO includes Bluetooth connectivity (2.0 with EDR) and an interface with HTC ExtUSB (audio jack, 11-pin mini-USB 2.0, and TV out in-one.) When it comes to business productivity, power users can find HTC Touch Pro built-in TV-out functionality useful to deliver PowerPoint presentations directly from their handset.

I hope that the pricing will be good on this device, as paying $1000 for phone is just too much.

Intel Corp. unveiled its first central processing units designed for Internet-oriented small form-factor mobile computers. The new Intel Atom processors are likely to show Intel a way into handheld devices, a market that has been relatively untapped by the world’s largest maker of chips.

“This is our smallest processor built with the world’s smallest transistors. This small wonder is a fundamental new shift in design, small yet powerful enough to enable a big Internet experience on these new devices. We believe it will unleash new innovation across the industry,” said Intel executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer Sean Maloney.

Intel Atom processors, which were previously code-named Diamondville and Silverthorne, are based on Intel Core 2 micro-architecture, but are tailored for mobile operation and manufacturing cost-efficiency: e.g., they do not feature large caches and do not sport certain peculiarities.

These new chips will be manufactured on Intel’s 45nm process technology and will contain about 47 million of transistors. The chips have a thermal design power (TDP) specification in 0.6-2.5W range and scale to 1.8GHz speeds depending on customer need. By comparison, today’ mainstream mobile Core 2 Duo processors have a TDP in the 35W range and run at speeds of about 3.30GHz.

Typical Atom based computers will be ultra-portable notebooks or tabled PCs with small 7-10 inch displays. Devices will ship with either hard disks or solid-state drives that use flash memory and offer battery life ranging from three to five hours. The majority of models are most likely to come equipped with wired network controller or WiFi, and then later with WiMAX. Some will be really sleek and thin, some will be a bit more ruggedized. The manufacturers will provide their solutions with Linux or Windows XP operating system and the Atom based devices will be primarily positioned for internet-surfing and typical office work. The cost of  Atom notebooks will range from $250 to $300, which should appeal not only to small to midsize businesses with small IT staffs and more limited budgets, but also to emerging markets and consumers.

With personal computing increasingly going mobile and the computer industry rapidly developing new classes of products to connect the next billion people to the Internet, the Intel Atom processor offers customers the unique ability to innovate around the new low-power design. In addition to the mobile Internet device (MID) opportunity, Intel believes the demand for a new category of low-cost, Internet-centric mobile computing devices dubbed “netbooks” and basic Internet-centric desktop PCs dubbed “nettops”, will grow substantially over the next several years. The Intel Atom processor is perfectly suited to meet these new market segments.

By 2015 Intel expects to have CPUs with many smaller IA cores, each with very low power characteristics but with the entire chip being very high performance. Intel commissioned its Austin design team to work on one of the cores for this type of many-core CPU.

Anand Chandrasekher, Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group Senior Vice President presents the ATOM processor

Intel is effectively promising that in the coming years its Atom processor will enable you to, without sacrificing battery life, have significantly faster mobile devices and phones. We can’t help but be excited about that.

Maybe not cooler than the interactive mirror, but close. I can’t see this being used to view DVDs since I would much rather watch them on the big screen, but it would be really cool to just have one, with all that this multimedia system offers. For what its worth, this seems to be what I envisioned from one of Bill Gate’s speeches on Multimedia in the home 4-5 years ago.

I was waiting for this feature for a very-very long time, as many users did, and at last Googleannounced the rollout of free IMAP4 over SSL access for GMail. POP is nice, but IMAP is a much better option. Among the advantages, you’re always connected to the server, more clients can connect to the same account, you can obtain the text from a message without the attachments and the state information is synchronized (you can add labels from the client, read or delete a message and Gmail will synchronize). “As some of you know, IMAP is the best way to access your email from multiple devices allowing you to keep your Gmail message state information such as whether or not a message has been read, replied to, or deleted synchronized across any IMAP4 client on desktop or mobile devices, since these flags are stored on the server unlike POP3.

A brief review of why IMAP is better than POP

Gmail added IMAP support, but you’ll have to enable it by going to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Because the new feature is slowly rolled-out, you may not see it, but rest assured it will be available in the next days. Here are a few resources to setup and configure IMAP4 over SSL for a multitude of desktop and mobile clients:

• Nokia S60
• Sony Ericsson UIQ3. This tutorial points to a help guide from Synchronica. Just substitute Synchronica’s server names with Google GMail’s IMAP server.
• Blackberry
• Apple iPhone
• Motorola Razr (Note: External guide, similiar to Sony Ericsson above)
• Windows Mobile
• Outlook 2003
• Outlook 2007
• Thunderbird
• Windows Mail Desktop
• Outlook Express
• Mac Apple Mail

I am a user of KMail on my Linux box, and for KMail to work with IMAP you only have to change your Host server from pop.gmail.com to imap.gmail.com and change port to 995, with SSL Encryption enabled. The rest stays the same.

