If your a Sling user then they have just released some interesting information on a forthcoming release for the iPhone. According to Sling, "Ever since the Apple iPhone hit the market, we’ve been receiving inquiries as to when we’ll have a version of SlingPlayer Mobile for the platform. To date we’ve only expressed our desire to support the platform when it is possible to do so. But with the Apple WWDC kicking off this week, we’re now ready to show off a bit of what we’ve done.
We have been working hard behind the scenes and have some great news to share. Starting very soon we will be getting our hands on some devices to produce our own reviews. We have already got a Palm Centro which we are writing a review and it will be up very shortly but soon we will also start to receive more and more devices and accessories to review. This is a great result for the site and we can guarantee one thing, all our reviews will be our honest opinion.
On top of this we have just about completed the look of the site and we have added an iPhone web icon so if you bookmark us with your iPhone it now has a much better look and we have a tab / bookmark icon too.
HTC Touch Diamond review (Part 3) – “Touch-flo 3D”
One thing that sets the HTC Touch Diamond apart from other Windows Mobile devices is the unique Touch-Flo 3D user interface. This builds upon the success HTC had with the original Touch and later the Touch Dual and Touch Cruise and integrates further into the Windows Mobile OS.
Lets take a closer look at the Touch-Flo 3D interface by examining each screen in turn. Note that I’ve reduced the size of the screen shots by 50%.
Home Screen
This screen effectively replaces the Today screen and shows you the date, time and Operator name. You’ll also see that it tells you when your alarm is set for, has a link to call history and shows you the next event in your diary. Unlike the today screen this page wont show you whether or not you have unread email or SMS on the main page but if you look to the bottom the number of unread emails is shown in a green circle over the email button.
People
This tab allows you to add your favourite people or contacts to a roladex style system that lets you thumb through your contacts if your contact has a photograph associated with it then it will be displayed here, otherwise you get to choose what image to display instead.
Messages
This tab provides you with a preview of your text messages and gives you quick access to compose a new text message.
The mail page is where you access your email accounts. As you can see in the image below you get a preview of the last message in your inbox on the screen. The icons down the side denote the three email accounts I have configured and the icon at the top starts a new email message. Buttons at the bottom of the screen allow you go to the inbox for the choosen account or, from the menu button, send/receive, switch accounts or start a new message.
Internet
The internet page is pretty self explanatory with a link to the web browser (Opera 9.5) and the excellent YouTube client.
Photos and Videos
The photos and videos page lets you browse through any photos you have stored on your device providing they are in the My Documents/My Pictures folder. You can scroll though your photos by swiping your finget up and down on the page then you can tap on the image to bring it up full screen. Once you have the image fullscreen you can zoom in and out by spinning your finger around the dpad and you can move the picture around the screen by dragging it.
On this page you also have an icon to start the camera in either still or video mode. At the bottom of the screen you have buttons to open the album, which gives you a typical preview of images or you can start a slideshow of the currently displayed images.
Music
The music page give you direct access to the music files saved on your phone so there is no need to go into media player, you can select songs or whole albums to listen to from this page and you even get to see the album art for your files if they have them.
You navigate through stored music on this page in much the same way as you would an iPod or iTunes, by swiping your finger across the screen. Buttons at the bottom get you in to your media library or the menu allows you to access controls for repeat, shuffle, track properties, playlist and audio booster.
Weather
Once again this page it pretty self explanatory. The main image tells you what the weather is like today (there are some nice animations to be seen here) with other buttons offering 5 day forecast and the menu allows you to add/remove locations, change the temperature units and change how the information is updated.
Settings
The settings page does what it says on the tin. From here you can sync with ActiveSync, edit the sound settings, alter the background image or wallpaper, open up Comm Manager or download updated weather information. Each of the pages accessed from here are also HTC customised pages that are very easy to use and navigate.
Programs
The last of the main touch-flo 3D pages is the Programs tab. Here you can add shortcuts to the programs that you most commonly use. You can add up to 18 shortcuts to this list and you can easily add or remove them as you see fit.
Comm Manager
Finally I’m going to briefly mention Comm Manager. This is yet another example of how HTC have done away with the standard Windows Mobile interface and replaced it with their own customised version. This is a welcome change and shows you at a glance whether the phone is on or off, if your data conection is active or if you have WiFi on. I think that new WM users are going to find these pages a lot easier to use.
I think that’s enough on the Touch-Flo 3D interface for now. This review unit has to go back in just a few more days but fortunately I’m told that my retail unit is on its way. I’ll tell you more about the retail version as soon as it arrives and I’ll let you know what the differences are, if indeed there are any!
Review by: Matt
See Part 1 of the review.
See Part 2 of the review.
[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, orange, HTC, HTC Touch Diamond]
The Windows Mobile Team Blog have posted an interesting article explaining how to customise the sliding panel seen on all Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone) phones. Jorge Peraza is a Developer on the Windows Mobile team that was responsible for the new “Sliding Panel” home screen in Windows Mobile 6.1.
Get iPhone-style internet browsing on your Pocket PC. TouchBrowser lets you control everything using only your fingers. You can type using the large keyboard, glide through web content and scroll through pages with a flick, with full page view.
Tired of Pocket Internet Explorer? Forget about the stylus, the tiny scrollbars and the keyhole view of the internet. TouchBrowser gives you the smooth webbrowsing experience of the iPhone, right on your Pocket PC. It lets you scroll pages with animation and iPhone inertia effects for easy reading.
Since starting my review of the HTC Touch Diamond many of you have dropped me a line to ask when you’ll be able to get your hands on your own.
The latest news that I have from HTC is that the Diamond has been delayed for up to two weeks. We’re now looking at a worst case 23rd of June for official UK stock. I say UK stock as I have been told that some UK retailers are selling devices imported from Hong Kong.
The official line from HTC is that any HTC Touch Diamond handsets on sale outside of Hong Kong will be grey market imports from that country. These devices were not ordered directly from HTC or their distributors. It also seems that the devices can’t be registered on htc.com and therefore the warranty will not be honoured.
I’m still hoping to get my retail Diamond early next week but I’ll keep you posted!
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, orange, HTC, HTC Touch Diamond]
Just watched this which I caught over at all about symbian, its an S60 Touch UI demo video with many examples of the UI in action. Good stuff, although dragging down the web browser screen to make the content move up seems counter-intuitive, along with using a stylus, Windows Mobile users want to move away from that so Symbian needs to think more about that one.
One thing that springs to mind here is that all the major players in the smart phone market have really upped their game since the launch of the iPhone. Its great to see the innovations at all the different platforms and love or hate the iPhone you have to say its done all consumers a lot of good. Video after the break.
FlexMail 4 is a full-featured award-winning (2004/2005/2006/2007) Email application that works with your device’s built-in Messaging client to provide the best Exchange and IMAP connectivity available on Windows Mobile! Use FlexMail to improve your ActiveSync or SMS messaging with our multiple signature support, multiple folder searches, and cross-account email copies and moves. Use FlexMail to connect with the best IMAP feature-set on Windows Mobile with easy to configure yet powerful folder settings. Set each folder to download differently, notify of new messages, and get email using PUSH use IMAP IDLE.
It’s easy to take for granted the 3G iPhone’s launch at this point. After all, Steve said it was "coming later this year," as did a number of prominent mobile executives. And then there’s been the barrage of carrier announcements, many in international markets that use UMTS and have zero support for the iPhone as we know it today. But the fact of the matter is we’ve had very little to go on by way of material evidence — until now.
We are playing around with the site layout today so you my see some strange results when you visit, don’t worry all will be back better than normal soon…….we hope
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