That Guy's Windows Mobile Test Drive

WiFi tethering is go

2011-08-26T19:41:00.001-07:00

This just in Windows phone Mango WILL HAVE WIFI HOTSPOT AVAILABLE!!!! This means my new HP touchpad i bought (for 99.99 via theSource.ca) will be able to use my phones 3g connection for web browsing while I'm on the bus!
Posted with BloghuB for Windows Phone 7

What was I doing again?

2011-07-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

No more will we have to wait for the Zombies game to load after responding to a text message! App switching is here! Well almost, its coming in Mango.

All you have to do is hold down the back arrow on your device and up pops the task switcher. This lets you switch back to something you were doing up to FIVE apps ago. It will be a joyous occasion when that finally hits.

Imagine you're playing a game, and you get a text message with a link to a hilarious youtube video. Before Mango you had the choice to either watch it now then have to wait for the game to load and possibly lose your place or wait until you're done. Once Mango arrives you'll be able to go and watch that video, share that video to facebook, send a text back to your friend saying how you liked the part where the guy got hit in the nuts with a pogo stick and then jump right back into your game with no loading!

How sweet is THAT!

Bing!

2011-07-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

Well the title says it all! Bing is getting some great improvements in Mango! We'll get access to "Bing Vision", "Bing Audio", Turn by turn voice navigation and the new "Bing indoor maps"!

Bing vision is kind of neat, it's a lot like google goggles if anyone who reads this blog has played with that. it will let us scan bar codes, QR codes and Microsoft Tags. It will let us take a picture of a DVD, or book, or movie poster and then search Bing for things that relate to said object (like buying it on amazon).

Bing audio is a bit more of a mystery from what people can tell it's like Shazaam or Midomi and you hold your phone near a speaker and it tells you the song that's playing. Wonder if it will tie in with the Zune marketplace so you can find a song then download that song right from inside Bing. That would be swell.

Turn by turn voice navigation for Bing maps will be mighty handy. Don't think I need to go into too much detail here I'm sure everyone has seen a GPS before.

Finally there's the new Bing indoor maps. Ever go to a mall and wander around in circles about five or six times wondering where the hell EB Games is? No more! Bing fixes this (at least in the states at the moment, nothing good ever makes it up here to canada) You will be able to pull up an indoor map of most shopping centers complete with where the different stores are. That's pretty damn cool.

More power to the Peoples hub!

2011-07-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

Mangos done it! Its finally done it! You know in the future... The Peoples hub is good now! Its not just a list and a Facebook status list now (read Now as 'When mango launches')

The peoples hub is getting a LOT of work done to it, a whole series of improvements and face lifts. So much so even Michael Jackson would be jealous! First off, Twitter is now there so you get to see something other then just Facebook statuses!

Next on the Awesome List is the option for groups! You can create groups of contacts in the peoples hub now, Friends, Coworkers, Family, friends of mine who own Windows Phones, Whatever you want. What this new group lets you do is have a single place to check Facebook, Windows live and Twitter updates of all of the people in the group in a single "Whats new" window. It has its on area of the hub for Pictures the group has posted to Windows live and Facebook. Lastly you can see updates, peoples check-ins, missed calls (voicemail too), texts, and emails from these people.

Cool stuff!

Know what else they fixed? Hint its similar.....

The Me hub! It now actually has a purpose now! Basically it has all the features of a group, but just you're there. So its an amalgamated area for missed calls, texts, emails, check ins... You can set your IM status so people can chat at you from MSN or Facebook. You can see all your Facebook notifications so you can clue in when Someones posted a comment on a photo of yours.

Actually www.winrumours.com has a very nice video showing all of the above right... Here

App list

2011-07-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

Just a tiny feature added but a great one. If your app list is getting very long (much like mine) Mango makes launching the app you're actually looking for so much easier. Once you get over 45 apps, the app list to the right of your home page will actually get the little letter headers like in the people hub. You know that thing where you tap a letter, it shows you the alphabet, you choose "s" and suddenly you're looking at Sam, Sandy, Sarah, Sue, etc? So launching BloghuB I just need hit the B and bingo bango bongo its there!

Also they're adding a search feature so if I have an exorbitantly high number of apps and don't want to have to scroll through my WHOLE "b" section I need only type the first few letters of the app I'm after and, guess what...

..

.

no really guess...