Remeber to enable IMAP in your GMail account, goto your Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP and select Enable IMAP. Check Gmail IMAP Access help center for more information.

At last a much better way to play them Youtube (and alikes) videos on your WM powered phones … no more fisrt downloading and then watching. You now have direct, unfettered access to Youtube, Google Video & Veoh, in all their glory. Simply install the CABs listed below, go directly to these websites, and click on a video to play. That’s it

If you follow the instructions exactly and use the preconfigured TCPMP settings, you should be able to play videos smoothly if your network connection is adequate.

Installation instructions:

1. If you already have a version of TCPMP installed, uninstall it now.
2. Install tcpmp.pocketpc.0.72RC1.cab: link here
3. Install FlashVideoBundle.CAB (this MUST be installed in the same location as TCPMP): get it
4. Soft-reset

Note: In order to play back videos on a touchscreen-less MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) platform, you’ll need THIS TCPMP CAB file (instead of the one linked in the tutorial) – while the other CAB file, FlashVideoBundle.CAB, can be installed on Smartphones as well.

Caveats:
Requires pocket IE. This plugin will not work with Opera, NetFront, Picsel, etc. (at least for now). However, it is compatible with PiePlus.

Tips:
- If your video is scrambled, change the video driver setting from “Raw Framebuffer” to “DirectDraw.”
- Google video is a mess, IMHO. They mix links to Youtube, Google and even AOL and they continue to index lots of videos that have been removed. In addition, the complexity of their javascript/flash code make it a bear to deal with. If you are using it, I’d recommend skipping their main page and going to their “Top 100″ page instead.
- Veoh videos tend to be higher quality than youtube, so it requires a fast connection.
- When clicking on a video image or title, be patient rather than repeatedly clicking it. It takes a little time to load up TCPMP, especially the first time.
- The FlashVideoBundle will work with TCPMP .81Beta, however I wouldn’t recommend it.
- If you want to disable the pocket IE plugin, first exit IE and then run “DisableVL.exe” in your TCPMP install directory. To enable it again, run “EnableVL.exe”

P.S.> Tnx to all developers for this great pieace of code … works like a charm on my HTC P3300.

UPDATE (01.02.08): This one is for WM 6.1 update (cab came out on Jan 22, 2008 — to fix the youtube issues)

1. Uninstall your TCPMP and Flashbundle player. Yes you have to install TCPMP and Flashbundle all over. I read you had to do this or else it wont work properly.
2. Install TCPMP (a media player that is used to play many files.For example youtube videos ). When you install it chose to install it to your SD card.
3. Copy the NEW Flashbundle cab (the one I provided) to the program folder that was created for TCPMP on your SD card
4. Once you copied the Flashbundle Cab to the TCPMP folder run the Flashbundle Cab from there and chose to install it to the SD card instead of local memory.
5. Soft Reset

If you ever experiece issues where you flashbundle doesnt work dont worry. Youtube updates their site many times and our Flashbundle is incompatible. Lucky for us we got a source where they update the Flashbundles to work when this happens just visit : http://discussion.treocentral.com/sh…=youtube+tcpmp

Right now I am using HTC P3300 “Artemis” - an award winning pocketpc phone with Windows Mobile 5 (upgraded to WM6) and cool design. But there are few things that I am missing, and one of them is a full QWERTY keyboard.

This is what I am hoping to own as my next mobile device replacing my current Artemis - the HTC P4550, code name “Kaiser” (sounds very cool).

Running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional, the P4550 has a 32bit Qualcomm MSM7200 CPU at 400Mhz (wonder how it compares to Samsung 400Mhz and perhaps PXA 412Mhz) with 128 MB RAM and 256Mb ROM with a 2.8 ” TFT screen and a full QWERTY keyboard with unique option that lets you tilt the screen to have it sit on your desk perfectly aimed at you.

