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ROUNDUP: Bluetooth remote control (AVRCP) compatible media players

Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) is a very nice feature of Bluetooth. Accessible on Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP)-capable Bluetooth Hi-Fi stereo headphones, they allow for remote controlling your media player on the Pocket PC: going straight to the next or back to the previous song or pause/resume or stop/restart the current one.
Now that I’m working on a big roundup of Bluetooth Hi-Fi stereo headphones, I’ve also thoroughly scrutinized the AVRCP capabilities of current Pocket PC multimedia players. In this article (which will be followed a lot of similar articles discussing AVCRP (and, naturally, A2DP) compliance of different stereo BT headphones), I elaborate on what you need to know about remote controlling your Pocket PC-based media player from the Plantronics Pulsar 590A stereo headset.
Unfortunately, current headsets are far from being compatible with all multimedia players and Pocket PC's. There are several multimedia players and Pocket PC's (more precisely, specific Bluetooth stack / A2DP / AVCRP implementations) not compatible with the Pulsar while it's compatible with other models and vice versa (for example, the built-in A2DP of the WM5-upgraded 2.01 hx4700 works just great with the 590A while it's almost useless with the Moto HT820). Therefore, what you read here mostly applies to the Pulsar only. Still, if you have (or, plan to purchase) a different model, this article will be really worth reading because it discusses a lot of additional hacks and tips - not only related to the Pulsar headset. For example, in addition to a lot of "which is the best media player I should look for", I also provide some dependable CPU usage statistics (playing a 112 kbps MP3 (Värttinä – Oi Dai / Oi Dai)) so that you will be able to compare the battery usage of each application (with and without the equalizer enabled – it’s only with TCPMP that enabling the equalizer caused some visible CPU usage increase. The CPU usage data was measured on my Pocket Loox 720; with WMP10, on my WM5 hx4700).
The, currently, four remote controllable third-party applications (the built-in Windows Media Player (WMP) is AVRCP-compliant in both version 9 and 10) are as follows:
The free, excellent Mortplayer (current, tested version: 3.31RC6 released slightly over a month ago). Its only downside is the lack for WMA support (the other three alternate clients support WMA.) I also recommend this thread on the AVRCP support of MortPlayer.
The free, also excellent TCPMP (current, tested version: 0.72RC1 released about half a year ago)
Pocket Player 3.0 by Conduits (current, tested version: 3.0 released two weeks ago; no build data available)
The fourth Pocket PC multimedia application to support AVRCP is 40iPlay (current, tested version: 10/01/2006 released two weeks ago), which should be accessible here. If you get a screen with a simple link when you visit the page like this, then, you’re out of luck: your IP address is banned off the site as is the case with many people having tried to access the page. Unfortunately, the developer doesn’t seem to be wanting to remove the ban of, it seems, half of the world (I also recommend this thread on this problem). If you also encounter this problem, I recommend trying it via alternate means; for example, accessing the page via your dial-up / mobile account. It’s via my GPRS account that I access the page.
It’s worth noting that, while 40iPlay runs flawlessly on my considerably older, PXA255-based WM2003 iPAQ 2210, it refuses to work on my (newer, PXA272-based) WM2003SE Pocket Loox 720 complaining about it not having an XScale CPU. This is certainly a bug in the current version; the older versions I’ve tested didn’t have this problem. Unfortunately, the hack PM'ed by FirstLoox forum member androabo (thanks for that!), that is, depressing “?” during loading the program, didn't work either.
Note that I’ve scrutinized the recording capabilities of the application in the Sound Recorder Bible.
I really recommend this media player because
it has one of the lowest CPU usage of all the applications (even slightly lower than that of TCPMP!) and has even in-app CPU speed setting capabilities to further reduce CPU consumption (please read this article (and all the past articles linked from it) for more on this subject: there, I've shown some nice examples of this fact.)
I've played a lot with the latter and found it to be highly useful and reliable. While it doesn't offer automatic scaling (unlike XCPUScalar), it's good to have it built-in on devices that otherwise, "out of the box" don't offer CPU speed setting capabilities (iPAQ hx4700 and 2210, HTC Wizard, Universal etc). It's really easy to use: you just click the Turbo ON/OFF and, then, SET icon when you want to switch back and forth between a downclocked and the original mode.
I've found playing stuff worked pretty OK with the following parameters:
h2210: 100 MHz (via wired headset!)
x51v: 208 MHz (via Widcomm A2DP) - note that the x51v also has a system-level CPU speed setter capabilities, but they're well-buried under the Power applet and you need to click a lot to access it
hx4700: 208 MHz (via A2DP)
Unfortunately, it's unable to underclock the HTC Wizard as can also be seen in this screenshot showing the CPU controls shown on the Wizard (example screenshots of running it on other devices follow: x51v, hx4700 and 2210).
its "Reverb" effect (accessible here) is by far the best I've ever heard on Pocket PC and is indeed industry-strength. I really recommend it - you'll love it
The compatibility / CPU usage can be found here - CLICK THE LINK!
CONTINUED BELOW!

The hacks I've used / referred to:
Adding A2DP (and AVRCP) support to WM2003 devices
WM2003 devices should use the Widcomm 1.6 HP Bluetooth AV upgrade to gain A2DP / AVRCP support. The update is officially only meant for HP iPAQ 5550 devices but it works (to some degree) on other Widcomm-based WM2003 devices too (you can install it on any device – the installer isn’t locked to the particular PPC model). Note that you shouldn’t except miracles: for example, on my HP iPAQ 2210, the sound sometimes stops for 1-2 seconds and, what is worse, it gets a considerably lower, really annoying pitch for some 10-15 seconds before this. That is, it’s highly possible you’ll find it useless on your particular WM2003 model too - it's only certified to work on the 5550.
Adding A2DP (and AVRCP) support to WM2003SE devices
(Widcomm-based) WM2003SE devices should use the hack CAB available here. See this and this for a generic discussion. Note that you shouldn’t try updating your WM2003SE device with the Widcomm 1.6 HP Bluetooth AV upgrade (see the WM2003-related section above) meant for plain WM2003 devices (you can, however, give it a try - it may work - or not). At least on my Pocket Loox 720, it would never stop discovering the services of my Plantronics and, therefore, seems to be useless.
Unfortunately, this update has severe problems: no matter what model it’s installed on, the sound transfer will just stop after some dozens of minutes and can only be restarted by explicitly disabling Bluetooth on the PDA and, then, reconnecting to the headphone (fortunately, no soft reset is necessary). This makes listening to music wirelessly really painful on the long run.
Note that exactly the same applies to the (current) Widcomm version 0.50 “hack” for the WM5-upgraded Dell Axim x50(v) and the entire x51(v) series: from time to time, the sound transfer will just stop and, then, you'll need to reconnect to the headset. (This problem may be only related to the 590A only - I haven't really seen similar bug reports in the above-linked thread - neither have I seen here.) This won't be a problem with most x51(v) users as the built-in A2DP / AVRCP support in AKU2.3 works with most headphones without making it necessary to install the Widcomm BT stack. It seems, however, it doesn't work with the 590A - using the standard, built-in A2DP support of WM5 AKU2, the music transfer to my 590A would stop after some 0.2-0.3 seconds. The case is exactly the same with the AKU 2.0 HTC Universal. Interestingly, FirstLoox owner Duncan hasn't run into this problem with his 590A, using the built-in A2DP support on his F-S N560.
Adding A2DP (and AVRCP) support the HTC Wizard
The HTC Wizard, unfortunately, which doesn’t have support for A2DP at all even in AKU2+ ROMs. Therefore, you'll need the CAB file available here (linked from this post in this thread; to be on the safe side, I’ve also made it available here. Note that it’s highly recommended that you also import this registry file after installing the CAB file (the latter is discussed here, here, here and here).
Note that, even with the registry hack, the sound quality of the Wizard over A2DP has remained considerably worse (it has pretty bad compression effects) than with my other test Pocket PC’s (with all media player apps - this means it's not a media player issue but that of the A2DP hack). Give it a try to see if you can live with the (comparatively) lower sound quality. Furthermore, unlike with the other solutions, after finishing a call, the music doesn’t automatically restart – you must manually press the Pause button on the headset.
Making the Pocket Player AVRCP work under WM5
(Big thanks to PPCT / AximSite forum member Haesslich for summarizing it so that I didn’t need to look / experiment with it up myself much.)
Get the Conduits WMP Plugin Adapter 1.1 from the plug-in page (I really recommend it if you, for example, want to get FLAC or MOD support for your Pocket Player) (direct link to the download).
Unzip gen_wmhost.dll from the archive and put it in the home directory of your installed application ([Storage card name]\Program Files\Conduits\Pocket Player).
Go to Menu/More/Options (in 3.0; in 2.8, Menu/Options) and select the Plugins tab (it’ll be on the far right)
Single-click “Conduits WM Plugin Adapter”, when the context menu comes up, select “Configure”.
Click the “Configure WM plugins to load” button.
Under version 2.8, it’ll ask four questions; under 3.0, two. Click “Yes” in all cases.
Click OK and restart Pocket Player. Now, remote controlling should work OK.
The results shown in the comparison chart
As can clearly be seen, with the Plantronics Pulsar 590A stereo headset, none of the four third-party applications supported it under all OS’es flawlessly. For example,
MortPlayer only supported AVRCP on WM5 devices with the Widcomm BT stack; it won’t work on WM5 devices with the Microsoft BT stack or on any pre-WM5 device
Pocket Player only supported pre-WM5 devices without additional hacking; it doesn’t work under WM5 (with neither of the two most common Bluetooth stacks). Fortunately, with the above-explained "hack" it's working just great on all my WM5 devices.
Finally, the case is just the opposite with TCPMP, which only supports WM2003SE devices, AVRCP-wise. It doesn’t work on WM2003 / WM5 devices at all.
The most AVRCP-compliant multimedia player is iPlay - it worked flawlessly on all my test devices, except for the Widcomm 1.6-based WM2003 ones. In there, previous / next wasn't available.
As can also be seen, you don’t need to be afraid of the CPU usage (battery consumption) figures of these applications. While Pocket Player uses about two times more CPU cycles than TCPMP or iPlay (the latter two without the equalizer), it’s still way better than some other, non-AVRCP-capable (and, therefore, not reviewed) multimedia players like ViTO SoundExplorer, which (at least in older versions) consumed way more CPU time when playing plain MP3 files as can also be seen in these benchmarks. Enabling the really nice Reverb feature on 40iPlay “only” doubles its CPU usage – then, it’s still not much worse than that of players that otherwise consume considerably more CPU cycles even without any DSP’s or equalizers enabled (MortPlayer, Pocket Player). That is, if you need the reverb effect (give it a try – it’s really cool), you can safely enable it.
N.B. Once again, the compatibility chart is based on my compliance tests with the Plantronics Pulsar 590A. With other headsets, you may have (slightly) different results (as has also been mentioned in the chart – see my comments in parentheses). I will continue posting compatibility information with other stereo headsets hopefully as early as next week.