Yes! You're right! It shows you the app you're after and you can tap to launch! You know, just like the iPhones spotlight search, or vista/windows 7's "Start Bar". Who cares who had it first all that matters is we have it now.. Erm.. Will have it in September? October? Whenever this damned update actually goes live. Man do I want that to be tommorow...

Messaging hub changes!

2011-07-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

As you might have guessed from yesterdays blog post. Today's mango feature is the new improved and very shiny Messages hub! Now when you go to the messages hub and start a conversation with someone you now have the added options of messaging them over MSN if they're online there. Over Facebook chat, if they happen to be on Facebook, or if they're offline on both MSN and Facebook (they might be dead if that's the case with my friends) all messages sent will instead be sent as text messages! If they suddenly come back online on either service without having to do anything any of your messages will go to these instead!

The neat thing here is you get to keep the WHOLE conversation (not just snippets that happened to be the texting part) in your threaded messaging hub all together. The only thing I'm confused about is if they are both online on Facebook and on MSN at the same time I'm assuming that we will have a choice of WHICH to message them on and don't spam them from both sides at once (now doesn't that sound unpleasant.... )

Man hubs rock don't they?

Mango Feature Rumor:

2011-07-13T16:27:00.000-07:00

For my first micro-blog post, I bring you a feature I'm looking forwards to a fair bit. Developers are gaining access to... something, don't ask me what it is... but what this something means is suddenly VOIP is possible for WP7 apps! Yes, yes this means Skype. Skype has officially announced that it will have a WP7 app available as of the Mango update!

Finally I can save some minutes calling Long distance by Skype'ing instead! Whether or not this means I will have access to Skype text chat from the phone is another matter. If it does turn out that Skype chat is available I sure hope it rolls in with.....

....

... See tommorows update!

Filler Post. Nothing to see here...

2011-07-12T18:53:00.000-07:00

So once again I have run out of things to blog about. All the apps I want I already have and already use and have already reviewed. There have been no new updates since my last "Update Review" so there's nothing to see there. None of you readers have made any suggestions for topics so I've decided to do something that everyone else has already done, talk about mango.

Everywhere you look on the internet (at least everywhere you look while searching for information about Windows Phone 7) you see posts about Mango this, Mango that. So I realized, if you can't beat em, join em! Of course, knowing me, I'll put a BIT of a my own spin on it.

So for the benefit of the new guy I'll start off with the answer to, "What is Mango?". Well first off it's a tasty citrus and is great in smoothies, more importantly though its the code name Microsoft has given to the next major WP7 update. Actually its closer to making it Windows Phone 7.5 (this thing really blows NoDo out of the water). According to Microsoft there are over FIVE HUNDRED new features added. How many exactly will the end user (Read: You) notice? Actually most of them, and this is where my idea kicks in. Each day I will make a Micro-Post about one new feature I've noticed!

Be warned in advance, I'm lazy and forgetful. Days WILL be missed. Also, I have no idea as of yet how long I will continue doing this. It may be 500 posts and go long into the lifespan of Mango or might only be this post and like two or three more. You'll just have to keep coming back to find out!

3

2

1

MISSION START!

App Review: RemoteSuite

2011-06-14T08:33:00.001-07:00

Found another great app for you folks out there in the IT crowd! It's called "RemoteSuite: Ultimate" and it is an RDP client / file sharing / PowerPoint controlling beast.

I have used this app a LOT since finding it and it is now firmly pinned amongst the top few tiles on by home screen. Set up is a snap all you need to do is download the app for your phone and a paired program for any computers you want to connect it with (yes you can save multiple computers) and then set up port forwarding for your router, also don't worry you can choose any port you want so don't think this thing is a huge metasploit issue.

Once all that is done you're free to have at. Use your phone as a mouse, grab some files from one computer and upload it to another, use it to restart your private Minecraft server if you want! This app can do it all including connect to a power term window.

Not bad for for the price of a single Starbucks coffee!
Posted with BloghuB for Windows Phone 7

App Review: Lazytube

2011-05-08T14:55:00.001-07:00

I am greatly sorry dear readers! I just now realized that as of yet I hadn't even so much as mentioned the name of an app that I use close to twenty times a day! Lazytube!!

