Archive for the ‘windows mobile 6.5’ Category

Acer neoTouch S200 reviewed, not recommended

After what seemed like a full lifetime of waiting, Acer’s recently-launched neoTouch S200 is finally making its way into some reviewing hands. The fine young cannibals over at Phone Arena have just given it the head to toe treatment, and we have to say, we’re glad they’ve done the dirty work for us. This WinMo 6.5 handset, according to their impressions, seems to be a not fully baked affair — sluggishness and random crashing are both reported, as is a rather serious sounding call quality issue. The battery also seems to be inadequate for a workday, coming in at around five hours. Overall, the phone suffers from software optimization problems more than hardware issues. The one ray of light in all this is of course that 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU, which can multitask and handle several things at once without flinching — but it’s rather hard to get pumped about it in the face of all that sadness. Hit the read link for the full, exhaustive review.

Filed under: Cellphones

Acer neoTouch S200 reviewed, not recommended originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC Tilt2 now available on AT&T

Those looking for a slightly more QWERTY-equipped WinMo 6.5 device for AT&T than the HTC Pure need look no further than its stablemate, the Tilt2, now that it’s officially available to all comers. The carrier’s second model to use Microsoft’s latest and greatest cut of Windows Mobile stays pretty true to its Touch Pro2 roots, offering an industrial-strength full duplex speakerphone, 3.2 megapixel cam, WVGA tilt-up display, and of course, that five-row QWERTY keyboard that makes banging out long emails and extended MMS tirades just a little more tolerable. Interest parties should come bearing gifts and plenty of cash, because it’ll run $349.99 on contract before a $50 mail-in rebate.

[Via PhoneDog]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC Tilt2 now available on AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 02:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Six Things I Actually Like About Windows Mobile [Windows Mobile]

Windows Mobile 6.5 was a failure of imagination, design, and foresight. I’ve covered this, rather adamantly! But while the new version didn’t add that much—that was the problem—there are some things I still genuinely like about Windows Mobile.

The Browsers: Even if the latest version of Mobile IE isn’t spectacular, Window Mobile is still a great OS for browsing the web. Opera Mobile, now in 9.7 beta, renders pages about as well as the best WebKit browsers on the iPhone, Android, and the Pre, and promises compressed rendering for faster pageloads, as well as some Flash support. Skyfire can play back Flash videos without a hiccup. You don’t have these kinds of options anywhere else, at least for now. Bolt and Opera Mini both optimize the hell out of your pages, helping them load amazingly quick.

The Hardware: I’ve seen my fair share of clunky Windows Mobile hardware. I’ve also seen the OS powering some of the most spectacular handsets in the world, like the Toshiba TG01. Even disregarding the really sexy stuff, the average customer has a lot to choose from, from touchscreen-only devices to sliding QWERTY phones to candybar-style messaging devices. And given some of the latest from HTC, there’s plenty more to come.

: There aren’t a whole lot of fans of the stock Window Mobile interface. It feels old, to put it gently. Handset manufacturers do all kinds of interesting stuff with alternative interfaces, skinning Windows Mobile until you can barely recognize it. This keeps things interesting, but so do the fantastic third-party shells like SBP Mobile Shell and PointUI Home 2, which anyone can install. These are total transformations you can apply in a matter of seconds, which is basically unique to WinMo.

Tethering: We’ve been grousing about the lack of tethering on other platforms for a long, long time. All the while, Windows Mobile has had a dedicated settings panel for enabling tethering built right in. [Pic via MakeTechEasier]

Infinite tweaking: Over the last few years, hobbyists have reached deeper into Windows Mobile’s guts that it seems Microsoft has, and they’ve come up with some impressive stuff. Just about anything can be changed swapped out or customized. Want a new onscreen keyboard? A different system font? A entirely new homescreen layout? Deep changes to power management, processor control or memory allocation? Automatic orientation controls for all apps? Voice controls? It’s all just a matter of installing a .CAB file or two.

Open apps: This is a double-edged sword. Windows Mobile’s new Marketplace doesn’t have a whole lot to offer yet, and without a good centralized source, it can be a pain to find apps, to find out if they’re compatible, and to get a decent deal. That said, there is literally nobody between you and your apps. If someone wants to make a VoIP app that uses your carrier’s network, they can do that. If they want to stream live video over the air, they can do that, too. You might face a reckoning with your carrier, but that’s fine: at least it was you choice.

HTC HD2 turns up in purported T-Mobile USA materials

We’ve already had some indication that HTC’s take on Windows Mobile 6.5, the HD2, would be headed to T-Mobile UK, and heard straight from HTC itself that the phone would indeed be headed to the US in next year, but it looks like we may now have one more key piece of the puzzle. If that slide pictured above is authentic as it’s purported to be, it looks like the smartphone will be heading to none other than T-Mobile USA, and presumably sometime in that “early 2010″ period HTC mentioned. Of course, this slide noticeably doesn’t make mention of Windows Mobile at all, so the phone in question could also conceivably be HTC’s rumored Android-based Dragon handset — or… not.

[Via Brighthand]

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC HD2 turns up in purported T-Mobile USA materials originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Switched On: Microsoft’s touchy subjects

Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

As CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates would often talk about his dream of “information at your fingertips.” The company he co-founded, though, is now taking literal steps toward that goal. By the end of the month, Microsoft will have released three new devices or platforms that embrace or extend touchscreen support — but the impact touch will have on each varies significantly by their legacy, usage, and manufacturers.

Windows has long had touchscreen support. Such support, in fact, was the basis of the Tablet Edition of Windows XP, and Tablet PCs were proclaimed to be the future of notebooks. Early iterations were larger and thicker keyboard-lacking slates much like the new Archos 9pctablet. But this was before rampant Web browsing, streaming video, casual games and electronic books — all of which now provide relevance for a new generation of touchscreen PCs as content-consumption devices.

Continue reading Switched On: Microsoft’s touchy subjects

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video, Tablet PCs

Switched On: Microsoft’s touchy subjects originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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