Phones

Windows Mobile 6.5 honeycomb UI dropped

When Windows Mobile 6.5 was officially revealed last month at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2009 in Barcelona, it sported the honeycomb Start screen that users couldn’t quite agree on, even when early screenshots began to leak. Apparently, soon after Microsoft started dogfooding Windows Mobile 6.5 and related services internally last week, feedback coming from its employees started coming in, and it wasn’t very positive. This was apparently the final blow, because at MIX09 this week, it has come to light that Microsoft has acted on the negative comments and tweaked the honeycomb interface.

While the layout remains the same and the icons are in the exact same place, they have been enlarged and the actual honeycomb outline (hexagons around each icon) is gone. Furthermore, scrolling up or down no longer means going all the way to the top or all the way to the bottom: the second the finger leaves the screen, scrolling will stop.

The rather blurry screenshot above is actually two screencaps of a video which is filming Loke Uei Tan, Senior Technical Product Manager of the Mobile and Embedded Devices Group in Microsoft, as he uses the new interface during one of the 129 sessions at MIX09. This one was entitled "Windows Mobile 6.5 Overview," and before showing off the changes, Tan says in the video: "The middle screen is what we call the honeycomb interface. Well, this screenshot is a little bit old. We’ve got some feedback from the users that says ‘Hey, wait a minute, this honeycomb UI doesn’t work very well. Let’s change it a little bit.’ So I’ll show you what the new one looks like."

via ars technica

Google enable street view in the UK

Google Maps now allows users to navigate some UK city streets, using photographs taken at a street-level viewpoint. It has been rolling out its Street View service gradually in various countries, starting with the US, since May 2007. Camera-equipped cars began photographing British streets in the summer of 2008.

"Street View has been hugely popular with our users in Europe and worldwide, and we’re thrilled it’s now available in the UK for so many great cities, enabling users to see street-level panoramas of major city roads and look up and print out useful driving directions," Ed Parsons, Google UK’s geospatial technologist, said in a statement.

The full list of UK cities covered by the service includes: London, Edinburgh, Leeds, Bradford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Swansea, York, Newcastle, Dundee, Southampton, Norwich and Scunthorpe. The scope of Street View is limited in some cities, a spokesperson for Google said.

Windows Marketplace for mobile details revealed

Msmobiles have uncovered some interesting information on the upcoming marketplace for mobile. First off this is definitely an application and not a link to a website. Also included are automatic updates of purchased applications, search of applications suitable by device type, payment by credit card or through carrier, access to user ratings and reviews and transfer of applications to a new phone. For the full story visit msmobiles and also take a look at the video from mix09

Capacitive touch is not affordable for Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been talking with Stephen Adler from BusinessWeek, and All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka was a fly on the wall for the event. He paraphrased the chat, which we have below and has answered the big capacitive screen question and a few others. What he has to say is rather surprising and not the answer I wanted to hear, quality and usability should be the driving force not cheap products.

Stephen Adler: Do you care about “touch” on phones? The blogs say you are.

Steve Balmer: Windows Mobile 6.5 has touch on it. The way Apple does touch drives cost. The way they do it on the iPhone is not an inexpensive component. We’ll do it in a way that you can afford to do it on most phones.

Windows Mobile 6.5 Widgets explained

A new blog post over at the Windows Mobile Team Blog has  given us a little more information on the Widget Platform for Windows Mobile 6.5. From the post they tell us:-

For the first time since windows mobile 6 shipped we are expanding our development story to make easier and more accessible writing applications that not only look great but also consume cloud services to bring a portable chunk of the web to our mobile devices.

A good way to think of a Windows Mobile Widget is as a “Portable chunk of the web” or just basically a rich internet application.  Widgets are written using all the web technologies we know and love (HTML, CSS, AJAX, JavaScript) and, since they are powered under the covers by our new internet browser, they have full access to flash and other ActiveX controls available on the device (Like MediaPlayer).

The interesting thing about our Widget Platform is that it allows them to look and feel, to the end user, as a normal standalone application does; they have their own start menu icon, they show up as an individual apps in task manager and, most importantly, they have full control of the SK menu bar as any other application would.

You can read the full post over at the Windows Mobile Team Blog

Palm Pre to be assembled by Chi Mei Communications

According to Digitimes, the Palm Pre will be manufactured by Chi Mei Communication Systems. Taiwan-based Chi Mei Communication Systems will undertake OEM production of the Palm Pre, Palm’s next-generation smartphone that will be launched soon. Chi Mei is likely to source handset FPCBs from fellow suppliers, including Career Technology, Ichia Technologies and Flexium Interconnect, with shipments expected to begin in March at the earliest, indicated the sources.

On another note, the recent Palm and Sprint Webinar is now available for your viewing pleasure although it doesn’t reveal anything that we didn’t already know. The video is after the break.

iPhone software 3.0 video walkthrough

After all the excitement of yesterdays iPhone 3.0 announcements, Engadget have got a copy of the Beta software which was released for developers and put together a walkthrough of some of the new features. Check out the video after the break and see what will be coming in the summer. Lets be honest, its an interesting video but just makes you wish it was summer already.

HTC plans three Android handsets this year

HTC has announced plans to roll out three new handsets this year using Google’s Android operating system.

Peter Chou, chief executive and co-founder of HTC, told delegates at the Merrill Lynch Technology Conference in Taipei that his company is planning to release at least three Android handsets, one of which he described as a " second-generation smartphone".

The Android-powered HTC Magic was launched at Mobile World Congress in February, and the new handsets are widely expected to become available towards the end of this year in time for the lucrative last quarter.

Chou also said that the company will produce 10 new smartphones before the year’s end.

Pocket Informant for iPhone is now available

So the highly anticipated Pocket Informant application is now available in the App Store, we have just had emailed confirmation. Full product description after the break with screenshots. From the Press Release:-

With over eight years of mobile calendaring experience, we have built simply the best personal information manager available on the iPhone. We are excited to bring Pocket Informant to the iPhone and version 1.0 is just the beginning of a much larger vision we have for this product. Take a moment to look over what we have delivered in this release and we’re just getting started.

Third time lucky

Three years on and Apple have done the unthinkable, added cut and paste to the iPhone OS. Some, as they read this, are probably thinking “thank God!” This is one addition that puts the iPhone back at the top of the heap and nearly every iPhone user will be ecstatic their Windows Mobile buddies shall ridicule  them no more.