Lazytube is a YouTube client with a huge plethora of options available to it all for about a buck. The app is laid out in your typical hub style with Search, Featured, Favorites, Subscriptions, Most Viewed, Top Rated, Recently Played and Lazylist sections. The first seven are pretty standard so I won't get too much into them I'm sure you can figure out what they do however the last one, Lazylist, is quite neat. Basically Lazylist is like a combination of Stumble Upon (Google this NOW if you've not heard of stumble upon) and a friend who knows what you like. After looking at a few videos Lazytube will compile a list of videos that are similar to the videos you search for the most. Nine times out of ten they're worth looking at but every program has glitches, I like cats and electronics but I don't want to see a cat get stuck in a washing machine.

Apart from all these features it actually does the basics REALLY well including support for HD streaming even on 3G and lets you log into your normal YouTube account for everything else.

The only things it can't do that I wish it could was check YouTube messages, play audio back through A2DP, and share things to Facebook.

If you like watching video clips of random things or are subscribed to someone like Philip DeFranco on YouTube (check him out he's hilarious) this app is for you!
Posted with BloghuB for Windows Phone 7

Game Review: Praetor

2011-05-06T21:54:00.001-07:00

Bored of Tetris clones and card games? Fan of strategy board games and have a craving for some pirate slaying, gnome smashing, dragon feeding fun? Go download Praetor!

Praetor is a strategy game mixed with some elements of deck building games like Magic the Gathering made by Random Software. You play as a SRoman general named Scipio (or whatever else you want) who's sent to invade some island only to be ship wrecked on arrival.

The game is a turn based strategy game on a hex grid where you're pitted against various enemies with different abilities. Each unit you can play has a different amount of speed, deals different damage, and has different amounts of both armor and health. However things get a wee bit more complicated as you encounter wolves which can attack twice a turn or Hastatus or Triarius which get tougher and hit harder the more tiles you have next to eachother in phalanx or Golems which stun people.... The list goes on.

As an added element you have other non-creature tiles you can play like Javelin which hits a creature that's within at most two squares of one of your troops or Campsite which gives you one more energy (used for "casting" or pretty much everything else like moving and fighting) for each of your troops next to it but can be destroyed if your opponent can get near it.

All in all it's a very good game and I am eagerly awaiting the next expansion. Best dollar I've spent in a long time. I suggest you get it!
Posted with BloghuB for Windows Phone 7
Search Engine Submission - AddMe

App Review: FIM

2011-05-05T14:15:00.001-07:00

Just a quick review here while I'm on break at work here. Today I found a scary good Facebook messenger app known as FIM and its free to boot!

FIM has toast support so even if you're in another app or closed FIM you'll get a message at the top of your screen just like someone texted you and tapping this notification it will jump you into FIM and straight to the message. Also its one of the few apps I've seen that have actual live tile support and will show you how many messages await you.

Last but not least (quite possibly the coolest feature really). FIM can run in the background even when your phone is locked and you're waiting in an app (Like a match of Praetor)!!! It also chimes to let you know what's up.

Also did I mention it's free?

One of these days I'll get around to putting app tag pictures on this blog so you can jump straight to downloading but for now you'll have to use marketplace search.
Posted with

App Review: Project Emporia

2011-04-29T20:32:00.001-07:00

Ever get tired of scrolling through Google news for something you actually care about? Have a few different topics you like to stay informed on but really don't care what Charlie Sheen is up to? Have I ever got an app for you! It's called, "Project Emporia" and its a news reader app for Windows Phone 7.

Emporia lets you save a couple different (or if you're like me a lot of) topics then feeds you any news or interesting tidbits of info including blog posts that pertain to said topic.

Find an article you really like and emporia has a couple things you can do with it. First off you can save it so no matter how long ago you read it it's on your phone for you to show your friends, your coworkers, your dog or the waitress at that club you like. Also if you have a twitter account you can tweet about it right from the app! Living in the dark ages and don't have a twitter account? No worries! So long as you gave an email account synched with your phone (you've done THAT right?) you can email a link to the article to someone you know... Or don't know and can guess at an email address.

All in all its pretty snazzy and seems really polished. The only real thing I see it missing is the option to share via Facebook. That would be swell.

Go get it!

Posted with BloghuB for Windows Phone 7
Search Engine Submission - AddMe

Update Review: NoDo

2011-04-28T17:29:00.001-07:00

Once again Microsoft has given me a reason to come back and shout out my love of the OS to the blogosphere. Nodo has arrived for my HD7 on bell (a week or two ago but I'm a lazy blogger) and is chalk full of great features!