Menneisyys said:
As can clearly be seen,
none of the three third-party applications support all OS’es. For example,
MortPlayer only supports AVRCP on WM5 devices with the Widcomm BT stack; it won’t work on WM5 devices with the Microsoft BT stack or on any pre-WM5 device
Pocket Player only supports pre-WM5 devices; it doesn’t work under WM5 (with neither of the two most common Bluetooth stacks)
Finally, the case is just the opposite with TCPMP, which only supports pre-WM5 devices, AVRCP-wise. It doesn’t work on WM5 devices at all.
Now, you have all the necessary information to select a compatible multimedia player for your particular OS and Bluetooth stack version
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, I guess that I have no choice. I have WM5 with the MS BT Stack. Am I right? If someone would be willing to tell me how to change the MS BT Stack out for the Widcomm BT Stack, I'd be very appreciative.
Also, this thread is very much needed in my opinion. Thank you for starting it.

Article heavily updated.

Another thorogh update

Menneisyys: said:
Making the Pocket Player AVRCP work under WM5
(Big thanks to PPCT / AximSite forum member Haesslich for summarizing it so that I didn’t need to look / experiment with it up myself much.)
Get the Conduits WMP Plugin Adapter 1.1 from the plug-in page (I really recommend it if you, for example, want to get FLAC or MOD support for your Pocket Player) (direct link to the download).
Unzip gen_wmhost.dll from the archive and put it in the home directory of your installed application ([Storage card name]\Program Files\Conduits\Pocket Player).
Go to Menu/More/Options (in 3.0; in 2.8, Menu/Options) and select the Plugins tab (it’ll be on the far right)
Single-click “Conduits WM Plugin Adapter”, when the context menu comes up, select “Configure”.
Click the “Configure WM plugins to load” button.
Under version 2.8, it’ll ask four questions; under 3.0, two. Click “Yes” in all cases.
Click OK and restart Pocket Player. Now, remote controlling should work OK.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hopefully, this is what I've been looking for. We'll see.
Am I the only one that sees the value of this thread? I can't believe that I've had the only replies.

porterx said:
Am I the only one that sees the value of this thread? I can't believe that I've had the only replies.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also make sure to link it from A2DP / AVRCP threads when needed so that the information gets to everyone

Mr
porterx said:
Hopefully, this is what I've been looking for. We'll see.
Am I the only one that sees the value of this thread? I can't believe that I've had the only replies.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
These procedures didn't work for me. I tried 10+ times. I give up in frustration.

porterx said:
These procedures didn't work for me. I tried 10+ times. I give up in frustration.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try connecting your headphones BEFORE starting PocketPlayer and the whole procedure. I didn't find this necessary, Haesslich, with his equipment, did (or at least it seems he neeeded it)

UPDATE (10/14/2006): thanks to FirstLoox and AximSite forum member androabo, now I know how iPlay can be started on the Pocket Loox 720 (or on any device that it refuses to run on because of the incompatible CPU type): just click the “info” button,
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
, two times immediately after starting the application so that it displays the CPU/battery info panel (screenshot of the latter here).
Note that I've just heavily updated my generic Plantronics Pulsar 590-related article (the current one is the AVRCP-specific, not a generic, one). Make sure you read it for further information on the headphones.

Mr
Menneisyys said:
Try connecting your headphones BEFORE starting PocketPlayer and the whole procedure. I didn't find this necessary, Haesslich, with his equipment, did (or at least it seems he neeeded it)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't work for me.
The funny thing is that I had AVRCP working for one day. That was awhile ago and I understood less than I do now. The only thing that didn't work was FF/REW. Next/Prev track, pause, etc. worked.
I have HT820 headset. I don't get it.

porterx said:
It doesn't work for me.
The funny thing is that I had AVRCP working for one day. That was awhile ago and I understood less than I do now. The only thing that didn't work was FF/REW. Next/Prev track, pause, etc. worked.
I have HT820 headset. I don't get it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do AVRCP work with MortPlayer / WMP / iPlay with your headphones?

Mr
Menneisyys said:
Do AVRCP work with MortPlayer / WMP / iPlay with your headphones?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I can't get it to work with any of those. iPlay is a little complicated to use. That may just be me though.
I was going to put a link to the roundup thread but this is it. duh.
I should be able to get this to work. Others have. Why not me? Oh well.

porterx said:
No, I can't get it to work with any of those. iPlay is a little complicated to use. That may just be me though.
I was going to put a link to the roundup thread but this is it. duh.
I should be able to get this to work. Others have. Why not me? Oh well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Making a backup & hard reset? It should work. (At least I think so - I don;thave a HT820 so I'm not absolutely sure, knowing the vast compatibility issues of both A2DP and AVRCP. HT820 users may be out of luck.)

Mr
Menneisyys said:
Making a backup & hard reset? It should work. (At least I think so - I don;thave a HT820 so I'm not absolutely sure, knowing the vast compatibility issues of both A2DP and AVRCP. HT820 users may be out of luck.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've done a hard reset between now and when it did work. I don't think it was working when I hard reset it but I can't be sure. I'll have to think about that one because setting back up after a hard reset is a PITA and I've never attempted a backup.

porterx said:
I've done a hard reset between now and when it did work. I don't think it was working when I hard reset it but I can't be sure. I'll have to think about that one because setting back up after a hard reset is a PITA and I've never attempted a backup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's certainly worth using backups - now, all the four major backup apps are fully WM5 (and, more strictly, PPC PE) compliant - see my Backup Bible ( http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=1270&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 ) for more info if interested.

Thank You!
I have the 8525 and the Sony DS HBH970, and have been trying to get something better than WMP so I could use the AVRCP functions and have better sound, bookmarking, etc. I'll give it the 30 day trial period, and may actually have to buy this program...
Using the information here, I am now listening to tunes - using stop/play forward/backward (however, I am used to forward/backward from my bluetooth being an entire track while this goes forward/backward within a track - I'll have to play around to figure that out).
In case anyone else is techno challenged like me, here are the steps that I took:
1) Install the Pocket Player program first. It is an exe file, so you download it to your PC then install via ActiveSync.
2) Then get the Plugin as directed. Download to to PC, then put the file on your device via ActiveSync. Then you need to unzip on your device, putting the file in where you installed Pocket Player as directed.
3) If you have Pocket Player open, close it. Open Pocket Player, tap Menu - More - Options - arrow over the tabs to tap on Plugins - tap WM Plugin - Configure as directed in these instructions.
4) My initial playing would not route to the headset, but it works when you have BT on first, hit the play button to establish the connection, then open Pocket Player, play your song.
Thank you for all of the information! Great article!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Making the Pocket Player AVRCP work under WM5
(Big thanks to PPCT / AximSite forum member Haesslich for summarizing it so that I didn’t need to look / experiment with it up myself much.)
1. Get the Conduits WMP Plugin Adapter 1.1 from the plug-in page (I really recommend it if you, for example, want to get FLAC or MOD support for your Pocket Player) (direct link to the download).
2. Unzip gen_wmhost.dll from the archive and put it in the home directory of your installed application ([Storage card name]\Program Files\Conduits\Pocket Player).
3. Go to Menu/More/Options (in 3.0; in 2.8, Menu/Options) and select the Plugins tab (it’ll be on the far right)
4. Single-click “Conduits WM Plugin Adapter”, when the context menu comes up, select “Configure”.
5. Click the “Configure WM plugins to load” button.
6. Under version 2.8, it’ll ask four questions; under 3.0, two. Click “Yes” in all cases.
7. Click OK and restart Pocket Player. Now, remote controlling should work OK.

scharnet said:
Thank you for all of the information! Great article!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks

Just read about Core Player 1.1 Mobile (commercial version of TCPMP)...these articles say it has AVRCP.
http://fairdeal.modaco.com/product.asp?id=8905
http://software.pocketnow.com/product.asp?id=8935
However, their own website does not acknowledge AVRCP. http://coreplayer.com/content/view/28/44/
Just curious if anyone knows or has tired it? Would it work on the 8525 running WM5? I really like the Pocket Player, but it does not play AVI videos. Core Player does not offer free trials, so I was trying to find out...thanks!

GSPlayer
For everyone wants to use the GSPlayer with AVRCP:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=316730
I´ve developed the app on the universal under WM6, but it SHOULD work with every device under WM5 and WM6.....
If i have the WM_ messages, i could control EVERY media player with this app....
Any feedback is welcome...
Greets,
Thomas

New stereo Bluetooth headphone comparisons!

