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REVIEW: Teksoft's brand new Pocket PC utility suite Smart Bar

Teksoft, developer of the excellent BlueMusic application (see for example this article & the links), has just come out with a brand new suite, Smart Bar, of system management applications. I decided to give it a try as it’s a pretty capable suite of utilities with some really excellent modules.
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They even promise an application capable of recording both (!) parties in a phone conversation (so far, this has been impossible with all Pocket PC Phone Edition devices of both HTC and ASUSTeK (Fujitsu-Siemens T8x0)); I think it’ll work by directly “tapping into” the Bluetooth unit as can be seen for example in here.
Availability, price
The suite is available here. To review the (pretty good and recommended) manual, visit this link. There is a(n unfortunately, pretty restricted) trial version too.
The “price” of the suite is 200 credits; that is, between 20 and 25 euros (depending on the amount of money you transfer to your online credit account). The registration is a one-device only (that is, CPU ID- and not PPC owner name-based); licenses can be transferred to other devices in case of a device change (for example, when the previous one bites the dust and gets exchanged).
Install
Use smartbar_setup.exe for pre-WM5 and the CAB files for WM5; see install.en.txt for the latter case.
Compatibility
It’s stated to be compatible with strictly QVGA devices with at least the WM2003 operating system. (I’ve also tested it on Pocket PC 2002; it indeed doesn’t work.)
You can, of course, try to install it on VGA devices, but I don’t think you should give it a go. I’ve tested it on three different VGA devices (Dell Axim x51v A12, WM5 iPAQ hx4700 2.01, WM2003SE Pocket Loox 720). On the hx4700, the PowerPlugin Today screen plug-in was absolutely useless; on the two other devices, it was shown, but not anything else. On the Dell Axim x51v, I’ve received frequent gwes.exe crashes after a reboot, because of which I had to entirely disable PowerPlugin.
Of the PowerPlugin, few features were accessible on these VGA devices; in the following chart, I’ve summarized all this (note that it also contains HTC Wizard-related info):
Note that, as far as the Wizard is concerned, I’ve listed two ROM’s: the O2 2.21.4.1 WWE (3/9/0) ROM and the “cooked”, widely known AKU3.2 one by KTamas / bepe. This means there are differences between different ROM versions / builds – all icons may work with your particular ROM version. The developer has promised they would test the suite with other ROM versions.
As can clearly be seen, the majority of the features PowerPlugin has can’t be used - not even on the QVGA HTC Wizard (with some ROM versions).
One of the central features of the application, Smartbar, wasn’t accessible either on any of my VGA devices. Self-standing apps like the screen capture, the network troubleshooter and the task manager applications, however, did work on VGA devices.
Also, it’s very important that you BACKUP (see the Backup Bible if you’re unsure) your device before installing the application. My absolutely clean, freshly hard reset WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210, after the install, couldn’t boot in at all and I ended up having to hard reset the PDA (I’ve tested this two times). I haven’t tried to boot into Safe Mode (read this roundup & tutorial if interested in Safe Mode on the Pocket PC); it may have helped .
Today plug-in (PowerPlugin)
It’s a simple plug-in with shortcuts to en/disable wireless units, suspend the device, show whether it's connected to the Net (IMHO, this is pretty useless on a WM2003+ device - after all, the Connectivity icon is always visible on the taskbar) and a backlight slider. It doesn’t contain for example battery or memory meters, unlike most other Today launchers (please see this iLauncher review and the links to earlier reviews to find out what a decent Today launcher should offer.)
Unfortunately, the majority of the functionality it’s supposed to offer didn’t work on my test devices. For example, as far as en/disabling wireless functionality is concerned, it was only on the x51v that it was able to both en- and disable Wi-Fi; on the Wizard, it was only able to enable it and on the PL720, wasn’t able to do anything. As far as Bluetooth is concerned, it didn’t work on any of my test devices in any direction. The backlight slider only worked on the PL720. (See the chart at the top, in the Compatibility section for more info.) The only exception is the HTC Wizard with the O2 ROM, where everything worked. (Again, more information on the compliance with other HTC Wizard ROM versions will be published / announced later.)
Also note that, while it has, in addition to the backlight slider, a backlight icon. It, now, doesn’t do anything. Hope the Teksoft folks wire it to the backlight / brightness applet of the device as is the case with all the other, similar Today plug-ins.
Task manager
This is one of the best features of the suite.
Pretty cool. Better than the built-in task manager: it lists the memory used, whether it’s a windowed app/process and if yes, is it visible; the title and the window class name. However, it doesn’t display other advanced & useful stuff like CPU usage and has no “Stop all processes”. Also, it’s not possible to “hide” system processes either – that is, for a newbie, this task manager can prove pretty dangerous.
Ultra Keyboard
This is probably the most unique feature of this suite: it allows for controlling some functionality using the keyboard. The most important of this is text insert macroing capabilities, which has always been missing from Pocket PC’s (except for some, not very capable Software Input Panels (SIP's) like Resco Keyboard Pro and Biomobility’s CopyText Pro; also see this thread for more info if interested).
When you use text insert macroing and assign a macro to, say, the series of characters “bye”, Smart Bar will constantly monitor the keys you press on the built-in (or external) keyboard of your PDA and when it sees the keys b, y and e pressed in order, it’ll delete back the three characters and insert the replacement text.
It's really cool but, unfortunately, only works with built-in keyboards or external ones (like those of desktop-based PDA controllers; see this roundup for more information on them.) Even in this case it can prove useful - most built-in thumb boards are pretty awkward to enter text on them.
You can initiate the following functionality from the keyboard: Replace with phrase; Execute a file; Turn device off; Reset device; Call number and Screen Capture. Note that if your keyboard has a different layout than your current ROM language, the default layout will be used. For example, if you have a German MDA Vario (= HTC Wizard) with English ROM but use the keyboard in German mode so that you find all keys at once, you will need to enter ‘bze’ instead of ‘bye’ for the ‘bye’ script to be executed. Also, note that not even in this case will everything execute – that is, try not to use anything that have relocated letters.
In my tests, all these functions worked OK.
Smartbar
This is a shortcut bar at the bottom of the Today screen for accessing active apps (closing / activating them) and activating other built-in apps (and the Desktop mode) of the Smart Bar suite. Unfortunately, task control-wise, it is probably the worst module in the entire suite; hope this will be greatly enhanced in subsequent releases.