The device supports plethora of networks - CSD, GPRS/EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA. Other key features include - SDIO, microSD, TransFlash slot, USB 2.0 client, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, WLAN and 3MP primary camera with VGA forward facing secondary camera. The only thing that I can think of missing from this killer device is VGA resolution - now that Toshiba and E-TEN are offering small-size Windows Mobile phones with touch screen and VGA resolution (640×480, but Toshiba offers even more: 800×480) it seems a little bit strange that HTC is missing this one from high range product such as Kaiser ……… making surfing the web much more pleasant experience than on QVGA screen.

Another really cool addition could have been a fingerprint scanner for authentication, such as one on Toshiba G900.

Complete specs for this device can be found here.

I guess the price will be quite steep for this device here in Moscow, at a mobile retail shop, perhaps somewhere in the range of $800-900, as I paid around $750 for my HTC Artemis. But that ain’t gonna stop me from getting one, that if I have cash :) Plus I am anxiously awaiting for one of those MIDs, running Linux, to hit the street.

I have been waiting for this one for some time now and now it is on my mobile phone and I am super happy.

I have been waiting for WM6 upgrade for my HTC P3300. Now there is one available today, though not being an official ROM from HTC, as it is based on official O2 XDA Orbit WM6 German ROM, which is based on HTC P3300. I have tried this method on my CID-Locked HTC P3300 device several times and it works nicely, including GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth.

DISCLAIMER: Make sure you have original ROM as well, just in case your device stalls. I am not responsible if you brick your device.

The following WM6 ROM is of course in English, dont want one in any other language.

1. Download the WM6 English ROM

2. Download the package for upgrading your device

3. Copy the os.nb file to extracted folder (ARTE_WWE_WM6) and rename the file to tom.nba

4. Establish an ActiveSync connection

5. Run UpgradeRom_Artemis.bat

(don’t bother about the text output, as the package is from other “WM5 Crossbow Style” ROM)

6. After around 25-30 mins hard reset your device

>> If you encounter some problem while flashing, try change the value from 03900000 to 03500000 in the UpgradeRom_Artemis.bat file, and then try flashing again.

Once you are in WM6 Today screen, when you get 3 seconds screen for extended rom to be launched -> press soft-reset (you don’t want WM5 related patches installed on top of your WM6 device), unless you have flashed your device completely with another WM6 “other language” ROM, meaning you have CID-unlocked P3300 and just want English ROM.

Welcome to all new Windows Mobile 6:

Check the following forum for more help and details. Or wait for the official WM6 ROM from HTC.

P.S. Thanks to “bepe”, a member of xda-developers site.

UPDATE (02.02.08): Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro - Introduction and Running on HTC Artemis

OMG …got it working !!!

Here is what i did:

On your PDA
1. Go to BT settings on your device and make it discoverable.
2. Go to COM Ports Tab and create a new incoming port (mine is COM6)

In GPS2Blue
3. set your GPS to 4 (this is your internal GPS port ..see under Start –> Settings–>GPS)
4. enable BT on and set it to the COM you created in step 2.
5. Press Button ON

On your PC
6. Open your Bluetooth settings… i used Microsoft not Widcomm
7. Add a new Device
8. Choose your PDA
9. When this is done click properties on your device and go to the TAB services.
10. Now it will find a serial Port (SPP) ‘Serial Port’ COM 8 (in my case) enable it and press OK.

11. Now go to the TAB Com Ports and press button ADD. Choose your device and choose the Serial port.Now you have connected COM port 8 on your PC to COM Port 6 on your device. The only thing you will have to do is choose COM Port 8 as your GPS port in your application.

- Tnx to Tranzy from xda-developers.org

New year is knocking at our door steps and it is time to make gifts to our loved ones, and of course to yourself.

Apart from getting a new monitor, Acer AL2216Ws, I decided that it was not enough to satisfy my list of presents and decided to replace my HP hw6510 with HTC P3300 “Artemis”. I know it runs Windows, but it is the best as of today - plus I got there WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and it is small and coool.

In the office I was gifted with state of the art Logitech webcam known as QuickCam Ultra Vision, perhaps the best desktop webcam available in the market. Simply love the gift. This one will replace my plainvanilla Quickcam that I have right now. I hope I will be able to use this new cam with Linux without much trouble.

Apart from these I am also getting Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 3000, from a person I love dearly. This new combo will replace my older Logitech Cordless Desktop MX.

Now all I need is new dual-core computer, packed with the latest and the greatest :)

This is coming out to be really nice when I see all the new tech stuff I am going to start the new year with.

I wish everyone a very Happy New Year.

Decided to get myself couple of new gadgets. Have to mention that I am satisfied with the products.