At HowardForums, Fire Dragan 418 has posted some comparative information on the currently available Bluetooth stereo headphones. Make sure you visit the thread.
Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the forum engine (there's no HTML table support), the results are a bit hard to read. I, therefore, took the liberty to convert the results to HTML so that they're far more readable:
THE CHART IS HERE – CLICK THE LINK!!!!
My remarks: I don’t think the Plantronics Pulsar 590A has bad Bluetooth range at all. On the contrary: in general, in our flat, I can listen to the room next to the room my Dell Axim x51v is located at (I’ve found the x51v to have the best range; my other, flawless, high-quality and compatible A2DP-capable PDA’s (PL720, hx4700) have slightly – but not much!! – less range). That is, the – in my opinion! – relatively bad range according to the chart shouldn’t be a showstopper.
As far as the Hi-Fi sound quality of the 590A is concerned, in the meantime, not very good highs aside (which, to a certain degree, can easily be cured by using equalization), I started to love my 590A a lot. It’s a really nice BT headphone – I certainly recommend it, despite the (comparatively) high price. I only wish the Bluetooth light could be entirely switched off – it’s really distracting and annoying in darkness.
Recommended links
You have skipping or other problems with your stereo Bluetooth headphones? Read this!
Bluetooth remote control (AVRCP) compatible media players
Mobileburn.com and PDAMania Publish Great Bluetooth Stereo Headset Roundups
A2DP Headset Review Thread - not many posts yet, but worth checking out
And, in general, the Bluetooth category on the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Expert Blog. Make sure you check it out!
UPDATE (10/23/2006): discussions of this article / more info: PPCT; AximSite.

Everything you will ever need to know about the power consumption of PPC audioplayers

In my well-known Pocket PC & Smartphone Magazine article Maximize Battery Life by Minimizing Power Consumption! and, for example, Pocket PC Thoughts-frontpaged Some new power consumption measurements (Dell Axim x51v, HP iPAQ hx4700, Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720, HTC Universal, HTC Wizard), I’ve elaborated on how important it is to reduce the processor (CPU) usage of a given application to gain the best battery life possible and/or force the CPU to run at a lower clock speed.
In the current article, I elaborate on how all the known MP3-capable Pocket PC multimedia players fare in this respect. You will really need to read this article if you regularly listen to for example MP3 files for more than, say, half an hour between recharges. You can save even hours of battery uptime if you choose your multimedia player with the CPU usage in mind. As you’ll see, current multimedia players have vastly different CPU usage (and, therefore, power consumption), particularly if you enable for example equalization, digital signal processing (DSP) and the like.
I’ve previously also made some similar measurements with Pocket PC multimedia players (see for example this article) and sound recorders (see the well-known (see for example these remarks) Pocket PC Audio Recording Bible), but have never compared ALL MP3 players directly to each other, on the same Pocket PC, at the same time. Now, this omission has been fixed.
In the comparison chart (click the link!), I’ve collected (after some really thorough measuring) the following characteristics of each and every MP3-capablePocket PC-based multimedia player.
Upon creating the chart, I've measured the CPU usage at 208 MHz to directly and reliably compare the CPU usage of each and every application. I’ve chosen such a low CPU frequency to emphasize the CPU usage differences (at higher CPU speeds, the differences would be smaller and more prone to benchmark errors. As can be seen, the, in this respect, there are four clearly separate groups. As with all the other figures in the test, the lower the given percentage, the better.

[/LIST]
The first group, consisting of three applications, offers, CPU-usage wise, about twice the runtime than the better titles (for example, the built-in Windows Media Player (WMP), LGC Jukebox and GSPlayer in the second group). The best-behaving applications is definitely 40th Floor's iPlay (sporting 11% CPU usage), closely followed by TCPMP and Resco Audio Recorder (12 and 12.5% CPU usage, respectively). Always try preferring these three players if you absolutely need the best battery life!
The second group contains many more titles and is started with a brand new title, LGC Jukebox (sporting 20% CPU usage), which is, then, closely followed by the widely-known, excellent, with third party add-on plug-ins, even midi- and mod-capable freeware GSPlayer (21%), VITO AudioPlayer (21%) (when minimized), WMP (21.4%), the (as opposed to all the listed titles so far, not taken iPlay and, partly, TCPMP into account) AVRCP-capable, free and and excellent MortPlayer (22%). Also, some lesser-known titles (for example, the no-longer developed TodayPlayer) are also in this group; so is NoteM, the excellent, free MP3 recorder. (Also note that NoteM is particularly sensitive to skips, which may make it to a non-recommended player in certain circumstances.)
The third group consists of titles like WinVibePro (more on this title later!), Conduits' Pocket Player, VITO SoundExplorer, PocketMind's PocketMusic Bundle , iMusic and withMP3. The CPU usage of these titles is between 24 and 27.5% and are definitely less recommended than even the players in the second group, unless you REALLY want to take advantage of the advanced features of, say, Conduits' Pocket Player and VITO SoundExplorer.
The fourth (worst) group consists of Nero Mobile (31%), Platform4 Player (37%) and absolutely the worst title, WinamPAQ (40%). Note that WinVibePro should also belong to this group because its CPU usage is pretty tricky and is pretty hard to predict whether it will really "only" consume 24% of the CPU cycles, or, will it consume way more.
I've also measured the CPU usage with enabled equalizer (I've tried to "cook" the same very-strong-at-highs and slightly-stronger-at-basses with all the players so that they sound at least similarly the same with my Plantronics 590A, which, by default, pretty much lacks the highs) and bass boost, both when available. These are listed in the third column.
As can be seen, using built-in equalizers (EQ's) definitely raise the power consumption with most (but not all; there are some exceptions like GSPlayer and MortPlayer (they use exactly the same core; hence the minimal additional CPU usage), the no-longer-maintained TodayPlayer and the otherwise absolutely bad WinamPAQ). This means if you use some other player, you may want to consider using built-in, hardware-level equalizer capabilities of your Pocket PC if and only if it supports it AND you don't listen to music via Bluetooth A2DP. In some devices (for example, the HP iPAQ hx4700, the HP iPAQ 2210 (even if the latter only has a really basic bass/middle/tremble setter) in Start / Settings / System / iPAQ Audio), there is already a built-in equalizer; in other devices (for example, the Dell Axim x50(v) / x51(v) or the old Compaq iPAQ 36xx/37xx series, you can get access to them with external tools like x50mix and UdaEq 1.1, respectively. They won’t cause any additional CPU usage, as opposed to software-based solutions.
Except for them in this test, excellently behaving GSPlayer, MortPlayer, TodayPlayer and the (otherwise, in no way recommended) WinamPAQ, enabling EQ may result in really bad CPU usage increase. This is definitely the case with, for example, PocketMind's PocketMusic (Bundle), withMP3, the non-recommended Nero Mobile, and, finally, depending on the number of points you use (for example, if you only raise the highs with only one point, you can save a lot of battery - but, still, it's better to use another media player if battery life is a concern), VITO SoundExplorer. Note that VITO AudioPlayer, unlike its "big" brother, doesn't have any DSP or equalizer; it, however, sports a (fixed) bass boost, which, unfortunately, is pretty CPU-hungry.
Also note that the two multimedia players (iPlay, TCPMP) belonging to the "least CPU-hungry" group and also having a built-in EQ (Resco Audio Recorder doesn't support EQ) become much more CPU-hungry when you enable the built-in EQ. iPlay's CPU usage almost doubles, and TCPMP's CPU usage increases by about 40%. This also means you almost completely lose the CPU usage advantage of, say, iPlay if you DO use the built-in equalizer. Again and again, if you use wired headphones, check first if your particular Pocket PC model already has support for system-level EQ settings. (Unfortunately, this, as has already been pointed out, won't work through A2DP.) Alternatively, try to avoid EQ's - remember, real audiophiles (like I used to be) don't use any kind of equalizers at all ;-)
The fourth column lists a well-known, nice and really useful DSP, reverb. While most reverb (in some players, there are only some similar DSP's like Pocket Player's "echo") implementations (except for that of iPlay) are pretty bad, I've still found this test necessary to find out how much additional CPU load they cause. I was particularly interested in the figures of iPlay, which has a wonderful reverb DSP you'll love to keep enabled. As can be seen, with iPlay, enabling reverb almost triples the CPU usage. This is, however, in my opinion, is a good tradeoff, taken into the quality of the reverb. It should be pointed out that "massive" (maximal) reverb causes the same CPU usage as "more". This means you won't really extend battery life if you refrain from using "massive" reverb effects and stick to lower-level effects.
The fifth column lists whether the bad side effects of enabled visualization (spectrums, peaks) can be avoided by (that is, is the application celever enough NOT to spend any CPU time on the then, invisible visual effects) just shutting down the screen. As can be seen, even some of the top apps (for example, Conduits Pocket Player and, of course, the CPU usage-wise, pretty hopeless WinVibePro; also in this group is VITO AudioPlayer) ignores this and continue to compute for example the spectrum. It's only with withMP3 that the CPU usage decreases in this case.
Finally, the sixth column lists the speed the (XScale) CPU switches to while playing the same 112 kbps MP3 test file (Värttinä: Oi Dai - Oi Dai). The CPU speed setting will also be of interest in addition to the, up to now, 208 MHz-only CPU usage figures. As you'll see, these results are pretty easy to predict based on the results listed in the second (208 MHz, no-EQ/reverb/bass boost CPU usage) column - with a notable exception (WinVibePro).
Why is this column important? If you don't want to manually force the XScale CPU of your Pocket PC to either 104 or 208 MHz (as opposed to letting the CPU itself switch back to these speeds when there isn't much load), you may want to go right for a program that lets the CPU run at the lowest speed possible; that is, 104 MHz. Currently, there are only two of them: iPlay and, for the most of the time, TCPMP. (Without using the built-in EQ or, with iPlay, Reverb DSP, and, naturally, without additional CPU-intensive tasks like A2DP encoding running in another process. If you do run additional tasks like A2DP encoding - A2DP is VERY resource-intensive, particularly if you use the Microsoft BT stack -, then, the CPU usage of the multimedia player application won't be the only factor for the CPU to decide what clock speed to run itself at.) This is because, say, consuming 22% of CPU cycles at 104 MHz requires LESS power than consuming 11% at 208 MHz, as can also be seen in my past, power consumption-related articles.
Note that the CPU usage introduced by actively monitoring the CPU speed / load (through Services.exe) is 1.5% (1.8% with enabling the load monitoring) at 208 MHz and is, therefore, negligible, as far as the test results are concerned. That is, it's highly unlikely the additional, at 312 MHz, ~1.3% CPU usage caused by monitoring is causing the CPU to switch to 416 MHz from 312 and so on.
Also note that this column is only meaningful for XScale CPU's (it's they that use integer multipliers with the default 104 MHz); Pocket PC's with Samsung (for example, iPAQ 1930/1940/rx1950; HTC TyTN etc.) or the TI (HTC Wizard and a load of other QVGA WM5 PPC Phone Edition devices) CPU's don't really use this kind of automatic speed switching or, if they do, they use vastly different speed steps.