Compared to (better) task managers like iLauncher, Magic Button or Spb Pocket Plus, its disadvantages are as follows:
It can only be accessed on the Today screen, not on the taskbar (and / or the Close / Minimize icon itself)
It supports no mass operations like “close all but this one”, “close all”, unlike with Magic Button or the built-in iTask of Compaq / HP iPAQ’s
It doesn’t override the Minimize / Close (x) icon
Hope these disadvantages will be soon be fixed and the task management functionalities of the application greatly enhanced.
Note that while it doesn’t have explicit scrolling icons / menus (unlike Magic Button as can be seen in here but NOT iLauncher 3, which is suffering from the complete lack of scrollbars as can be seen in this and this screenshots), you can scroll the active task icon list if there are more than five (Portrait) / seven (Landscape) of them.
I’ve also tested the CPU usage of smart.exe to see whether it causes any CPU load, particularly with more than a handful programs active. (For example, Magic Button causes a constant CPU usage of about 1-3% all the time.) The results are acceptable and not much worse than those of Magic Button:
Desktop
Yes, a WisBar Advance Desktop (WAD) clone! It’s in no way so advanced as WAD; still, if you like these kinds of applications, you may find the one in Smart Bar suitable.
Screen capture
Smart bar also contains built-in screen capturing capabilities. Please see the Screen Capture Bible for more information; in the following pros/cons list, I build on the information and explanations of that guide.
Compared to other screen capturer applications,
Pros
Uses a 3-second delay by default; that is, it can be used to make menu screenshots (without using the periodic screenshot capabilities)
Able to capture images periodically (albeit with some limitations, particularly when it comes to the frequency of taking shots). Note that it’s the “Stop interval” drop-down list that lets you fine-tune the interval it’ll take screenshots (between 10 seconds and 10 minutes as can be seen here and here)
If you use it on a device with a built-in thumb/keyboard and you enable screen capturing through Ultra Keyboard, you will be able to capture almost any game screen any time (!) by just entering the Ultra Keyboard shortcut (“CAP” by default). In this respect, the suite is unbeatable and unrivalled.
Periodic screenshot capturing is fast and, therefore, gaming-friendly (unlike, say, BeniSoft ScreenShotCE)
Both BMP and JPG output; the latter with settable quality
Can save files to anywhere, not just the main storage
Can capture images, in addition to the original (100%) size, at double and triple (200% / 300%) size – very useful on QVGA devices to avoid further enlargement and unique among all the screen capturer applications
Landscape & VGA compliant even in SE VGA mode
Cons
Multishot (periodic) capabilities are a bit limited – you can’t instruct the app to make shots less frequently than every two second
While the screenshot utility is a self-standing app, it cannot be invoked from a custom-written nScriptm script to fine-tune periodic screenshot making parameters
(Trial version useless: it inserts a message in the captured images)
All in all, the screenshot capabilities of the app are excellent, especially when you take the price of the suite into account and the only problem with this module are the too frequent screenshots in auto mode. Also, as has already been pointed out, the ability to make hardware keyboard-based screenshots of games is unbeatable and unique.
Network Tools
The suite also contains a simple (it’s in no way as advanced as, say, vxUtil) network troubleshooting utility, Network Tools.
It’s able to ping and traceroute to find out possible networking problems. It also uses DNS lookups; that is, if you for example enter www.yahoo.com, the contents of the input field will revert to 209.73.186.238 (or something very similar, with a different ending), showing the IP address of the given computer (it doesn’t do the reverse).
It also exports the traceroute results to a file. (Note that I didn’t have a “real” wireless connection during the tests and the utility had problems accessing the net via USB (in both WM5 AKU2+ networking modes); I could only access the desktop computer my PDA was hooked up to; this is why there is only one entry in the tracelog.)
It’s pretty cool to have if you don’t happen to have Windows Mobile Network Analyzer PowerToy or vxUtil around.
Verdict
This app is certainly promising. Hope subsequent builds / versions will fix the issues / implement the missing functionality (most importantly, overridden Close / Minimize button) I’ve elaborated on. Then, I’ll recommend it heartily, without conditions. Now, in the present state, I do recommend it too – but conditionally.
First, the bad. It does have compatibility issues. If it does work on your PDA model, it won’t likely to support all the features of the Today plug-in (PowerPlugin) and has no for example storage meters. Also, the task management functionalities / program shutdown capabilities of Smartbar are certainly inferior to most similar apps like iLauncher, Magic Button or Spb Pocket Plus. I find this the biggest stumbling block of the application.
Second, the good. It’s, as an all-in-one application, is really good. That is, if you don’t want to struggle with installing many applications (say, WAD + Magic Button + some advanced (!) screenshot app + vxUtil) to achieve the same (or even better! See for example the screenshot utility) functionality (without keyboard macros, of course), give it a go. Also, if you need keyboard macroing (again, it won’t work with on-screen keyboards, only hardware ones!), this is the application to go.
The same stands for taking screenshots: this application clearly excels in this area (except for the too frequent screenshot taking in repetitive mode – hope the developer fixes this too), particularly when it comes to making screenshots of anything (most importantly, games) that inhibits hardware button access and, therefore, renders hotkey-based screen grabbing impossible. Then, Ultra Keyboard’s excellent keyboard-based shortcuts will prove highly useful.
All in all, if you still don’t have any application to implement the above-listed functionalities or, for example, losing the excellent task management functionalities of other task managers isn’t a problem, definitely give it a go. Remember, however, that
do NOT get it if you are a VGA user; wait for the soon-to-be-released VGA-specific / compliant version
do backup your device before installing or, at least, make sure you have an active Safe Mode application

The ONE and ONLY guide to emulating Nintendo NES under WM

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES for short) (also known as Family Computer or “Famicom” in Japan or “Dendy” in the former Soviet Union) was a very famous third generation (8-bit) in the second half of the eighties with several notable games.
Being a 8-bit, comparatively simple (even when taking into the different Multi Memory Controllers I’ll later elaborate on) game console, not very powerful hardware like current Windows Mobile devices can easily run NES games at their original speed, including music. In this roundup and tutorial, I elaborate on how this can be done. In addition, I publish a reliable, dependable (I've made all the tests MYSELF and don't rely on any other, in most cases, unreliable source) compatibility list with many-many famous titles.
As with my previous emulation-related articles (see the reader feedback I’ve received to my, say, SNES emulation article), it was because of many reasons that made me publish this roundup:
There are absolutely no comparative, let alone up-to-date roundups on emulating this platform.
There are a LOT of apps to choose from (see Michu's related, excellent link / archive repository HERE), which really makes a newbie cry, given that there has been almost no comparative information on these titles on the Internet.
Users’ reports you can run into in different Windows Mobile forums are really unreliable. So are the advertisements of some software developers ;-) (never EVER believe any advertisement without reading an unbiased expert’s report / evaluation!)
While, technically, NES is pretty much inferior to fourth generation (16-bit) and fifth generation(32/64-bit) consoles released later (fourth-generation consoles - and even some of the fifth-generation ones; namely, Playstation - are very easy to emulate on Windows Mobile), the platform still has a lot of titles worth playing. For example, it was on the NES that the Final Fantasy, the Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) and the Zelda series debuted. These titles (the first three Final Fantasy and first four Dragon Warrior titles) are not necessarily available on later, technically more advanced and/or, under Windows Mobile, easily / efficiently emulated platforms (except for the Sony PSX re-releases of the Final Fantasy titles, which are perfectly playable even under the current version of the Windows mobile PlayStation emulator).
As they’re very good RPG’s, if you are into the genre, you may definitely want to check them out. The same stands for some other titles like Elite (which doesn’t have a really non-beta WM version, as is also explained in the Bible of Windows Mobile Games – Part I) and Prince of Persia, which has a pretty good NES version (Windows Mobile still lacks a decent port of this title; it’s only recently that a port has been announced and an early alpha released by Mobirate but it’s still far from being perfect).
Finally, the generic games (which I and Allen Gall have cleaned up last year - after that, we haven't received any criticism) and, particularly, the Emulators category received so much negative criticism (see for example THIS) before my starting to completely update & rework the annual Best Software Awards at Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine that I found it absolutely necessary, now that I’ve been appointed the Awards Nomination Manager, to, finally, show the whole world the right person (someone that REALLY knows what he’s doing and REALLY knows everything about the available software titles for Windows Mobile) was chosen for this task .
Bird's-eye view on NES emulation: what makes NES emulation easy / hard?
While the built-in circuitry itself in the basic NES console is pretty easy to emulate, the custom chips / electronics (for example, enhanced sound generators for the Japanese Famicom – Famicom supports external sound generator circuitries, as opposed to the NES sold in Europe / the States) present in many game cartridges requires require a lot of additional work. You can read a bit more HERE on what chips there are. Implementing emulation for all of these technologies takes a LOT of time and effort; this is one of the reasons why “from-scratch” one-man projects like SmartGear have so low a compatibility rate.
Getting game ROM files
As usual, I may not tell you were to download games from. Believe me: it's far easier than you think if you know what Google is. Fortunately, there isn't a plethora of available ROM formats: everything you run into (most probably .nes files, in most cases, in a compressed form) will run under the emulators.