First thing that comes to mind is that copy and paste is here! It's really here! Really! For real! Also its a lot smoother then it was on my old WM6.5 device Microsoft really came through on that one.

Next best (at least for all of us gamers) is a boost in loading speed while resuming apps, particularly apps that are heavy in graphics. No more waiting two minutes to resume Zombies after my coworker sets the phone down without telling me it's my turn.

Then theres the generic bug fixes and improvments on both search and the marketplace. Still have issues with bluetooth headphones not working with videos though. Seriously Microsoft if you read this FIX THIS it's so annoying when someone sends me a link to a youtube video on the bus and suddenly my phones making loud noises and my headphones seem to suddenly stop existing.

All in all I'm very pleased with the update and am still in love with the OS. Cant wait until mango ships! /happydance!

Posted with <a href="http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=a1303275-51f7-df11-9264-00237de2db9e">BloghuB </a>for Windows Phone 7

Gaming on the HD7

2011-03-06T10:22:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, guess I lied about the fast and plentiful updates, this phone has been so amazing I haven't found the time to stop playing with it and write a post.

Today I'll be talking about gaming on the HD7. I've been doing a LOT of that lately, mostly on these three games from XBox Live: "The Harvest", "Zombies", and "Ilomilo".

The Harvest is an adventure RPG set in the future. You pick a character type (I'm playing as Scarab and he's a beast at mitigating damage) and off you go to save the human race from an alien invasion of "Harvesters". As you progress you get more special abilities, unlock special characters, find gear and learn how best to destroy everything nearby.

Zombies is a direct copy of the famous board game and is also loads of fun, more so with friends. It's you're basic screw your neighbor, zombie killing, survival horror/comedy game... Ok maybe it isn't so basic but it's still a barrel of laughs when you play "Your shoe's untied" Five squares from the escape helicopter.

And lastly but not leastly (leastly?) have "ilomilo" a puzzle game where you try and reunite the two friends Ilo dand Milo. Move block defy gravity, operate catapults, find more friends and more. The greatest thing is how immersive and addicting this game is, you use your accelerometer to look around corners or over ledges so playing this game you will find yourself pointing your phone around much like your parents and your old Sega controllers while playing Road Rash...Or maybe that's just me...

Moral of the story? GAME ON!

Posted with
Search Engine Submission - AddMe

App Review: BloghuB

2011-02-18T21:52:00.001-08:00

Hey there! I figured for my first official app review what better app then then the one I'll be using from now on for all my blogging on the go, BloghuB!

Despite only having played with this app for a short while I feel myself falling in love! It has a few glaring issues like no autosave (so if I back out to main menu to respond to a text or someone calls me I lose the whole post... Which by the way sucks this is the third time trying to post this) but has plenty of great features.

Lets start with formatting. This app gives you all the basics, bold, underline and italicize work as expected even with multiple options on at once. It has plenty of choices for font size from big to littleand lets you change bothfontcolor and highlightcolor.

You can align left

You can align center

You can even align right

It has a dedicated link button and you can snap a photo and add it right from the app... but apparently it doesn't work.... At least with blogger...

If you blog a lot or even a little grab this one!

It's here! It's finally here!

2011-02-17T08:26:00.000-08:00

My HTC HD7 has finally arrived and I am so far loving it the UI is super responsive, the web browser is nice and snappy and pinch to zoom is SO FLUID it's unbelievable! I'll get into some more indepth reviews later on but for now theres just a couple things I wanna say I love...

1) Wireless sync with Zune software, no need to plug it into my comp to sync which, with my limited USB slots, is one hell of a boon no more need to unplug my printer to put media on my phone.

2) The super LCD screen is quite frankly gorgeous. Really crisp and clear with vibrant color, not quite as high contrast ratio as my friends Galaxy S's SAMOLED screen but its a huge leap past the standard amoled on my old Omnia I8000.

3) Xbox Live support - Havn't gone too in depth into this yet but so far its been useful was playing with my phone when I noticed somone on Live wanted me to join them in Black Ops, just one more way the phone is described as a "Social genius"

4) The peoples hub. I know android has this too but coming from an iphone and WM6.5 it has brought a smile to my face almost every time I pick up my phone. Have my girlfriend and friends Facebook pages on my homepage who post a LOT being able to see the comment and post on it without having to launch a dedicated app is wonderful.

Anyways, I'll leave the rest for later! Off to enjoy my phone!

And we're back!