Other remarks
Note that if you install Platform4 Player 3.0 into the main storage, it'll start playing its default video, MPEG4 by philips.mp4, at starting. This will mess up the screen of the Pocket PC. Therefore, you'll want to manually delete this file from \Program Files\Philips.
It's also worth pointing out that Citsoft's iMusic 2.10 , which is a direct successor to withMP3, seems to be definitely worse, both CPU usage- and capabilities-wise, than its predecessor. For example, it seems it's not possible to switch off the screen from inside the new player, as opposed to withMP3. That is, you may want to stick to the latter, despite its being older.
Note that, as it doesn't have (and I don't particularly like requesting freebies so that I can avoid situations like biting the feeding hand) a trial version, I couldn't test the current version of TCPMP's successor, CorePlayer either. According to the developers (I've talked to them on the matter per e-mail), it has 6...10% less CPU usage than TCPMP 0.72rc1, which may mean it's, now, better than even iPlay. Once again, I haven't tested this.
Also note that the current roundup ONLY tests MP3 playback. For example OGG or Flac playback is NOT benchmarked in here. In some of my older benchmarks, I've published Ogg-related information too.
Finally, the latest downloadable build of the WinCE port of well-known (also see this Wiki entry) VLC wasn't able to play any MP3 files at all; this is why I haven't included it in the chart.
Other recommendations on decreasing CPU usage
As can be seen, visualizations (and, with some titles - for example, TodayPlayer - even peak meters) are one of the worst enemies of battery life. The most CPU-intensive task is displaying equalizer spectrums. Some apps (for example, WinVibePro) don't even notice the spectrum not being visible and still consume a lot of additional CPU cycles - in vain. Therefore, make sure you scrutinize the peak meter / spectrum-related remarks in the chart and either disable them or make sure they are hidden while playing.
The comparison chart
(Note that, should you have problems with the local rendition of the chart, you can also access it HERE):
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Verdict
My personal pick / recommendation is iPlay. I only wish I could find ANY way of purchasing it. I’ve been trying very hard to find a proxy server so that I can visit the homepage of the developer; so far, without any success. The developer is also ignoring my e-mails and public messages to contact me back. It seems the developer considers me because I'm unable to pass to his homepage a "dark alley guy", as he often puts it about everyone that complains about being banned out of the website of 40th Floor. A nice way of handling would-be customers, eh? (I also recommend THIS and THIS AximSite threads on this.) Nevertheless, iPlay is still really worth checking out and is highly recommended - assuming, again, that you can get even the trial version.

good read!
hmm i hand no idea pocket music used that much battary!, i alwasy thought he 10% battary loss in 30mins (i was using the eq) i was getting was due to the BT being on!
iPlay is a ass to get, mortplayer seems good though, plus i has a today plugin (thouhg the site is currently down)

thebranded said:
good read!
hmm i hand no idea pocket music used that much battary!, i alwasy thought he 10% battary loss in 30mins (i was using the eq) i was getting was due to the BT being on!
iPlay is a ass to get, mortplayer seems good though, plus i has a today plugin (thouhg the site is currently down)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup, Pocket Music pretty quickly chews through your battery if you enable the equalizer. Get something else.

New, updated version posted, including info on VITO AudioPlayer and providing a much bigger chart, with much more links.

Another update; see the new version at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=1656&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Menneisyys said:
Another update; see the new version at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=1656&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for this man ive currently switched from using pocketplayer to mortplayer ive noticed that pocketplayer does eat alot of memory also mortplayer is very stable in a2dp unlike pocketplayer i encounter skipping playing mp3 files 192kbps and higher.

I would not recommend people use tcpmp. I have noticed that in some video playback it can malfunction while drawing to the screen buffer directly and write over its own controls. This in itself is not a dangerous thing but it suggests that their drawing algorithm dose not clip the region it is trying to access before writing to the screen. This could result in more serious corruption of data on the device during a malfunction. I know this is not music related but it is the same software. If that bug was fixed it would be very good, I have found its playback to be good on most formats.
Do you have any stats on the aidem mp3 player that ships with the dopod 838 pro?

OdeeanRDeathshead said:
Do you have any stats on the aidem mp3 player that ships with the dopod 838 pro?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope as I don't have the TyTN. I'll try to get hold of it - is there an extracted version installable to other models anywhere?

bkb said:
in a2dp unlike pocketplayer i encounter skipping playing mp3 files 192kbps and higher.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your
1, BT stack?
2, phone and headphones model?

Hi Menneisyys,
Been wondering how to get you(other that pm-ing you), since you are active in this thread(it's yours!!). I got a few questions for you.
1) I tried iplay like you suggested, unfortunately it plays my aac+ files at "chipmunk" speed. So I just stick to TCPMP.
2) In Sleuth's A2DP skip free thread, you mentioned that the Widcomm stacks play fine on your wizard, well, it plays ok on mine too except for the memory issue after switching it off for a while and it does not continue connection after my wizard goes into standy. Any idea which registry setting I need to change? I have tried a few(and still trying) in the Widcomm directory but no luck so far.
regards,
Eugene

new2city said:
Hi Menneisyys,
Been wondering how to get you(other that pm-ing you), since you are active in this thread(it's yours!!). I got a few questions for you.
1) I tried iplay like you suggested, unfortunately it plays my aac+ files at "chipmunk" speed. So I just stick to TCPMP.
2) In Sleuth's A2DP skip free thread, you mentioned that the Widcomm stacks play fine on your wizard, well, it plays ok on mine too except for the memory issue after switching it off for a while and it does not continue connection after my wizard goes into standy. Any idea which registry setting I need to change? I have tried a few(and still trying) in the Widcomm directory but no luck so far.
regards,
Eugene
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1, thanks for the iPlay bug report; will check this issue too
2, I'm having the same problem - this is why, in most cases, I need to soft reset before (re)connecting my 590A headphones. However, it's still well worth using the Widcomm BT stack because of the vastly superior sound quality and slightly reduced CPU usage, compared to the MS BT stack.

Just to let you know I am using the Axim's stack BTW. Helm's universal stack is more stable, I feel but I think you noticed that I couldn't get A2DP to play skip free on my wizard using that stack.

That is, to my knowledge, it's not possible to fix the Widcomm memory problems on the Wizard.
Can't really answer the Wizard Widcomm skipping problems as I haven't had any skipping probs on the 590A and, therefore, couldn't really try in practice how skipping, different headphones should be "hacked".

UPDATE (10/31/2007):
HTC has also released a hardware equalizer compatible with most (but NOT all!) Pocket PC Phones
I've started working on the long-awaited Multimedia Bible! It'll kick some serious butts, I promise

the HTC audio manager is about twice as more conservative than core player.
unmatched thrift!

First thoughts of the Nokia N95 & I’ll, in the future, publish a lot of Symbian info