The available emulators I – the three (+1) most recommended ones
First and foremost, there are three (and an additional one) major, up-to-date, recommended emulators for Windows Mobile. Note that, in the following section, I also give you some advice on how these titles should be used. Note that, as always, I also give the current version of these titles.
1. Jetech.org’s PocketNester 0.7
This is the first emulator you should check out. It is the most compatible, free and reasonably fast emulator. Some of the other, current emulators (for example, NesterJ4u) are based on this one and, therefore, have exactly the same capabilities, except for the additional support for WM5 softkeys and, with the VGA version, Landscape support.
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Its main problem is the lack of WM5 softkey (and, therefore, Smartphone / Windows Mobile Standard) and Landscape screen orientation support.
These issues, as has been already mentioned, have been fixed by for example the NesterJ4u applications. There is another PocketNester derivative implementing WM5 softkey support (and, therefore, sporting support for the Smartphone / Windows Mobile Standard platform) and offering Landscape support: Masterall’s PocketNesterPlus (see the next subsection). Unfortunately, it’s only at these two areas that it excels at; it doesn’t have anything else worth mentioning.
Using the emulator is very simple: download the archive from Sourceforge, unzip it, install and click the PocketNester icon in the Programs / Games folder. Go to File / Open ROM and select the ROM you’d like to play. The ROM can be both compressed and uncompressed and, if you use Mad Programmer’s File Dialog Changer (please read my previous emulation-related articles on how it can be installed; most importantly, the related section in my guide to running Magnetic Scrolls games), it can be anywhere in your file system. If you don’t use File Dialog Changer, it must be under either \My Documents or in either the root or a direct subdirectory under it on your storage cards.
While the emulator has on-screen controls (screenshot), you may also want to (re)assign these functionalities to hardware buttons in Options / Controllers. In there, click a … button and, as instructed, press the key you’d like to be assigned to the given functionality. Also, it’s in here (see the lowermost checkbox) that you can enable a different method for scanning hardware buttons, should you encounter problems with some (rare) Windows Mobile models.
In Graphics, you may also want to enable displaying the top- and bottommost 8 scanlines. It’s disabled by default, you will want to enable it with games supporting them (for example, 1942) so that you can see more of the screen (some games use this). To see what the difference is, this screenshot (of the game 1942) shows the scanlines enabled and this when disabled. See the difference on the top and bottom? Yes, 16 pixel rows are missing from the second screenshot. Note that, however, there are also a lot of games that don’t use these rows and even games that just display some static in there. An example is King’s Quest 5, which has some static at the bottom there as can be seen in here (see the colored line under “Game paused”. During the game, it can become pretty annoying.). If you disable the 2*8 scanline display, this won’t distract your attention (see screenshot here).
Note many emulators don’t let for enabling displaying these rows at all. Also note that I’ve also elaborated on how the individual emulators behave in this respect (see the “2*8 scanlines displayed?” row in the Comparison and Compatibility Chart).

1.1 Masterall’s PocketNesterPlus 0.9
This self-standing emulator is an enhanced version of PocketNester. Download it from the first post of the linked MoDaCo thread, unzip it and transfer PocketNesterPlus.exe to your handheld. Execute it there.
As has already been mentioned, it adds Landscape support to PocketNester (but nothing else). You can switch the orientation in Options / Display as can be seen in here. Unfortunately, currently, it’s in no way compatible with VGA devices.
2. MorphGear 2.4.0.9
A not very fast (but, on current, fast Windows Mobile devices, speed-wise, still perfectly sufficient), commercial emulator with somewhat limited compatibility (and some other emulators; most importantly for the GameBoy). I recommend it mostly because of the NAMCO106 compatibility and the native support for landscape / stretching / on-screen buttons.
Getting and installing MorphGear is easy: download THIS (main program) and THIS (Morat’s module) CAB files; unzip them, transfer them to your PDA and click them for installing. Then, click the new MorphGear icon in the Programs / Games group. Click the
icon in order to select a ROM to load. After this, the game will start (if it’s compatible).

As, by default, MG uses the Portrait orientation and the 100% (one source pixel equals one target pixel) rendering mode, particularly on VGA devices, you will want to make sure you override this setting so that the rendering becomes full screen. To do this, first, click the
icon and select iNES (NES) in the list. Now, click Screen Size on the upper left; a drop-down list will be displayed on the right. Select Window Size in the drop-down list.
You can also fine-tune other parameters here: for example, the sound and the frame dropping ones. On current, fast devices, you can safely leave the sound settings at their default, high-quality settings; on slower ones, you will want to either disable sound completely or select “Low (11 kHz)” in the Quality drop-down list. Also, at the bottom of this settings dialog, you can reassign the buttons of your mobile device. As with all the other apps in this roundup, you can utilize any button on your mobile device, even WM5 hardware softkeys and the red/green phone buttons.
Finally, if you want to play games in Landscape orientation, click the
icon again and, now, select “Global Settings” in the menu. Click Orientation and, from the drop-down menu, select either West or East, depending on whether you’re right- or left-handed.

3. HanaHo Games / Bitbank Software’s SmartGear
(Note that the official homepage of the developer doesn’t even mention SmartGear. Use the Modaco link to download the emulator from.)
A blazingly fast and efficient, commercial emulator: it runs flawlessly even on Windows Mobile devices underclocked to 104 MHz. It, however, has severe compatibility problems and is only compatible with about 60-70% of the current NES games, as opposed to PocketNester(Plus) and even MorphGear, which have a compatibility ratio of around 96-99%. It's not compatible with VGA devices either.
Download the file from the above-linked Modaco thread (you’ll need to register yourself as a forum member). Decompress the archive and transfer SmartGear_PPC.exe to anywhere on your Windows Mobile device. Execute it.
In the Options / Settings section, you may want to make sure “Throttle framerate” remains checked in (it is enabled by default); otherwise, the games will be FAR too quick. (This will be the case with some games even with it enabled; for example, Super Mario Bros 2.)
Also, you will need to redefine the A, B, Start and Select buttons in Options because, by default, they are assigned to the numeric keys (even if they don’t exist – it’s been written for Smartphones, which do have numeric keys) 1, 2, 3 and 4 as can be seen in here. Therefore, you’ll need to click all of them in turn, click Define and press the hardware button on your Windows Mobile handheld you’d like to assign the given functionality to. I also recommend reassigning the Exit functionality so that you can easily stop running a game and bringing up the GUI of the emulator – with the traditional, stylus-based method, this may take some 2-3 seconds.
After this, you can load the ROM image in File / Open and enjoy gaming.
Note that in order to really save battery life, you must manually underclock your handheld to, say, 208 MHz (if it’s an XScale one). It’s only this way, if you use SmartGear, that you will save significant battery life. The sole reason for this that SmartGear, as with both MorphGear and PocketNester, uses all the CPU cycles of the handheld even when it doesn’t actually need it. (For example, when you do make sure “Throttle framerate” remains enabled.)
An example CPU usage graph showing this fact can be seen HERE. The first, about a minute long 100% peak shows running a Mario game in PocketNester, the second shows MorphGear and, finally, the third shows SmartGear. All in all, you will need to underclock your handheld. Please see my battery life saving-related articles (there are quite a few of them) for more info on this.
The available emulators II – the less recommended emulators
Now, I also list and elaborate on the other, older and not any more recommended emulators; for example, Jogosoft’s PocketNES, YameCE, NesCE, InfoNES etc.
NesterJ4u
These two emulators, except for some minor issues, are almost the same as PocketNester. There isn’t much point in preferring them over PocketNester – unless you have a VGA device (it doesn't run on QVGA ones) AND you want to run your games in Landscape. Then, the Sharp build will be your friend.
Jogosoft PocketNES 1.0
This was the first Pocket PC-specific NES emulator (in addition to the Pocket PC-compatible YameCE). Now, because of it not supporting several mappers and lacking for example Landscape support makes it a worse alternative.
InfoNES for PocketPC 0.97
Note that the official homepage of the developer only contains the old (v0.76b) Japanese binaries; the latest, 0.97 version can be accessed either in Michu’s database (pre-WM5 and WM5) or HERE.
This emulator isn't really notable: it has stuttering sound even at 624 MHz. Most of the alternative emulators are FAR better.
nesCE 2.0
(See the download at the bottom of the page). A non-recommended title. See the comparison chart for more info on why I don’t recommend it.
YameCE
This emulator used to be the first really fast NES (but NOT SNES! Its SNES emulation is very slow) emulator to be released for WindowsCE. Now, however, with the advent of fast Windows Mobile devices and the later versions of both PocketNester and, particularly, the unbelievably fast SmartGear, the initial speed advantage has gone. This means it’s no longer worth sticking to this emulator, particularly because it is only able to work for some 3-4 minutes under WM5+. After that, it becomes unable to emulate anything and only a soft reset (!) helps the situation. (Under pre-WM5 OS’es, this problem doesn’t exist.)
(Also see THIS PG thread)
The comparison & compatibility chart
... is available here (click the link!). Based on the info above (and in my previous articles – read them!), you will understand what it contains.
Note that, compatibility-wise, I’ve not only tested most of the possible mappers, but also some generic, famous games.
I’ve included two versions of the most recommended NES emulator, PocketNester, in the chart: an earlier 0.5.4 and the latest 0.7, the latter occupying in the first column in the chart. All this in order to be able to compare how it has evolved over time.
Recommended links
My other game emulator reviews in the Games section of the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Expert Blog. I plan to cover / discuss ALL emulators available for Windows Mobile and have already published some of these articles. Do make sure you follow / read this articles - nowhere else will you find a better source of emulation-related information, I'm absolutely sure.