2011-02-13T15:56:00.000-08:00

Guess what faithful readers who have most likely forgotten about this blog, I am back and with exciting news! I'm transforming this blog from its current state into a blog devoted to the new Windows Phone 7 OS!

I know you guys are going to be sad about the lack of updates for WM6.5 and of course my Omnia II but... well.. seeing as that's now an outdated phone and a discontinued OS I've gone ahead and ordered an HTC HD7 from Bell Canada and am EAGERLY awaiting its arrival! Once it gets here be sure to expect (at least until I get bored again) more posts about useful tips and tricks and many reviews!

The Phone is due to arrive sometime next week so hang in there!

Sorry about the wait cough

2010-05-16T21:37:00.000-07:00

Two months later and I'm STILL loving my Omnia II. I apologize for the giant lapse in posts as I've been busy with work and social life and the blog kinda faded away into the back of my mind for awhile. Needless to say in the time I've been gone I've found some neat things to share with you! Before I start though, I'd just like to say thank you to the two people who commented, love to see that people find what I write interesting. Always a bonus.

First off, to answer the comments: Allreader still works great in winmo 6.5 I've not had any issues with it myself and am currently reading "A Song for Arbonne" by Guy Gavriel Kay. So far, so good. As for your comment about divx playback, I'll be the first to admit I'm not much of a videophile, and am not sure how to go about finding out the bitrate for the videos on my phone. Max resolution though is 800x600 as thats the cap of the display itself which on a small screen is still brilliantly crisp unless standing in direct sunlight then the reflective screen is kind of lack luster...

For the other commenter I did some research as I myself have voice mail included in my bundle with bell and haven't had the need for an answering machine app and came up with iSecretary which seems to be rather full featured from what I can see Only used it once with a test call from myself but worked like a charm, not quite voice mail quality but not bad.

As for things I've found and started using a lot for myself, I've grabbed Skyfire browser, YouTubeplay, PDAcraft Paint and Windows Media Center Remote.

Skyfire so far is an awesome browser if you're on WiFi as it gives you a fully rendered webpage and pretends you're a desktop, this browser will DESTROY your data usage if you aren't careful. It has full Java and flash support (with the correct updates downloaded for winmo 6.5, easily available on a quick google search) and is amazing for browsing those pages that require you to "mouse-over" to get to certain menus. Also Skyfire supports "Save Target as" and "Save Picture As". That is a VERY useful feature to have on a mobile browser, I've not found a way to do that with either Internet Explorer or Opera, but I may just be missing something so don't hold me to those two missing that feature.

YouTubePlay is also a very useful app that I use all the time it allows you to browse and view YouTube videos quickly and easily in its own app non-Dependant on a secondary web browser like the "YouTube" app that comes shipped with the phone. It also allows for the download of said YouTube videos and can launch previously saved videos from inside itself without having to switch to your media player. Now the player itself is missing some major features like the ability to seek or rewind. As an ADDED bonus youtubeplay can extract the audio of a YouTube video as an MP3 file and save it to your phone (music videos anyone?).

PDAcraft Paint I won't bother giving a full paragraph review as its just a simple MSPaint port. But it can draw circles, use fill and spray can and all your oldies. Yay for MSPaint ports!

The last app I've downloaded, Windows Media Center Remote I've only had since yesterday morning and as of yet haven't been able to get it to work correctly but from the forums where I snagged the program people say it does indeed work once you've got it properly configured and theres reports that yes it does work with both Winmo 6.5 and the Omnia II so I'm holding out hope for it and will keep poking at it. It's supposed to be able to allow you to pause, play, rewind, skip and control volume etc of any computer running windows media center on your network, for example, my Media Center PC. I can get it to connect and it brings up my keys but crashes promptly as soon as I touch any button.

Anyways, I encourage you to KEEP COMMENTING I may take awhile to get back to you but I SWEAR I will eventually. Thanks for reading and I guess thats all for now. Now I'm off to fiddling with that remote app. Hope this works.

Nimbuzz

2010-03-30T21:44:00.000-07:00

Ever tire of switching between ICQ, MSN, AIM, Facebook, Google Chat and umpteen other chat clients to chat with your vast swarm of adoring fans? No? Hire about switching between just a couple to chat with friends too stubborn to switch to the more popular client? If either of the above ever happen to you I have an app you'll LOVE!