First thoughts of the Nokia N95 & I’ll, in the future, publish a lot of Symbian info
Now that the HTC folks have announced they will not release the HTC Omni in the next three months, that is, there is no real successor of the HTC Universal (my current workhorse and main Pocket PC) and, frankly, none of the current Pocket PC’s (or Smartphones) appeal to me (I already have several previous-generation PPC’s and SP’s and the current HTC models don’t offer significantly more than, say, my Universal or Vox), but I’m (still) severely addicted to electronic toys & gadgets like smart phones, I’ve decided to get the Nokia N95. After all, I needed a new toy (Yes, it’s certainly HTC to blame for my decision – why on earth did they have left us high and dry on the upgrade path?)
I received it about a week ago and now I understand why a lot of, otherwise, Windows Mobile freaks (for example, the folks over at MobilitySite) publish so many news items / articles on it. Despite it being over half a year old, the Nokia folks have managed to pack in a lot of functionality into this phone. Frankly, my HTC Vox (s710) MS Smartphone (which was released about the same time as the N95), hardware-wise, seems still to be in the stone ages compared to this beauty (much heavier, much worse camera, no GPS, no 3G (let alone 3.5G), no 3D hardware acceleration, no TV out, no FM radio, impossible to set the brightness level (the Vox is far too bright in a completely dark room), no call recording / answering machine support etc.) – except for, of course, the QWERTY keyboard.
Unfortunately, there are some problems with the N95. The battery life is pretty bad, for one. While, sometimes, I only charge my TI OMAP-based (and, therefore, non-3G) phones (OK, I don’t use them much for for example Web browsing and such – I mostly use my Universal for that because of the VGA screen) once a week, the N95 requires far more frequent recharges – at least a daily one.
The size of the RAM memory is another question. While the 22-23M RAM available after boot is enough for a LOT of things under Windows Mobile, multitasking in Symbian seems to be much more memory-hungry, particularly if you use the built-in, indeed excellent Web browser. If you open some (not very big) no more than two or three pages in the factory browser, the background tasks (for example, media player) inevitably shut down. In addition (still speaking of the browser), you can’t keep more than 3-4 pages in memory; they will need to be reloaded if you go back to them. Even the pretty much memory-hungry Internet Explorer Mobile behaves better and uses less memory on Windows Mobile, let alone other browsers (for example, the at least twice more memory-friendly Opera Mobile; and I haven’t even mentioned Opera Mini, which has at least two orders of magnitude less memory usage). Fortunately, both Opera Mobile 8.65 and Opera Mini work in a far more memory-friendly way. That is, if you do plan to multitask (a lot), never ever think of getting the N95.
Speaking of the built-in browser, it indeed rocks. It’s using a narrow character set like Thunderhawk and is really able to crunch a lot of text into the visible screen estate without the need for horizontal scrolling. Also, as opposed to almost all Windows Mobile browsers (except for the slow & memory hog Minimo, the, currently, unavailable NetFront, the still slow and buggy jb5 and the unofficial and the somewhat outdated (no full page view), Russian Opera Mini 2 Mod), it allows for in-page text searching – a feature REALLY missing from mainstream Windows Mobile(-compliant), recommended browsers (Opera Mobile, IEM and the official version of Opera Mini). Also, it has really good standards compliance. While the results it presented in the Acid2 (CSS2) test were a bit worse than those of Opera Mobile or Minimo, it, otherwise, turned out to be pretty cool – for example, it has passed all my AJAX (and also the CSS1) tests.
The A2DP support, while it certainly had no quality problems with any stereo headphones (as opposed to the Microsoft BT stack on Windows Mobile) I’ve ever tested it with, has severe AVRCP problems with the Plantronics Pulsar stereo headphones: you can’t just restart playing a title from the 590A. This seems to be an issue with Nokia’s A2DP-enabled products in general: the 5300 also had, albeit different, AVRCP issues with my Plantronics 590A (but, of course, not with Nokia’s own headphones). That is, it’s still pretty sad to see neither the MS BT stack-based Windows Mobile (sometimes severe sound quality problems) nor the Nokia / Symbian platform (AVRCP problems and, after a while, drop-outs) support Plantronics’ products well.
The (stereo) speakers are of very good quality and are VERY loud. Much better than on my HTC Wizard, HTC Universal, HTC Vox, Oxygen, x51v and even the Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 718 / 720, which, so far, had the best, loudest speaker.
The (Java) MIDlet support is excellent (much better than under Windows Mobile) and is hardware 3D accelerated. While there’re few real MIDlets making use of the hardware 3D acceleration support, it’s still nice to have a device around that does support MIDlet acceleration. (More on this in my forthcoming MIDlet Bible.)
As far as the generic (non-A2DP) Bluetooth support is concerned, it, unfortunately, lacks advanced features; for example, it doesn’t support BT PAN at all (not that the MS BT stack would on Windows Mobile – actually, it was only some weeks ago that one-direction (PAN server) support was, finally, added by some XDA-Dev hackers). It can’t use other computers in DUN mode and, as it seems, it can’t connect them via a wireless serial connection either. Note that I had no file exchange problems with neither Widcomm- nor MS BT stack-based Pocket PC’s, which is certainly good news if you take into account that this isn’t necessarily the case, not even on the Windows Mobile platform.
Wi-Fi-wise, p2p connections work, should you really need something like BT PAN. Otherwise, it isn’t as good, compatibility-wise, as that of Windows Mobile. I’ve encountered far more situations where it either didn’t connect or just disconnected after 10-20 seconds than with my Vox (the Vox having the best Wi-Fi support so far). The rumored 2.x ROM update, which should be released next month, is stated to fix this problem.
The camera – particularly when taken into account it’s a phone camera – is very good, particularly when used as a video camera. I especially like the fact that, in video mode, it uses the really advanced and great H-264 (a.k.a. MPEG-4) coding, as opposed to the M-JPEG most even high-end (Canon's expensive SD/IXUS range etc.) point-and-shoot digital cameras. For example, even the latest Canon 870 IS camera (the one I’ll purchase as it has far better optics than its predecessor and has wide angle – see the just-published DPReview HERE) burns around 1.7MB every second at the best quality setting (640x480 / 30fps). The N95 burns about 20 Mbytes every minute – that is, about five times less than M-JPEG encoders – using the same VGA resolution and 30 fps, with compression artifacts not really visible during regular playback. Another comparison: low-end digicameras like the HP R717 burn 13 Mbyte a minute with QVGA (320*240), 30 fps, pretty low-quality videos. The lack of stereo (or even better) microphones is really a shame, though (not that any point-and-shoot, "real" digicams had stereo mikes – you need to use a “real” videocamera for that).

The screen is equally bad outdoors and/or in direct sunlight than those of the current Windows Mobile phones. Quite a letdown after the bright, old 176*208 Nokia screens like that of the Nokia N-Gage, which were perfectly visible / usable outdoors and even in direct sunlight. Instead of pumping out 16 million colors, Nokia should pay attention to making their screens more usable outdoors. Fortunately, the AllAboutSymbian folks declared this problem has also been fixed in the successor, the N95 8GB.
Fortunately, the screen doesn’t have polarization problems in Landscape, unlike many Pocket PC’s (all Casio transmissive color screens; the Dell Axim x50v / x51v etc.). This, and the fact that the minimal backlight level you can set is pretty low make the N95 a great bedtime device – very few gadgets are better in these two respects (the HP iPAQ hx4700 being one of them – it has even lower minimal backlight level and the same lack of polarization issues in Landscape).
Gaming-wise (let’s not forget: the N95 will be compatible with all N-Gage platform games from next month, meaning a lot of high-quality games), the hardware has both pros and cons. First, the pro: it has is excellent 3D accelerator and, again, it’s officially part of the new N-Gage platform. Then, the cons: it has pretty bad controls. Even worse, I’d say, than on most Pocket PC’s (OK, I admit the Pocket Loox 720, the HP iPAQ 2210, 38xx, 39xx, 5450 and 5550 are even worse, D-pad-wise). The sole reason for this is as follows:
it’s very easy for your thumb to accidentally press the two Menu buttons, located to the left / right of the D-pad. There isn’t anything worse than accidentally pressing them during playing a game. Fortunately, games, in general, pause themselves in these cases, so, you can still return to playing them.
if you prefer playing in Landscape (fortunately, the built-in games all support this orientation; so do some MIDlets), the multimedia buttons on the left won’t be of real help: they are very hard to press. According to the latest reviews, the latter problem, to some extent, have been fixed in the N95 8GB.
the Action button isn’t very easy to press either.
I can’t comment on the phone part (particularly recording phone calls and/or using answering machines – the biggest problem with most Windows Mobile phones) as yet as I’m still awaiting T-Mobile UK’s official unlock code so that I can use the phone outside of the UK. This is why I’ll only elaborate on the data capabilities later; most importantly, how the HSDPA support really fares, compared to my Windows Mobile devices. And, of course, I’ll also comment on the call recording capabilities.
All in all, so far, the N95 has turned out to be a VERY positive surprise and, if it records my phone calls without problems, I’ll give my HTC Oxygen to my wife and promote the N95 to be my main phone.
BTW, All About Symbian has just published a quick review of the Nokia N95 8GB, the enhanced version of the N95, which will hit the shelves REALLY soon - certainly worth reading.
Finally, an important announcement
I’ll continue publishing a LOT of information on the N95, particularly software-wise (the above is almost exclusively hardware-related) – that is, Symbian-related stuff. That is, in my future roundups, I’ll also elaborate on the comparable / related Symbian s60 products as well, starting with my MIDlet Bible, which will be published, hopefully, tomorrow. Note that the charts (main chart; 3D games Compatibily Chart and JBenchmark Chart) of it already have excessive information on the MIDlet support of Symbian. This will help
both Windows Mobile and Symbian software developers in learning how the software titles on the other platform behave, what functionality has been implemented etc. Currently, my full software roundups and Bibles are, for Windows Mobile developers, probably the number one source of information on what they should implement / work further on (at least this is what I’ve been told by most Windows Mobile top developers and I, knowing the detail of the information contained in these articles, I don’t think they’re just flattering me ). Adding multiplatform coverage will further help developers on adding features they may have not been aware of because they may not have the necessary means / time to know what a completely different, alternative mobile platform offers. This applies to developers of both platforms, of course.
originally Symbian (or, WM) users learning the new / other platform and finding software titles that offer the same (or similar) functionalities they got used to on their old (other) platform
users that have devices from both platforms will find these tests useful. As has already pointed out, the N95 beats most (if not all) Windows Mobile devices in many respects – and, of course, vice versa (for example, the GPS locking speed of natively SiRFIII-based devices, the AVRCP compliance with my Plantronics 590A A2DP headphones or the, in general, better software availability on Windows Mobile); hence, I think in the future the N95 will be always in one of my pockets (along with some of my Pocket PC’s and MS Smartphones, of course). This will greatly help them in deciding what platform / device to use for a given task.
Recommended reviews
MobileBurn
My-Symbian
Gizmodo

Nice review. I've just bought an N95 too and agree with most of your points.
But I gotta say the screen isn't really that bad, the daylight readability is quite acceptable - at least it is a transflective not transmissive like the Kaiser or the G900!
But hey you've not mentioned anything about the GPS?

wywywywy said:
Nice review. I've just bought an N95 too and agree with most of your points.
But I gotta say the screen isn't really that bad, the daylight readability is quite acceptable - at least it is a transflective not transmissive like the Kaiser or the G900!
But hey you've not mentioned anything about the GPS?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I'll re-compare it to my devices.
BTW, the Kaiser is transflective too (not sure about the G900), as are all 2.8" QVGA HTC devices. It's just that their screen is pretty hard to read outdoors. Still, they are transflective - still much better screens than real transmissive screens like that of color, old Casio models.

wywywywy said:
Nice review. I've just bought an N95 too and agree with most of your points.
But I gotta say the screen isn't really that bad, the daylight readability is quite acceptable - at least it is a transflective not transmissive like the Kaiser or the G900!
But hey you've not mentioned anything about the GPS?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BTW, how much did you pay for your N95? (Is it the "basic", N95-1 model?)