UPDATE (05/28/2007): New, 0.24 version of excellent multiplatform gaming console emulator SmartGear out! It is definitely an enhanced version with a lot of new functionality (lowered CPU usage (no need to underclock your device to conserve battery life), configurable rapid fire, working Landscape support with NES emulation, in-game menus now accessible, screen size settings, new, even more effective “quick and dirty” rendering mode) and fixes some problems. Unfortunately, it still has the same, not very good game compliance ratio and still doesn’t support high-res VGA devices.
See THIS for more info. Note that I will NOT edit the original article below to reflect the changes – after reading the original article, move on to reading the changes so that you’ll see what has been changed.
UPDATE (05/25/2007): getting the Sticky status, along with ALL my other emulation-related tutorials & roundups, in the Emulators forum of one of the most active Windows Mobile forums, AximSite. By no other than Michu, the manager of the well-known Emupage! This certainly shows – along with the other for example PocketGamer.org and YAMM frontpages – these tutorials & roundups are simply the best.

dont know how i missed this one too!
this is one hell of a guide! cheers.

Glad you liked it
(And don't forget to check out my other articles )

Beautiful! Comprehensive guides such as yours are invaluable especially given the remarkable speed and effectiveness of Google's indexing this site. Thanks for sharing.

this is great!!
only thing is i can not get pocketnester .7 and nesterplus .9 to work at all!!!
i had DLed the plus to my phone and installed ok.. when i tried to play a game, the screen would flicker bad and cause all kinds of problems to be reported. so i un-installed.
same with pocket .7 dl'ed the zip file, and copied it to my storage card. tried to unzip the files but it didnt really install anything, all it did was just extract the files. i read something about unzipping it to your pc first and trying from there but i cant figure it out!!!!!
i have htc hd2 tmob.
thanks for any help!

EL_REY666 said:
this is great!!
only thing is i can not get pocketnester .7 and nesterplus .9 to work at all!!!
i had DLed the plus to my phone and installed ok.. when i tried to play a game, the screen would flicker bad and cause all kinds of problems to be reported. so i un-installed.
same with pocket .7 dl'ed the zip file, and copied it to my storage card. tried to unzip the files but it didnt really install anything, all it did was just extract the files. i read something about unzipping it to your pc first and trying from there but i cant figure it out!!!!!
i have htc hd2 tmob.
thanks for any help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Give a try to SmartGear, it has become really good lately with even support for BT game controllers.

Menneisyys said:
Give a try to SmartGear, it has become really good lately with even support for BT game controllers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
will give it a try
thanks!!

Smartgear works great.
I was just about to post how it is too bad that it doesn't work in WVGA, but I just figured it out. Silly me.
Anyway, SMB3 played full speed, with audio (enabling audio in Morphgear is painful). Works great using a Wiimote (via CobaltController).
Pros
-Full speed with audio
-Full screen on WVGA (with or without stretching)
-Supports touch screen buttons
Cons
-Not free
-Possibly still limited support for games
Note that I did my testing on a LG IQ (eXpo) - 1GHz Snapdragon