Enter Nimbuzz, this app lets you simultaneously chat between close to thirty different chat programs all through one client. Once installed simply register a new account with Nimbuzz (doable from within the app) and log into each of the clients you wish for Nimbuzz to remember and your set! Next time you go to chat just log into your new Nimbuzz account and it will automatically connect to all your chat clients at once. Happy chatting.

Oh! Market!

2010-03-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

It's here it's finally happened! FreewarePC released an app-store styled app! Check it out it's called "O!Market" (link and photos at bottom of page) This is one of the smoothest marketplace apps I have ever seen. Every app is free and it runs a one touch download and install engine keeping things simple. As an added bonus this thing will keep track of what you've installed and let you know if it finds any updates for them.

After playing with O!Market for awhile I've found some neat and some trivial apps, everyone’s favorite kinds.

For starters lets take a look at PockeTwit a twitter app that lets you post messages as well as photos and links to several micro blogging sites.

Then there’s NeoReader the hundred in one scanner program that can pick up Data Matrix, EAN, UPC, Aztec Codes you name it. It can be a little tricky to aim but is pretty quick when it works.

Waze is also a neat app that expands upon the phones GPS giving full turn by turn instructions and will actually speak street names. Just note Waze requires true GPS not AGPS that some phones use.

Then there is SonarCE. I'm not one hundred percent sure why one needs sonar on their smartphone but now you can just please remember the Omnia us NOT waterproof. Yup.

That’s about all for now thanks for reading and I look forwards to more of your comments!

Note: O!Market download at This site
Screenshots later.

Change of Pace

2010-03-22T21:44:00.000-07:00

Well faithful readers I have a quick announcement to make. This post was a lot harder to write then the last few weeks as my posts catch up to my use. I've covered multi tasking, swype, the microsoft office suite, and a bunch of other miscellaneous apps. I realized if I kept going with those large block posts I'd quickly run out of apps so I'm changing my layout into three smaller posts a week. One will review a single app and will also include a suggest an app feature where you can show me YOUR favorite apps simply by commenting. The next post will cover something neat you can do with this awesome phone that isn't directly tied to an app as well as any reviews of "Suggest-an-app". The third post each week will be similar to my current posts only fairly shorter. Hopefully this will give you readers out there more chances to read my poorly written posts as well as a direct way for you to influence what gets posted while giving me more wiggle room with how much homework I have to do all at once. So I encourage you all to post your thoughts and give ME something to read every once in a while! Thanks for reading, I'm off to do more research!

Push button; Launch bacon

2010-03-09T15:14:00.001-08:00

Hello again, I'm back, sorry for the late post I've been a little preoccupied as of late as I've just recently found a new game and its been eating up all my free time. If you're at all interested in PC FPS's I highly recommend trying S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Fall of Pripyat.

Now back to the regular theme of this blog! I was digging around in the settings folder of my beloved Omnia and found a wondrous feature, custom hardware buttons. Simply goto start> settings> General settings> Button> Assign a program.

I set my cube button so a tap brings up my Task Switcher, holding it brings up my Task Manager useful if shutting those pesky frozen apps that appear now and again (PocketGBA anyone?) and I also have new hardware hotkeys for my Media Player and Microsoft Word where I do most of my blogging from.

Since this discovery I've more then doubled my productivity with this phone. Having a hardware shortcut to "The Cube" menu was a waste as custom apps don't show up there anyway.

Thanks for reading and once again I encourage you to post your comments, let me know what you think.

Week Two; I'm Lovin It

2010-02-27T09:58:00.000-08:00

Well week two has gone by and I've learned a few more things about this phone. Some are pretty neat and a few are just a bit frustrating.

I'll start with the good and talk about the AMAZING camera this phone has. Originally I just thought, "Ooh, five mega pixel camera! Not too shabby," and left it at that. It's so much more then that! This baby is chalk full of useful features such as smile detection, panoramic, macro focus, and even an "Action" mode where you can point the camera at something moving like a kid playing soccer and whenever the kid happens to pop into focus the camera automatically snaps a photo. I've added a few photos at the bottom of this post showing the clarity of the above mentioned camera.

The camera also has the really neat feature of "Smart reader" mode where you can use it to scan in business cards or even translate a word you snap a picture of into another language! How cool is that!