Menneisyys said:
Thanks, I'll re-compare it to my devices.
BTW, the Kaiser is transflective too (not sure about the G900), as are all 2.8" QVGA HTC devices. It's just that their screen is pretty hard to read outdoors. Still, they are transflective - still much better screens than real transmissive screens like that of color, old Casio models.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
I'm very interested in buying the Kaiser. Is the screen really good readable in direct sunlight?
Thank you very much in advance.
Sincerely
JCD.SAG

Menneisyys:
You 100% sure the Kaiser is transflective? Every owner I talked to said its not? I am not doubting you but I need to make sure, as I dismissed it purely because of the screen. But... even if its transflective, if it is not readable in daylight then it might as well not be.
My Hermes is obviously 2.8" too and is definitely transflective, very readable in daylight.
I bought the N95 from Mobiles2yourdoor.co.uk for free, £35 a month on 12 months contract, £175 cashback. Yes it is the basic N95 (I think its refurbished too), not the latest sexy 8GB model.
So, any update on the GPS front? I am still trying to decide which sat nav software to go for But definitely not TomTom because it STILL can't use the internal GPS receiver.

How is the Nokia N95 an upgrade from the HTC Universal
Compared to the Kaiser I would say that the only advantages of the N95 are the camera (5MP, but with extremely bad noise reduction) and video recording ([email protected] with good sound quality). If you want a VGA screen then wait for the ETEN M800 but if the video recording capabilities of the N95 appeal to you then Nokia do not yet have serious competition, AFAIK.
(My i-mobile 902 can do VGA recording, but at a very low bit rate, i.e. the end result is comparable with Video CD quality.)

UPDATE (10/28/2007):
As promised, I've started publishing (comparative) info on Symbian / the N95. The first article, the MIDlet Bible, has already been published. I'll pblish an article on the just-released, EXCELLENT Opera Mini 4 beta 3 tomorrow and will publish the long-awaited Multimedia Bible next week. Both with extensive Symbian-related remarks.
I'd like to thank "Beck" from the sprites & bites blog. In addition to sending me the phone even by her leaving without a single mobile phone for one and half a day, she was really helpful in receiving an official T-Mo UK unlock code for the device and sold the phone really cheap - she didn't try to rip me off in any way. That is, a big THANKS to her, and, if you, sometime, would trade with her, I can assure you she's 100% reliable and is an excellent seller.
Thanks again for the N95, which, otherwise, I couldn't have afforded (at its recent street price) because, after all, I've only bought it to have another toy I sometimes write about, not a(nother) Windows Mobile device I constantly use.
Finally, don't forget to check out her above-linked blog if you're interested in desktop console gaming (currently, it officially discusses the MS Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii and the PS3) and her occasional mobility-related posts.
I’ve continued playing with the phone. First, some short remarks and, then, I discuss call recording.
The memory problem IS an issue and makes (occasional) running of the built-in browser a pain in even if you only want to see one page. For example, its memory requirements very often result in the application the browser was invoked shut down. This is really a pain if you, for example, clicked a HTML attachment in Messaging or a download link in Opera Mini. Then, there won’t be anything you can return to after having finished reading the HTML mail or downloading the file. Therefore, the built-in browser, no matter how great it is, is pretty much useless (but not on S60 3rd ed. Devices with substantially more free RAM like the N95-3 or the N95 8GB.)
The battery life turned out to be much better than I thought at first. If you don’t actively browse the Net use Wi-Fi etc. all the time and aren’t in a 3G area, you may end up having to recharge the device “only” every second day. Yeah, still much worse than the battery life of the HTC Wizard or any other TI OMAP-based Windows Mobile device, I know.
Compared to the HTC Universal Pocket PC, it has a little bit more tolerance to really low-level signals. When the Universal displays around one bar signal level, GPRS is sure to be interrupted. Not so with the N95, it was able to pretty surely
Unfortunately, the same can’t be stated about its being able to use 3(.5)G (UMTS / HSDPA). In that (at least in using 3G), the Universal seems to be better – it is clearly more sensitive. (It’s another question the Universal can’t make a usable connection with one UMTS bar visible. It’ll constantly switch between the two (GPRS and UMTS) modes, rendering Net access (and sometimes the entire handheld) almost useless – an inherent problem with Windows Mobile, unless you manually disable all kind of 3G support.
That is, if you plan to use your handset exactly at the boundary of 3+G UMTS (HSDPA) and pre-3G (GPRS. EDGE) coverage areas, there might be better handsets out there than the N95.
Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking is implemented REALLY cleverly and in a much more superior way than under Windows Mobile because it allows accessing the Net on the N95 while another client is actively using it as a modem. This really rocks. See THIS for more info on Windows Mobile’s (clearly inferior) approach.

Finally, the question of call (auto)recording – compared to Windows Mobile: In this area, the N95 is orders of magnitude better than most (but not all!) Windows Mobile handsets because 1, it does allow for recording the other party 2, while it does beep every 15 seconds (as opposed to what the manual states, that is, 5 seconds), this is only heard by the local party, not the remote one. The remote party doesn’t hear a thing – not even the initial beep about 2 seconds after starting the recording. This also means you do NOT need to use any beep filter applications (BeepOff, which, currently, doesn’t have an S60 3rd-compatible version AFAIK or the beep filter function of Ultimate Voice Recorder itself) and you can even use the built-in Recorder app (in the Office suite) to (manually) record your conversations. No beeps will be heard on the other end of the line.
I’ve played a lot with the call recording facilities and thoroughly tested the already-mentioned built-in Recorder app (which needs to be manually started and lacks memory-saving output formats), VITO AudioNotes for Nokia S60 3rd ed 1.31 and the well-known Ultimate Voice Recorder (UVR) 4.01.
I’ve created a chart of these apps:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
You’re supposed to directly compare the contents of this chart to that of my Windows Mobile VITO AudioNotes review. Note that, in the meantime, Resco Audio Recorder has also received MS Smartphone support. A quick, textual comparison & explanation follows:
Records to the card: of course, all of them do. In here, I’ve listed the directories they record to. As can clearly be seen, VITO AudioNotes uses exactly the same directory structure than under Windows Mobile, clearly separating incoming and outgoing calls. This is certainly good news – as we’ll later see, the other two solutions don’t store the direction of the call.
Format: in here, I’ve listed the output file format. As can clearly be seen, the built-in Recorder produces very large (one megabyte / minute) files unless you do know the call will take less than a minute OR are ready to always begin a new recording when the first times out; in this case, you can also use the most memory-effective MMS (physically, AMR) output format. The two other apps are far better in this respect, particularly UVR, which also allows for recording directly into AMR, unlike VITO’s app.
Distinction between incoming and outgoing calls?: as has already been mentioned, only VITO’s app supports this. However, I still don’t consider this to be a stumbling block with UVR as it’s, in general, very easy to decide who was the caller, particularly if you follow my advice below on trying to defer speaking with some 1-2 seconds.
Boot-time loading?: on Windows Mobile, both Resco and VITO automatically start themselves. With PMRecorder, you can easily do the same by creating a shortcut to its main EXE file (and, then, just minimizing PMRecorder’s main window upon restarting your handset). On Symbian S60 3rd ed, only UVR is able to auto-start itself, VITO isn’t. That is, you will always need to start the latter manually.
Shut down by the OS?: as with Windows Mobile, Symbian also shuts down background tasks when the memory starts to run out. This happens on the memory-constrained N95(-1) (NOT the 128M RAM-equipped N95-3 or the N95 8GB!) a lot of times.
Under previous S60 editions, there were call recorder apps that registered themselves (and, therefore, run) as services, not as high-level applications prone to be shut down. UVR has also followed this line. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case – UVR will be shut down on the N95 too pretty early. Fortunately, this can be very easily spotted if you let it display its icon at the bottom of the screen – if it’s hidden, then, you know it needs to be restarted.
VITO’s app, on the other hand, was a VERY nice surprise: it isn’t shut down and keeps recording flawlessly. I’ve done some VERY serious tests mass program starting tests, spanning some 15-20 minutes, to be absolutely sure this is the case. VITO was never shut down. That is, if you don’t want to continuously restart UVR, go for VITO – it will surely be in the memory, ready for recording. A big thumbs up for the VITO folks!
Caller ID (or, if it lacks, phone number, including the case of unknown other parties) in the filename?: a decent call recorder app (as all the three recommended Windows Mobile call recorders) should make a Contacts database lookup, based on the caller / callee’s phone number, in order to insert her or his name in the file name, instead of the phone number. Both specialized apps support this.
Results of problematic chars in the contact name?: just like on Windows Mobile, Symbian apps refuse to record calls where the other party can be found in your local Contacts database and her or his name contain invalid characters like slashes (/).
As can clearly be seen, neither UVR nor VITO’s app knows how to deal with these cases – they simply won’t record anything. With UVR, this is particularly painful, as it DOES show it’s recording the conversation.
Results of beep elimination?: UVR (as opposed to the, in this regard, weaker VITO app) offers beep elimination, which is highly useful on (some) other models, where the other party does hear the beeps denoting being recorded. As, on the N95, beeps aren’t transmitted to the other party, the need for such an app isn’t so important on the N95. Therefore, you can safely turn off UVR’s beep elimination functionality (set Options / Settings / Warning beep to On; it’s Off by default) if you can put up with the beeps every 15 seconds. Note that I didn’t find this necessary: while some people complain of UVR’s beep elimination making the conversations a little bit stutter upon beeps, I haven’t run into this situation on the N95. Both parties were absolutely OK and pause-less with beep elimination on; so was the recording.
Visual feedback when (in)active?: UVR displays an icon at the bottom of the screen (this can be disabled); VITO doesn’t. With UVR, this is of particular importance because you’ll see at once if UVR gets shut down.
Lagging at start: along with the following, this row explains whether the recording starts at once, or, there is some kind of a lag, making the first (few) seconds unrecorded. While VITO’s app excels at this (no lagging at all), UVR has lost this test: it starts recording some 1.5-2.5 seconds after the call has been answered.
Note that you can’t fix this problem with URL by, for example, making it record to the internal memory (as opposed to the card) or disabling the beep elimination functionality.
Cutting at end: the situation is the reverse when the opposite case (“does the recorder app finish recording prematurely; that is, (long) before the call is hung?”). VITO’s app, unfortunately, doesn’t record the last 1.5 - 2 seconds. Make sure you keep this in mind when you want to be absolutely sure everything is recorded – try to insert a pause if you are to hang up the call and not the other party!
Other goodies: just like the built-in Recording, UVR is also able to password protect recordings and is able to do some similar niceties. VITO’s only real advantage is its ability to append a new recording to existing ones (both MP3’s and WAV’s). Of course, I haven’t listed essential functionality like playing back recordings.
Verdict: if you do need call recording, N95 supports it almost flawlessly. As neither UVR nor VITO AudioNotes are perfect, you will want to carefully compare their (dis)advantages and your needs to pick the one that better suits your needs.