REVIEW: brand new SOTi Pocket Controller Professional 6.0

We all know the, without doubt, BEST “let’s control a Windows Mobile device from a desktop PC” solution, SOTi Pocket Controller Professional capable of controlling both Pocket PC's and Smartphones. Now that they have just released a brand new, 6.0 version, I’ve given it a very thorough test ride (current, tested version: 6.01 build 1256). Read on to find out whether it’s worth upgrading!
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Note that the excellent Windows Mobile site Just Another Mobile Monday has already published an excellent review. Please make sure you read it. In the current article, I “only” show what has changed over the last, 5.07 build 966 version (and, for SP users, I give you some genuine registry hacks to hide the icon of the old Pocket Controller from the task bar). I also provide you with some benchmark so that you will know everything to decide whether the new version is worth upgrading. You may also want to read my all-in-one roundup of all the comparable solutions HERE.
Availability
It’s available HERE. A single-device license costs $35.95. If you have purchased Pocket Controller-Pro during the last 10 months, you are eligible for a free upgrade. Otherwise, you get a 20% discount if you've purchased Pocket Controller earlier.
Should you have more than one Windows Mobile devices, you need to purchase a license for each of them, should you want to access them via Pocket Controller. This isn't an issue with the vast majority of the Windows Mobile users out there, having only one handheld, "only" supergeeks and gadget fans having more than one device.
Compared to the old, 5.x series,
The pros
Fully fledged registry editor – currently, the only one registry editor to flawlessly work with WM5+ devices, as opposed to the free Mobile Registry Editor 1.1 (of which, the long-promised, new, 1.2 version doesn’t seem to be released). It supports everything a decent registry editor should support: import / export (using version 5 compatible with Resco Registry Explorer), search and is way faster than MRE. (See the Windows Mobile Registry Editor Bible for more info.)
Image snapshot capabilities are vastly enhanced: PNG is supported and GIF are saved compressed. No need to save your images to BMP files and, then, in a separate session, convert them to PNG’s (or, probably, GIF’s). Not that the latter would be THAT complicated: I’ve, for example, created a simple batch file just calling ImageMagick to make this stuff automatic.
The video capture capabilities have also been enhanced: now, it’s also able to record into WMV files (not only AVI ones), should you prefer the former to the latter.
On MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) models, the Soti icon isn’t any more displayed on the task bar (in addition to the above screenshots, HERE is an Oxygen screenshot; compare all these screenshots to my previous Smartphone shots).
Note that , with previous versions, you could also do the same with importing THIS registry file and restarting your phone (results visible HERE). This hack has been, as usual, discovered by me; it just involves setting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\Apps\ SOTI\ PocketController\ enabletray to OFF.
The client CPU usage is a TAD lower, 32-33% as opposed to 33-34%, under exactly the same circumstances. In the screenshot, the first 3-4 minutes have been taken using the new (another screenshot of this case HERE; as can be seen, it lacks the PocketController icon in the top right corner, also showing it’s the new version), the last 3-4 minutes with the old version, quickly swapping the two versions in between. Note that if there is no remote controlling session, the CPU will not be used.
The User Interface is far prettier now: the new Vista style UI, which also now has a New Skin Display Mode (i.e. Skin in Window) that was not possible in v5.07.
The Skin Catalog has also been completely redesigned; for example skin downloads are much faster now, you can also do things like download all skins for a manufacturer with a single mouse click and preview all skins without having to download each skin one at a time and then click on each skin to look at it. Also added is the capability of showing the specifications for a device in the Skin Catalog in addition to its picture. At present, however, the data of a few devices data is populated. As an example, look at the Intermec CN3 device in the Skin Catalog.
Now, for some other stuff I don’t actively use / need: it supports advanced security options (for example, remote wipe), advanced printing and a lot more; see THIS for more info on new / enhanced functionality.
Still not changed / enhanced
You still can’t use the keyboard / mouse with the HTC Vox – as opposed to the HTC Oxygen
The Task Manager module hasn’t changed at all. This means you can’t expect anything like acbTaskMan or any, more advanced task / process manager / monitor tool. (See THIS for a complete review of these tools.)
The draw mode isn’t enhanced: it only supports hand drawing (shot of the older version HERE) – there are no ways of using for example circles / ellipses (to emphasize something) or making some text (for example, e-mail addresses, names etc. in a contact list) illegible. This means you will still need to post-process a LOT of images to make a lot of personal information unreadable.
On the other hand, you don’t need to keep Ctrl depressed on the keyboard any more to continue drawing, which was a definite problem with the earlier version (which just deleted handmade drawings upon releasing the Ctrl button; this also means, with the old version, you can’t use the Ctrl-D shortcut to quickly bring up the screenshot window, unlike with the new one).
The remote console is as simple as before; it only knows very few commands. Not that it should be a complete reimplementation of the file system tools of the venerable MS-DOS, anyway.
About 100k more (built-in - as before, being a service started at startup, it can't be installed to storage cards) storage usage (understandable if you think of for example the brand new functionality like remote wipe)
Note that Intel 2700G (3D accelerator in the Dell Axim x50v / x51v; see the Screen Capture Bible for more info on the related problems) screen capture-wise, I haven’t found any differences. The problems are mostly based on the fact that a given game’s hating ActiveSync. As is pointed out in the Bible, you can be successful at making a game run with Pocket Controller being active; for example, with Call of Duty 2, to do this, you need to only activate Pocket Controller after you’ve started a new game or loaded a previous one, not before (otherwise, the game may hang in the menus).

Verdict
If you can get a free update (that is, you’ve purchased your copy in the last ten months), go get it. If you need Smartphone screenshots without the SOTI icon and are afraid (you shouldn’t be!) of importing my registry script, it’s a must. Also, if you need a decent and, as opposed to anything else currently available, working and fully fledged desktop-side registry editor, go get it. The same stands for the brand new functionality like enhanced security / remote wipe – if your particular model / carrier doesn’t support it, you may want to go for alternate means; one of them may be the new Pocket Controller version.
If, on the other hand, you already have the 5.x series, it’s working great with you, don’t need any of the new functionality and you aren’t eligible for the free, new version (because you’ve purchased your copy more than 10 months ago and, therefore, you could only use the 20% rebate), I’d think twice before going for the new version: the underlying engine is only (very) slightly better / faster than the last, 5.07 version (see for example the CPU usage results). It's only at low-speed, for example, GPRS connections (as opposed to the high-speed direct USB connection) that there is a certainly visible communication speed improvement: the data traffic during remote control sessions is a little more efficient (SOTi have switched to using the same technology for their enterprise solution, MobiControl, which can manage devices over slow GPRS connections, so sending less data really matters in this case) I’m not sure whether it’ll worth the $28.76 for a 5.0x user – again, unless you desperately need the new features (remote wipe, desktop-side registry editor etc).
Finally, if you’re a newcomer to Windows Mobile and have NOT ever purchased any version of this tool, go get it – it’ll pay off in everything; most importantly, speed (no other tool remote controller tool supports so high a speed). You will LOVE it, I’m absolutely sure – just don’t waste your time with the other, in most respects, vastly inferior solutions. What you gain by not paying anything for a free remote controller tool, you will easily lose by, for example, having to waste a LOT more time waiting for screen refreshes because of the far worse communication protocol used.
UPDATE (07/20/2007): PPCT frontpage; SPT frontpage; minor (mostly GUI-related) changes.

Web Browsing News as of 10/18/2007: new Opera Mobile, Picsel, Spb Pocket Plus

A lot has happened in the last month on the Web browser scene. Let’s go over the news!
1. Opera Mobile 8.65 Final released!
Since this March, there have been two beta versions of Opera Mobile, without doubt the BEST, fastest and most standards compliant Web browser for the Windows Mobile platform. Now, almost half a year after the release of the first Beta, the final version has, finally, been released, of which I was also a (closed) betatester, working closely together with the developers and decision makers of Opera.
Compared to the 8.65 betas, which I thoroughly elaborated on in the Web Browsing Bible (and, therefore, in here, I don’t elaborate on these new features – make sure you read my roundup above), there are only few changes. There, on the other hand, have been several bugfixes; for example, the really annoying DEFBROWSER bug I’ve, independent of some other people doing the same, discovered and reported HERE).
Design decisions
Single column layout removed. This is a design decision I don’t really agree with. Particularly if you have a VGA device, you MAY find the lack of the single column mode annoying, particularly with sites / pages that, otherwise, would work much better with a well-working One Column mode. An example: a Wikipedia article in PIE’s One Column mode on a VGA device in Landscape mode (Largest charsize, High Resolution enabled) (the same with Fit to screen – as can be seen, it’s pretty much useless) and the same in Opera Mobile (Minimum font size: 8; Zoom: 100%). As can clearly be seen, One Column modes will ALWAYS be able to present more information. You can, of course, use zoom facilities so that the horizontal screen estate is fully filled in but, then, the character size will also grow and, what is worse, the images will also become pixelizated. (Also see THIS thread for more info / discussion.)
Desktop view, which has been made the default (!) viewing mode, has been made much friendlier. Now, it’s using a bit smaller characters than before. Should you still find them too big, switch to the default (fit to screen) viewing mode because setting Menu / Tools / Settings / Minimum font size to even 8 doesn’t seem to do the trick. Thanks to the, most of the time, excellently working new wrapping functionality, makes it possible to live without having to scroll around. This is shown in the following (VGA Landscape) screenshot with the View menu shown:
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Now, the cache is stored on the same drive as the executable program itself. While this is what many people have been asked for (particularly with devices only having 64 Mbytes of Flash ROM, meaning only 10-11 Mbytes of it available to the users – for example, the HTC Oxygen / s310 Smartphone is one of them –, you will definitely like this.
Note that, however, this approach might have negative consequences. As has been explained in my Web Browsing Bible, storing the browser cache on a slow-to-create-files-on storage card (most non-high-end cards are like this) may result in the slowdown of the page loading. If this is a concern to you (because you visit pages that contain a LOT of different images, which are all cached), make sure you manually (!) relocate the cache to somewhere else – or, for that matter, completely disable it in Menu / Tools / Settings / History / Cache Size as can be seen in HERE. To relocate it back to the main storage (or even a RAMdisk, if its being completely deleted each reset and the decrease of RAM memory isn’t a problem either because, for example, you use a 128M RAM model), just follow my previous Opera cache relocation tutorial.
Problems I’ve discovered and/or fixed in the meantime
On MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) phones, when you have really low RAM memory (you’re running out of it), problems may occur with keyboard shortcuts. Namely, no matter what hardware shortcut button you press, the same functionality (in general, Reload and / or Back) will be executed. This can lead to confusion – at first, it caused me a lot of headache too until I’ve understood how this all works.
All in all, if your hardware dialpad buttons don’t do what they’re supposed to do, you may want to shut down (some) other apps and / or Opera Mobile tabs. This will free up some RAM, which will result in the buttons working again.
There’s still no hardware application button support (you can only tie button shortcuts to dialpad / keyboard buttons), but now that I’ve published a FULL tutorial and explanation of all decent Windows Mobile button enhancers, including how you can configure your hardware buttons to simulate the pressing of numeric (dialpad) buttons, this isn’t that big an issue. Just make sure you read the Button Enhancer Bible and do what’s there.
There had been a problem with non-English operating systems because of the wired-in (English) directory names with the initial release. This, along with manually fixing it, has been fixed in the meantime; that is, current builds no longer have this problem.
Verdict
Opera Mobile is and, as it seems, definitely remaining the best browser for both Pocket PC’s and MS Smartphones. While there still are some glitches (the worst of them, the lack for hardware app buttons, having been fixed by me), these problems are nothing compared to the generic sluggishness and/or Web standards incompatibility with (most of) the other browsers. Make sure you get at least the trial version.
2. New (1.0.5) Picsel version released!
There is (see THIS) also a new version of the Picsel Web browser.
As opposed to some XDA-Dev folks, I haven’t found much improvement. For example, the CSS compliance is still very bad (the result of the Acid2 test is HERE; that of the CSS1 test is HERE). The Ajax compliance isn’t a tad better either (tested with THIS and THIS test suite).
All in all, there isn’t much improvement. You may still want to give it a try if you are a big fan of the GUI. I, myself, would still stick to either Opera Mini or Mobile. Don’t necessarily believe the hype