I've also started using the Mobile Office suite included with the Omnia II. I've been playing with both excel and word a lot these last few days and some of the things they can do are great. Excel is just like the desktop version, charts and all. It also seems to run really smoothly with the occasional hiccup here and there while trying to scroll (they are tiny scroll bars). Word on the other hand is missing a few important features like page breaks and a few other formatting features but you can still do the basics; bold, italicize, underline, all of the align functions work, bulleting, font and color changing etc etc.

Another neat thing I've so quickly grown to love is the ability to install whatever I want! Instead of being bound to the app-store I can go to sites like Freeware Pocket PC, The Microsoft Downloads page, Smartphone Freeware, Windows Mobile 6 Software or the thousands of others like them and grab all the free games, utilities, tools and thing-a-ma-bobs I want!

So far I've installed closed to 30 programs and only one have I paid for. Of those thirty, three are definitely worth a mention. Zenonia is the first I'll mention, the only paid software I've downloaded. The game plays like a cross between Diablo II with its skill tree system and Legend of Zelda (the old school gameboy ones not the newish 3d ones) and has been absorbing MUCH of my time. O2Compass is another great app and it's also free. It gives you a compass to work with so long as your windows mobile phone has a built in digital compass (Hey, don't laugh not very many phones that have a built in compass actually have a way to view said compass out of the box), a spirit level, a flashlight app that works off your cameras "flash" LEDs, and a metal detector... the last one I'm not a hundred percent sure how it works, but it seems pretty accurate. Then theres PHM RegEdit, which is a Registry Editor, 'nuff said there.

This isn't a super phone however as even it has its bugs. Sadly this week the bug once more deals with web browsing. I've found the included opera browser crashes on anything with a large amount of images which bumps me back to using IE. Last week I mentioned despite being single touch not having to use clumsy safari seemed to balance that, I am now missing multi touch so hard. At least in opera there was a dropdown menu to do most of the things you could with multi touch just by tapping and holding on the screen for a couple seconds. This sort of exists in IE but things like selection mode and zoom can only be accessed via the menu at the bottom of screen which takes about five seconds to navigate. That time adds up when copying quotes from a website.

I almost forgot to mention that yesterday I actually had to reboot my phone as it was starting to slow down... Strange that even windows phones have that issue. For future reference however, that issue can be side-stepped via using task manager to close the inevitable avalanche of processes and keeping track of what's running in the background so the crash was kind of my fault. What can ya do?

At the end of week two I am still VERY thrilled over the Omnia and don't think I'll be thinking of changing back to an iPhone any time soon.

Notes: Below are some of the example pictures mentioned above
Lilly (fullsize)
Lilly (small)

Mimir (fullsize)
Mimir (small)

Panorama (The girl at the center was moving during the shot so shes a little blurred, that was my bad didn't give anyone a heads up about the shot)

Week One; "So Far So Neat"

2010-02-20T08:32:00.000-08:00

I have now had my new Omnia II a full week and thus far is been pretty bloody sweet. I've been watching full movies and TV shows on the high resolution screen on my way into work each day and at no point did I have to worry about converting it into itunes!

My next big source of happyness is the ability to multi task, and I don't just mean listening to tunes whilst typing a text. I finally have the ability to MINIMIZE! Right now for example I am on MSN with someone in one window, typing this in another, while offspring is playing in my ears.

The third major happy I have with this phone is ease of obtaining software. It aint no app store but I have access to the microsoft marketplace as well as a HUGE host of websites that host WM files some of which are damn near awesome for example the swype text program. Now my phone isn't with verizon so it didn't ship with this piece of heaven so I had to*cough*do something to fix that.... that app makes typing a breeze. This whole entry was done through my phone via swype and without it I probably never would have even attempted it, I know I would never of dreamed of blogging via my old phone.

Now on to the cons. First off, this website is SO not mobile friendly. It doesn't seem to want to scroll down as I type but that has nothing to do about the phone or windows mobile. Okay, so far at the end of week one the only complaints about either the phone or WM6.5 was the lack of native voice command and multi touch. Voice is fixed quickly by buying voicecommand from market place. Single touch is just a bit more clumsy then multi touch for web browsing but at least I can choose between using internet explorer, firefox and opera.

Notes: (http://www.swypeinc.com) for more info about swype

Hey guys I just got a great idea! I'll make a blog!

2010-02-20T08:20:00.000-08:00

Hello future valued readers, welcome to my blog. I recently decided to take the plunge and switched from the iphone to the Omnia II running windows mobile 6.5 and this blog is here to document my adventure. I apologize in advance for my poor writing skills.