abubasim said:
How is the Nokia N95 an upgrade from the HTC Universal
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, it's not an upgrade from the Universal, but from the HTC s310 (Oxygen) Smartphone, which I've bought in order to be able to record all my phonecalls. (Phone clal recoding is very important for me so that I can put them in my diary. It's great fun to listen to 20-30-year-old phone calls.)
I've only bought the N95 because Omni wasn't announced / released, I wanted to some new toy I can play with and I had some money to burn. In addition, "beck" sold it to me quite cheap (along with the official T-Mo UK unlock code) - so, my desire for new toys was fulfilled
abubasim said:
Compared to the Kaiser I would say that the only advantages of the N95 are the camera (5MP, but with extremely bad noise reduction)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fortunately, edge hardening can be switched off; then, the effects of noise reductions can't be spotted on all shots (only on a part of them showing, say, lawn).
abubasim said:
If you want a VGA screen then wait for the ETEN M800
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's, unfortunately, quite a bit inferior to the Omni specs. The Omni is a real upgrade to the Universal; the M800 isn't.

wywywywy said:
Menneisyys:
You 100% sure the Kaiser is transflective? Every owner I talked to said its not? I am not doubting you but I need to make sure, as I dismissed it purely because of the screen. But... even if its transflective, if it is not readable in daylight then it might as well not be.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends on what you call "transflective". The Wizard screen (which, I think, is exactly the same than the one in the Kaiser - after all, both are HTC and both are 2.8" QVGA - why would HTC radically change its screen between models?) is transflective, but next to unreadable in full sunlight. I'm, however, absolutely sure the Wizard's screen isn't transmissive because, being an ex-Casio / HP Jornada 680/720 user, I know how transmissive screens behave outdoors / in sunlight. They are ABSOLUTELY useless, in no way can you make out anything on the screen. Unless, of course, you put for example your coat on your head, creating a small dark room
Well, the Kaiser is certainly better than as transmissive known models like the Casios in this respect. At least, something is readable on its screen. Definitely not a, say, Nokia N-Gage, the transflective iPAQ hx4700 / h2210 or the Pocket Loox 720, let alone a reflective screen like that of the iPAQ 36xx/37xx/38xx series, but still not as bad as old Casios.
All in all, technically, the Kaiser's screen is (or, should be) transflective.

(Also cross-posting this disclaimer as a collection of answers to the questions I’ve received on different forums.)
UPDATE / DISCLAIMER (10/28/2007): Some people have misunderstood the meaning of these articles (see for example XDA-Developers, HowardForums, MoDaCo).
Note that I'm only comparing the two platforms and NOT telling anyone to get an N95. I'm not a Nokia fanboy - if you want to see how real Nokia fanboys write and what kinds of reviews(?) they publish, look at some Symbian sites (no names mentioned ). No offense towards the reviewers of these sites, of course. If you know they’re, along with their verdicts and comparisons to other platforms, heavily biased, you’ll find their articles worth checking out. Otherwise, prefer reading my articles and direct OS comparisons and don’t let fanboys misinform you.
My reviews are to the point and do emphasize the problems with both platforms (as opposed to those of some Symbian pages), Symbian and Windows Mobile alike. As I’m, I think I can state this without being laughed at (after all, I have everything a decent WM guy should have: an MS MVP, the Nominations Manager at Smartphone & PPCMag etc.), one of the guys that knows the most about Windows Mobile (programming-wise too), I think I’m able to objectively compare operating systems.
An answer to another common question (some people thought I’ve purchased the Nokia to be a successor of my Universal): I've bought the handset NOT to be an upgrade from the Universal (it’d be pretty hard for a QVGA device to be an upgrade from a VGA one, wouldn’t be?), but from the HTC s310 (Oxygen) Smartphone, which I've bought in order to be able to record all my phone calls. (Phone call recoding is very important for me so that I can put them in my diary. It's great fun to listen to 20-30-year-old phone calls. That is, for phoning, I don't buy anything that isn't call recording-capable - this is why I've bought an, otherwise, very incapable phone (HTC s310) to be my current main phone.) As an s310 replacement, the N95 REALLY excels and offers WAY more in every respect (except for battery life and size).
I've only bought the N95 because Omni wasn't announced / released, I wanted to some new toy I can play with and I had some money to burn (that is, to get some new gadgets to play with). In addition, "beck" sold it to me quite cheap (along with the official T-Mo UK unlock code) - so, my desire for new toys was fulfilled That is, I haven't meant at all "the N95 is better than the Universal in every respect" - again, we're comparing apples and oranges.
I also recommend my remarks & comments HERE in the Comments section.

Menneisyys said:
It depends on what you call "transflective". The Wizard screen (which, I think, is exactly the same than the one in the Kaiser - after all, both are HTC and both are 2.8" QVGA - why would HTC radically change its screen between models?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well it definitely isn't the same one as in the 2.8" QVGA Hermes.

wywywywy said:
Well it definitely isn't the same one as in the 2.8" QVGA Hermes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, good to know HTC has messed this up royally.
A friend of mine has just ordered one; I'll definitely take comparative screenshots when it arrives.

Great sound enhancer SRS WOW HD released for all Windows Mobile devices!