3. New Spb Pocket Plus
Spb Pocket Plus has always been one of the best Pocket PC (Windows Mobile Pro / Classic) system enhancers. The brand new, just released 4.0 version boasts, in addition to a lot of new functionalities, a, compared to the much less significant changes during the 2.x-3.x version jump, considerable
(screenshot showing the four tabs, all populated, and the drop-down list (now, only having one element) of the invisible tabs in the upper right corner. For comparison: a screenshot of the context menu of the old, 3.x-series version HERE, also showing there haven’t been any new buttons / any tabs in it.)
It has received the following niceties:
screen dragging mode; note that the autoscroll can be a bit of a pain in the back; it’s sometimes the best to disable it
tabs (with a pretty welcome context menu – very few other products have the same, as can also be seen in the “Tab context menu (if any)” row of the chart of the Web Browsing Bible)
adding the ability to switch off / on keyboard dragging in the context menu
a separate quick access button, next to the “Action” button of the address bar; note that “Search” here makes a quick Google search with the text you enter in the address field.
The settings screen has remained similarly simple – as you can see, there isn’t much to choose from. The same stands for Menu / Spb Pocket Plus, which didn’t change either as can be seen in HERE. As far as saving Web pages is concerned, you can still only save them as simple HTML files – no MHT or full HTML page saving is possible. Incidentally, as can also be seen in the last screenshot, the new SPP version has a system-level (not only available when saving pages, but from every app that would, otherwise, use the system-level, default, very dumb file dialog) file dialog box like that of Mad Programmer, whose FileDialogChanger I’ve often recommended. HERE’s a screenshot of the Setup program where you can en or disable it. (note that, as opposed to Mad Programmer’s FileDialogChanger, you can’t define exceptions – there’re no configuration capabilities of the new “File Open/Save Dialog”).
Compare this to the immense setting / menu options of PIEPlus or even MultiIE and you understand why I still recommend either of these for the serious Internet Explorer Mobile user, as opposed to Spb Pocket Plus. Not that SPP would be THAT bad any more.
It also has some bugs, but, knowing how great the Spb folks at bugfixing are, I’m pretty sure they’ll be fixed VERY soon:
clicking the cross in the upper right corner (to close the IE window) doesn’t work if there are more than one tabs open. You MUST manually bring up the Start menu and switch (in cases, re-run so that the execution is switched to it) to the program you want to. Of course, if you use a third-party task switcher (for example, the highly recommended Magic Button, PHM’s Alt-Tab or almost all the hardware app button enhancers reviewed HERE)
the smooth scrolling mode isn’t really doing what it’s supposed to: in Landscape mode, it’s, in general, scrolling more than it should or even scrolls multiple pages. Some people have also reported other problems with it; see for example THIS.
4. New version of jb5
In the MS Smartphone Web Browsing Bible, I’ve elaborated on the brand new web browser jb5, which, back then, only had a Smartphone version. Late August, a brand new, 5.0.79 version has been released for both the Smartphone and, now, the WM5+ Pocket PC’s. While it’s still having problems and I still consider it much inferior to Opera Mobile / Mini, if you need the special features (for example, in-page text search, which, on the Windows Mobile platform, is only supported by the currently unavailable NetFront and the memory hog & on several handheld models super-slow Minimo) jb5 offers, you might want to check it out. I’ll let you know as soon as it receives a really useful and recommended version.
5. Web Viewer for WM5
There is a brand new multitab IEM plug-in, “Web Viewer for WM5”, HERE.
Unfortunately, this title still has a lot of problems and, consequently, I don’t recommend it. As with jb5, I’ll announce when a useful, bug-free version is released. I also recommend the comments HERE.
6. Other stuff
In some of my earlier articles, I’ve already elaborated on two not really recommended newcomers: TeaShark and UCWEB. IMHO, it’s, currently, pretty useless to bother about these browsers. I’ll let you know when a considerably better version is released.

S2P, S2V and S2U2: excellent iPhone-alike apps (music player, screensaver, picviewer)