Anyone having had a O2 XDA Flame have already seen SRS WOW HD, which helps at both widening the stereo (a particularly useful technology on handsets with stereo speakers like the Flame, the HTC Wizard or the HTC Universal) and enhancing / modifying the sound in other ways as well. For example, it adds the, for lon-time audiophiles / Hi-Fi geeks, the well-known loudness-based bass control.
One of the reasons I love the Nokia N95 are the built-in, loud speakers with extremely good frequency response. In the N95, the built-in Music Player has a dedicated stereo widening mode, which can be en/disabled from inside the player:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
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"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
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}
Its results, when used together with the built-in stereo speakers, are simply phenomenal. It really widens their stereo, making listening to music via the built-in speakers a true pleasure (also taking the very good quality speakers into account, unmatched by any Windows Mobile device so far). This has been one of the main strengths of the N95.
Up until now, there wasn’t a generic, non-OEM, similar solution for Windows Mobile-based devices, except for the built-in applet in the already-mentioned O2 XDA Flame. The multimedia players available haven’t really supported stereo widening either, the only exception being Conduits’ excellent Pocket Player, which does support stereo widening at External Pitch/Echo/Stereo Wide DSP (listed as “DSP Stereo Example”). While it lets for the settable widening of the stereo:
it’s in no way as good as on the N95. It certainly makes the stereo a bit wider. No effect at all on mono sounds (as opposed to Nokia’s widening). (Note that, in Pocket Player, there’s another, similar DPS, but it doesn’t do any widening, just makes the center far quieter than the two sides. It’s, strangely, a bit more useful than the first DSP with the built-in speaker.)
Now, the plug-in that has only been available for the Flame has been released for the entire public. It can be installed on any WM5+ Pocket PC and Pocket PC Phone Edition. I’ve tested it with the following Pocket PC (phones):
Dell Axim x51v (A12 official ROM)
HP iPAQ hx4700 (WM5 AKU3.5.2 ROM)
HTC Universal (Midget’s WM6 AKU0.2.0 ROM)
HTC Wizard (mfrazzz’s XDA Mobile 6 Release 3)
and it worked just great on them.
Note that it isn’t compatible with MS Smartphones (WM6 Standard) and Pocket PC’s with operating systems prior to WM5.
(screenshot of the 3D parameter setter tab)
(screenshot of the Truebass tab – it’s here that you can set the bass level)
Additional screenshots:
it’s HERE that you can switch between headphones and internal speaker output. The two have entirely different stereo widening characteristics: while headphones, in general, don’t benefit much from stereo widening, especially built-in stereo speakers benefit a lot from them.
Unfortunately, the switching isn’t automatic – that is, the controller doesn’t notice when you switch back to either wired or A2DP headphones from using the built-in stereo speakers and vice versa.
The lack of the automatic switching is indeed pretty annoying: the contraphase effects are, in general, are pretty bad when played back in headphones and it’s only with fully mono signals that they don’t have any bad effect on.
This is also a problem with the Nokia N95, even as of firmware v20, by the way. In there, enabled stereo widening has a definitely nice effect if and only if you play back mono contents. Then, it prettily widens it so that it is no longer in the center of your head, but somewhere in there. Stereo sources, of course, are pretty much messed up when played back via headphones.
HERE and HERE, you can see two (of the several) pre-defined profiles. Of course, you can also play with the sliders yourself.
Resource usage
Based on my past articles (see for example THIS), you may already know that
software-based equalizers can require a lot of additional CPU time and, consequently, radically decrease the battery life on older and, in this respect, inferior platforms (most importantly, Windows Mobile devices based on the Intel Xscale PXA-2xx CPU series - see THIS for more info on how they compare to other CPU's; most importantly, Samsungs and TI OMAP's)
hardware equalizers (see for example THIS) don’t result in a decreased battery life (not even on the PXA-2xx CPU’s) but aren’t compatible with several models and can only be used with wired (!) headphones. Finally, unless the player plays special attention to NOT closing the channel between songs, you will end up having to re-enable some of them manually (!) after a song switching. (See the "Hardware equalizers (HTC Equalizer) keep their settings when switching songs? Tested on HTC Universal" row in the chart of THIS article for more info if interested in which players do this.)
Fortunately, this app, while it has pretty nice equalizer capabilities, doesn’t really cause any really bad CPU usage increase. I’ve measured the following results (these figures were largely independent of the active profile / output used):
HTC Universal (520 MHz): CorePlayer: +5%; WMP: ~7-8%
Dell Axim x51v (forced down to 208 MHz) CorePlayer: +5%; WMP: +13%
HP iPAQ hx4700 (624 MHz): WMP: +5%
HTC Wizard (195 MHz TI): WMP: +14%
As can clearly be seen, the music player will have a somewhat increased CPU usage but it’s in no way as drastic as with some players out there. As a rule of thumb, the already CPU- and battery-friendly players like CorePlayer fare definitely better than the built-in WMP.
Getting, installing
If you have a XDA-Devs forum account, you can download the CAB file right from the related thread (which is, BTW, worth reading!). If you don’t have an account and won’t bother to register one, download it from my mirror. Transfer it to your handset, tap the CAB file and soft reset the device. After rebooting, go to Start / Settings / System / WOW HD Settings and you’re set.
Using, tips
If you have stereo headphones, make sure you only use it in the Headphones mode (see the upper drop-down menu; it’s activated in THIS screenshot). Otherwise, the sound quality will be plain awful. Again, there’s no sound source type it can enhance when it’s in speaker enhancement mode and you listen to it via headphones, unlike with the Nokia N95, where strictly mono sources become definitely more pleasing to listen to (again, via headphones) with widening enabled.
If you have a handset with only one (mono) speaker (the vast majority of current Windows Mobile handsets belong to this category, excluding for example the HTC Universal, Wizard and the O2 XDA Flame), there isn’t much point in using it at all.
If you have external speakers, you may want to give it a try. Note that if they aren’t close to each other, you may want to refrain from using the loudspeaker mode – switch to either the headphones mode (if you need for example the support for extra bass) or deactivate it entirely.
Evaluation on the HTC Wizard / Universal, using the built-in stereo speakers – compared to…
… the Nokia N95: there isn’t much competition: the Nokia N95 has still better stereo, is much louder (when it needs to be) and has much better frequency response.
… Conduits Pocket Player: on both the test devices, WOW HD delivered better (wider) stereo than Conduits Pocket Player, even with the latter set to 100% stereo widening. You, however, will want to make sure you, in some way, decrease the treble level. With the thin, bass-less speakers of both the Wizard and the Universal, the treble-rich sound of WOW HD will quickly become really tiring.
the default mode: the Wizard has almost no stereo sound – only when you have a (not very close; for example, a wall) surface reflecting the sound back to your ears. WOW HD definitely helps this – again, better than Conduits Pocket Player. The difference between the default (non-WOW HD’ed) and the widened mode isn’t that articulated with the Universal, which, particularly if you keep it pretty close to your face, was already able to generate some kind of a stereo field.
(Note that, naturally, in this test, I’ve only tested handsets that do have stereo speakers as it’s mostly on them that, unless you have headphones, you’ll want to use this tool.)

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=1772622&postcount=29 <-- maybe this post is interesting for you.

LordDeath said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=1772622&postcount=29 <-- maybe this post is interesting for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! BTW, hacks / software like this should also be announced in the Dev & Hacking forum as well - I rarely visit the Prophet forums and, therefore, don't notice local development there.

UPDATE (01/07/2008): as my original review mostly concentrated on stereo widening with handsets with stereo speakers, I need to re-emphasize that this app isn’t only useful for stereo widening or adding (comparatively) CPU-friendly loudness+megabass support. It can also be used to enhance the sound (make it more characteristic), which works even on the built-in mono speakers. See the comments for example in THIS and THIS threads.

i have tested this on a spm m3100 with wm6 rom and i noticed that it does change automaticly from internal(speakers) to headphones and vice versa...

at10ti0n said:
i have tested this on a spm m3100 with wm6 rom and i noticed that it does change automaticly from internal(speakers) to headphones and vice versa...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the update; I'll post this info in the next update .

Menneisyys, did you try it over BT?
The instructions on the other thread aren't very clear:
Alexx~ said:
That worked through BT headset it is necessary to copy all parameters from [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers\BuiltIn\Wave Dev] in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers\BuiltIn\BtA2dpSnd
Except for value of parameter "OldDriver", he should be such, as was "DLL"
For example:
Before
"DLL" = "bta2dp.dll"
After
"DLL" = "WOWHD_ARM_WCE_PPC2005_Driver.dll"
"OldDriver" = "bta2dp.dll"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not giving Alexx~ grief, quite the opposite, much appreciated... but if you have anything to add it would be appreciated.
-Richard

rpodos said:
Menneisyys, did you try it over BT?
The instructions on the other thread aren't very clear:
Not giving Alexx~ grief, quite the opposite, much appreciated... but if you have anything to add it would be appreciated.
-Richard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope; will give it a try.

rpodos said:
Menneisyys, did you try it over BT?
The instructions on the other thread aren't very clear:
Not giving Alexx~ grief, quite the opposite, much appreciated... but if you have anything to add it would be appreciated.
-Richard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I concur with this statement. It would be good to know how well and consistently it works with A2DP.

For those with 240*240 screens and cannot see all of the WOW HD gui settings, the registry values are stored in:
HKLM\Software\WOWXT\WaveDev
Just in case it was not obvious straight off...

I´am using the MDA Compact III (its the same as the HTC P3300 or Artemis, branded by T-Mobile Germany) and I installed SRS WOW. It works fine with MP3-Files but it does not work together with the integrated FM-Radio.
Is there any posibility to "arrange" the registry to make SRS WOW working with the radio?
Thanks for answers.
roadrunner159

Does anyone know if this has any (positive or negative) effect on the A2DP skipping issue experienced for example on the Hermes?

roadrunner159 said:
I´am using the MDA Compact III (its the same as the HTC P3300 or Artemis, branded by T-Mobile Germany) and I installed SRS WOW. It works fine with MP3-Files but it does not work together with the integrated FM-Radio.
Is there any posibility to "arrange" the registry to make SRS WOW working with the radio?
Thanks for answers.
roadrunner159
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably not. The sound from the FM-radio goes straight from the receiver to the speakers/headset without entering the digital part of the device. Meaning that no signal processing algorithms can be applied as these all take part before the signal goes analog.

UPDATE (02/27/2008): see THIS thread on making it work on the MS Smartphone platform.

SRS, tytn ll, bluetooth and phone
I've been playing around with this, and when I've had it working over bt to my Jabra Bt3030 it sounds great, however, it kills my ability to make phone calls - phone works but I can't hear anything, through the headset or the handset.
Anyone had this working?
Cheers, A.

SRS WOW HD v. XT?
Menneisyys said:
Fortunately, this app, while it has pretty nice equalizer capabilities, doesn’t really cause any really bad CPU usage increase. I’ve measured the following results (these figures were largely independent of the active profile / output used):
HTC Universal (520 MHz): CorePlayer: +5%; WMP: ~7-8%
Dell Axim x51v (forced down to 208 MHz) CorePlayer: +5%; WMP: +13%
HP iPAQ hx4700 (624 MHz): WMP: +5%
HTC Wizard (195 MHz TI): WMP: +14%
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello. I'd be interested to see a comparison of its CPU utlization (v. WOW HD) to the ealier SRS WOW XT for Mobiles? Are Motorola e.g. well-founded to continue XT in their MotoQ handsets?
WOW HD was towards PMP or high-end Windows Mobile devices in 2006/07, whilst XT for Mobiles included "special capability for mobile phones with ultra-wide stereo imaging and optimized single speaker playback" optimized for "low-MIPS, low-memory" plus "TI's OMAP processors have been a key platform".
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=356589 (binary for WOW XT for Mobiles)

Does this work on Atom black, WM5? Not the Atom Exec, the model before the Exec. The plain Atom Black.

wm2003 dont working

I get driver issue errors. Is there a reason for that. I have a samsung and a htc wing.

UPDATE (02/27/2008): WMExperts frontpage (http://www.wmexperts.com/improve-your-wm-sound-srs-wow-plugin ); definitely worth checking out.