I can’t say I’ve been lazy in the last few days. Thanks to the excellent feedback the XDA-Develeloper folks provided, I realized I need to check out XDA-Develeloper coder A_C’s latest, pretty nice and, if you’re a big fan of iPhone-alike interfaces, pretty much recommended, free (!) utilities.
Non-iPhone platforms (including both the operating system – see HTC’s latest Diamond* have been trying to copy the way iPhone works and is used. For example, Symbian also has a similar tool HERE.
*: As far as the, well, built-in storage- and GUI responsiveness-wise, to put it mildly, not really convincing HTC Touch Diamond (which is all the rage today in the Windows Mobile world) is concerned, before I publish a full story on it, read the comments, including mine, HERE. They’re really worth checking out to see what the tech geeks think of the Diamond’s inherent problems – as opposed to what many sites state in their HTC Diamond announcement reports. You’ll see why the “4GB of built-in memory is more than enough for everything you can think of and you certainly don’t need storage cards to extend it” approach of HTC is pretty much flawed. The Diamond should either come with 16GB flash memory at least (as is the case with later iPhone models and the Nokia N96) and/or with an additional microSD slot – even if under the battery.
Slide2Play
Let’s start with S2P (Slide2Play), a stylus-free MP3/WMA player application. It simply lets you browse and play your music files. It supports album art but, as of the current version, not much else - for example, not even playlists are supported. The interface is, as with the other apps of the same author, very easy to use with fingers. Of course, because of the lower sensitivity of traditional touchscreens versus the capacitive, glass screen of the iPhone, don’t except anything as easily controllable as on the iPhone, particularly not on devices with screens known for their being overly insensitive; most importantly, the HP iPAQ 210.
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I’ve made some very CPU usage tests with acbTaskMan. BTW, speaking of the latter, a new, 1.4.2 version was released of it in late April, making it possible to chart the power usage on some devices it was previously impossible to do so. Version 1.4 turned out not to support any of the cooked ROM's I've reported on HERE. The new version does - to a certain degree - on the x51v. (Interestingly, the same isn't true with the HTC Universal, which doesn't seem to work under 6.1 any more - not even with 1.4.2.).
As far as background (!) execution is concerned, the figures are pretty OK on a Marvel Xscale-based PXA310 (iPAQ 210): WMA: 12% (as opposed to ~13% with CP 1.2.4), MP3: 16% (as opposed to ~9% with CP 1.2.4). The latter is 32% on a 195 MHz TI OMAP-based HTC Wizard. These figures are in no way different from that of the built-in WMP, the codecs of which SP2 is using. As far as CorePlayer (and other, much better optimized players like iPlay or Resco Audio Recorder) is concerned, it delivers considerably better performance and battery life when playing back MP3’s, though.
As of the current (v0.40) S2P version is concerned, the CPU usage is very large when the GUI is visible. On the iPAQ 210, when it’s in the foreground, it’s around ~45% in all dialog screens. On the Wizard, it’s ~48% (as opposed to the 32% default). That is, try not keeping it in foreground. Note that the same problem exists with the other A_C apps; this can be particularly a problem with the image viewer.
When you use S2P integrated into S2U2 (more on it later):
on the iPAQ 210, I measured about +20% CPU usage with non-(auto)dimmed screen (pretty bad), even with the S2P controls inactive; no excess CPU usage otherwise (with the screen dimmed).
It supports AVRCP, but only for users of the Microsoft BT stack (works OK with my test Pulsar 590). Widcomm users (for example, those of HP iPAQ’s) are left out in cold.
All in all, a decent player if you absolutely need finger-based usage / nice, accelerated scrolling and/or prefer free stuff and don’t mind the player’s being pretty simple (no playlists, streaming, equalizer etc.) Just remember to hide the user interface (by, say, clicking the battery icon in the top right) whenever possible – or just make it dim the screen after the default 17 seconds (just like with S2U2 introduced below).
Slide2Unlock2
S2U2 (Slide2Unlock2) is a simple lock/unlock application which has the iPhone style slide unlocking. It can be used as a screensaver while you don't use your device. Also, it has a CallerID function so that you can see who’s calling, some other phone integration functionality (for example, displaying the number of SMS messages) and a S2P (see above) control plugin.
The following screenshot shows it’s not only able to display the current album art, but also the output of several weather plug-ins / programs:
As with S2P, it’s not compatible with the HTC Universal (running Ranju’s WM6.1 v7.6), not even after the recommended DirectDraw vs. Raw Framebuffer registry hack and independent of the screen mode it’s started in. It, however, is compatible with the other VGA devices (tested on the Dell Axim x51v with WM6.1 from makuu A06 privß06p and the iPAQ 210 with its original firmware). Of course, it has no problems with QVGA ones either.
Note that, after the first resets (S2U2 puts itself in \Windows\Startup), it’ll display an error message. Upon subsequent resets, this problem will go away and S2U2 correctly initialized.
I really recommend this title if you want to have an iPhone-like screensaver with a lot of configuration options, caller ID display and even a plug-in for the S2P player introduced above.
Slide2View
S2V (Slide2View) (current version is 0.35) is a picture viewer with
1) switching between images by “swiping” the screen from left to right (or vice versa)
2) in zoomed mode, cool, accelerated screen scrolling
These are not offered by any other, current, mainstream picture viewer (I’ve, in this respect, tested XnView 1.40, Spb Imageer 1.6, Resco Photo Viewer 2007 v6.33, PQV 4.0.31 and Pocket Artist 3.3 – that is, the most important viewers), including Microsoft’s own Pictures and videos application coming with the operating system, built into ROM. Currently, the only mainstream image viewer with accelerated, iPhone-alike zoomed scrolling is HP’s Photosmart Mobile – at least as of version 2.11.012 coming with the HP iPAQ 210. As far as switching between images is concerned, PocketCM ImageViewer should be mentioned.

(VGA – iPAQ 214 – screenshot showing some (original-sized, 12 Mpixel) shots I’ve taken at MWC in Barcelona)
Taking into account it’s a free app, it’s pretty nice and recommended, again, particularly for iPhone fans. Despite it being free, it's very fast at both displaying thumbnails and reading the entire image for subsequent zooming.
Some of the problems or stumbling blocks you should be aware of:
- as with the other two apps, the additional “busy waiting” CPU usage can be pretty high (~28% on an iPAQ 210), even when just displaying the file list. While this really an issue with the two other apps (which run with the screen dimmed for most of the time – or minimized when run in the background), with a picture viewer, which always displays something in the foreground, the situation is entirely different. If you’re afraid of this, get another image viewer.
- when you try to open a storage card with tons (hundreds) of subdirectories in the root, it doesn’t display anything
- or, even worse, just a black screen. In this case, make sure you open the card with the "ARROW" button next to the folder and not by tapping the folder name. There’s an excellent post showing this HERE. As you can see, there’re two ways of opening a directory.
It also allows for setting the Today screen wallpaper (separate for landscape and portrait orientation) and assigning an image to a contact:
Zoom-in
The app also supports (pretty fast, unlike with, say, the otherwise excellent and free XnView) zooming functionality. It, unlike with PocketCM ImageViewer (more on it later), uses D-pad based zooming-in, only keeping the touchscreen for switching between consecutive images and, when zoomed in, accelerated, iPhone-like scrolling.
With the default settings, it can’t zoom in into large – tested with 12 Mpixel ones – images, not even on large-RAM models (for example, the 128M RAM iPAQ 210), unlike the five most recommended, other titles. The others are all capable of zooming into to at least 50% and, Conduits Pocket Artist 3.3 to 100% if you use an external cache. (Then, it’ll use about 36Mbyte RAM and an additional 6M cache to load a 12Mpixel image.). Then, it just prints a blank - or corrupted - screen - instead of showing an "out of memory" error. The developer stated setting the Registry value MaxZoomLevel to a higher value (from the default) may help. I haven’t tested the effect of this.
Finally, let’s compare it to the already-mentioned PocketCM ImageViewer (current, tested version: 0.4), which also offers “change picture upon swiping” functionality.
1. I’ve found the latter (PocketCM) less compatible (it didn’t even try to list my 12 Mpixel images). I don’t know where the threshold is (2 Mpixels? 4? 8? I haven’t tested this. VGA-resolution JPG’s are found, correctly displayed and zoomed-in).
2. The zoom-in functionality of S2V is far better thought-out (as it’s D-pad based, there’re no accidental zooming in if you don’t press the touchscreen upon swiping firmly enough) with any zoom level (as opposed to the two of PocketCM) with fast zoom-in loading
3. I’ve found PocketCM ImageViewer’s image changing animation much more spectacular (which may be important for an iPhone fan wanting great visuals) than that of S2V
4. PocketCM has the definite advantage in that it has no CPU usage at all, as opposed to the considerable CPU usage (and the consequential power consumption on most CPU architectures) of S2V (even when it’s just idling, displaying an image).
NOTE: This article has been cross-posted to several boards. In order to make all comments, questions and answers reach as many readers as possible, please consider posting your comment both here and on my home Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine blog page at the URL http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=2639&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 . It’s pretty easy: just use the clipboard to quickly copy your post. No registration is necessary to be able to post – just fill in a(ny) (nick)name, paste the body of the text and fill in the anti-spam code field. If you don't have the time, I can replicate your post on my blog so there is one repository for all discussion. Also, feel free to check out the comments from other boards there – also in the Comments section.

Great reviews of the software, however I would disagree with the CPU usage figures. On my Prophet (196MHz TI OMAP 850), the CPU usage rarely goes above 25% (normally sits between 15-20%) playing WMA or MP3 files in S2P. I also think you haven't mentioned one of the biggest features of S2P, the "CoverFlow" functionality. For me, this makes S2P the nicest and most used piece of software on my phone. Whilst other players may play more music, it's a pain to go through the files/albums and S2P is much faster and more intuitive.
Anyway, thanks for the in depth analysis.

I am very glad to see A_C getting some well-deserved attention for this great collection of apps. However, I feel that this "in-depth" review was anything but as you overlooked several major features of the apps, most notably the AlbumView functionality, and seemed to spend more time discussing other apps than those in the S2 family. Maybe it was just me, but the overall tone seemed quite negative while it should be anything but.
Another item that was not mentioned, but should have been, is the fact that A_C has been VERY responsive to feature requests and has been able to regularly make significant improvements in not just one, but all three, applications while responding to forum posts about feature requests, usage questions, etc. I've received much better support from A_C than I have from many developers that charge big $$$ for their software. Meanwhile, A_C provides his apps for free, though many of us have happily donated to help support his work. Thanks again A_C!!!

l3v5y said:
Great reviews of the software, however I would disagree with the CPU usage figures. On my Prophet (196MHz TI OMAP 850), the CPU usage rarely goes above 25% (normally sits between 15-20%) playing WMA or MP3 files in S2P. I also think you haven't mentioned one of the biggest features of S2P, the "CoverFlow" functionality. For me, this makes S2P the nicest and most used piece of software on my phone. Whilst other players may play more music, it's a pain to go through the files/albums and S2P is much faster and more intuitive.
Anyway, thanks for the in depth analysis.
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Strange you only have 15...25% CPU usage - on my Wizard (the same 195 MHz TI OMAP), it's ~48% (as opposed to the 32% default).

del4 said:
seemed to spend more time discussing other apps than those in the S2 family.
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Click to collapse
Yup - I generally write comparative reviews. No apps exist without alternatives - this is why I always write comparative reviews so that the reader knows which app suits his/her needs the best. This is why I've spend so much time on, say, the PocketCM ImageViewer (and, to a lesser degree, XnView - these are two free image viewers) comparison.
Maybe it was just me, but the overall tone seemed quite negative while it should be anything but.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While I certainly listed the cons of each app, I still recommended all of them - even the thread title contains "excellent"

BTW, please guys DO consider cross-posting your comments, answers to my blog. It isn't that complicated and only takes about additional 20-30 seconds. It's of great help to, say, the HowardForums, BrightHand, MoDaCo etc. forum members. As will be their posts, which you will also see when I replicate them (there are already two posts at HowardForums in my thread).

I kinda got the feeling the reviews were looking for the negative in these apps. The thing to remember is that all three are currently/constantly in development, and A_C is always adding/improving on things, so I don't think it is quite fair to make the down-sides quite as glaring as they seem to come across here.
I don't think the author meant for it to come across like it did, I think it was meant to be complimentary, it just didn't sound it at times.
I also see what del4 was talking about with the feeling that other apps were concentrated on more than they should have.
This is a nice attempt, but I really feel the first two posts of each apps threads gives more detailed descriptions than these reviews do.
P.S. It did make for an interesting read though, thanks for posting!

I've got to be honest - I never understand the point of all of this.. well fluff, it just seems to gooble CPU cycles and memory for little benefit - (well no benefit I can really think of).
Not a knock - just a statement of ... bemusement (is that the word I'm looking for)?

Joezhang said:
I've got to be honest - I never understand the point of all of this.. well fluff, it just seems to gooble CPU cycles and memory for little benefit - (well no benefit I can really think of).
Not a knock - just a statement of ... bemusement (is that the word I'm looking for)?
Click to expand...
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I saw your post in ifonz as well, and something like that, I see it as well, and agree with you, too much for me, but I know people like the freedom of being able to do something like that, and don't blame them. These apps though I really don't consifer 'fluff' (although they do look cool)!! I consider these viable alternatives to existing apps. I always disliked the stock lock on my device, and never used it, resulting in many calls I didn't mean to make LOL!!! This lock screen is a lot easier to use for me, and I KNOW when it is locked or not. The caller ID is great as well, because it maked the answer buttons large enough for even my meaty finger to press easily!! The media player is a gem, I never liked the layout of Windows media player for music, and love being able to play music WHILE the phone is locked with control!!!!
Did that make sense, or did I type myself in circles here LOL??

Hey, if it works for you great - I'm not knocking choice - just saying that I don't particular see much benefit for me.
I did look at slide2unlock but all the threads I saw made it seem very complex to install ("then you hack this bit of the reg", "now you need to install"). Just too much hard work for someone like me!

del4 said:
I feel that this "in-depth" review was anything but as you overlooked several major features of the apps, most notably the AlbumView functionality
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Well I admit it isn't an in-depth review - at least not in the sense (non-comparative) several-page-long reviews, full with screenshots (albeit I've also provided some, taken by me, showing as many features and icons as possible) are written by other Windows Mobile pundits.
What I tried was putting these apps in the generic application Universe and show in what areas they're better and where they're worse than the comparable titles.

Joezhang said:
Hey, if it works for you great - I'm not knocking choice - just saying that I don't particular see much benefit for me.
I did look at slide2unlock but all the threads I saw made it seem very complex to install ("then you hack this bit of the reg", "now you need to install"). Just too much hard work for someone like me!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On the (several - 5 or 6) PPC's I've installed it on - so that I can provide as much compatibility info as possible -, absolutely no reg tweaking was necessary. It, not taking into account the "no components found" message after the first reset, worked out-of-the-box.

syrguy1969 said:
I kinda got the feeling the reviews were looking for the negative in these apps.
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Sincere / fair comparative reviews should always look on the negative sides of apps too. I always list the negative in the apps I review - along with the positive aspects. Look at, for example, my Touch Browser review
It's mostly listingthe negatives of an app that helps a user the most to decide whether a particular software title is worth installling or the alternatives should be preferred.
Again, note that my reviews are in no way similar to what you can see on most Windows Mobile sites, who don't write / publish comparative reviews. I think my reviews are much more useful to end users than non-comparative ones that don't bother mentioning the negatives of an app.

Strange you only have 15...25% CPU usage - on my Wizard (the same 195 MHz TI OMAP), it's ~48% (as opposed to the 32% default).
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That's using my own cooked ROM with some memory optimisations (large cache settings etc.) but I can't think how it could have such a large effect...
Possibly a relatively small number of albums?

l3v5y said:
That's using my own cooked ROM with some memory optimisations (large cache settings etc.) but I can't think how it could have such a large effect...
Possibly a relatively small number of albums?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tested with very few songs too. That is, I don't think this causes the difference in CPU usage. Prolly the different hardware?

I've tested with very few songs too. That is, I don't think this causes the difference in CPU usage. Prolly the different hardware?
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Wizards and Prophets are pretty similar inside, you can flash a Prophet with a Wizard ROM and vice-versa with very minor changes.
Maybe it's just the magic of my Prophet!

Menneisyys said:
On the (several - 5 or 6) PPC's I've installed it on - so that I can provide as much compatibility info as possible -, absolutely no reg tweaking was necessary. It, not taking into account the "no components found" message after the first reset, worked out-of-the-box.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
<installs>, <plays>, <plays some more>, <likes...>
ok, I was wrong and I like this bit of "fluff" very much....

Joezhang said:
<installs>, <plays>, <plays some more>, <likes...>
ok, I was wrong and I like this bit of "fluff" very much....
Click to expand...
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Glad it works with you

Some know if I can run these programs on my ipaq rx4540 ?
thanks