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Impressions from HTC Cruise - Windows Mobile
Hello All,
I have been relatively new here, but I thought I could contribute in the forums by posting my (unbiased) views about HTC Cruise here, hoping other people may find them useful. I am a software developer, so although I do not have an experience with hi-tech PDAs and smartphones, (never owned such a device before), I am fine with the technicalities of such devices.
My everyday phone was a simple sony ericson K510i . What had always annoyed me was that in most "simple" phones, it was quite hard to control the phone via my PC, do backups, backup contacts, SMSes, etc. My sony was good, I had found "MYPhoneExplorer" which pretty much did all those things for my phone. The screen was little bit outdated in terms of resolution, but I did not mind much.
And then came iPhone (which I never owned). I was impressed by its design, usability and user friendliness. I also liked the idea of having WiFi on it. I was close to buying that phone and using one of the available tools to unlock it, (noway I would pay for a contract - I am UK based). My brother who is into mobiles and gadgets more than I am, commented on the fact that iPhone is an "old" generation phone in terms of phone technologies and overpriced. I soon realised it was quite overpriced and started looking at alternatives. I was happy to see HTC would release a really cool phone, which I could get as my Christmas gift (yes, dream on, I had my eyes on it since November and managed to get it this February)...
So, what are my impressions so far?
I dare to say, quite mixed...
On the one hand this device is really wicked and cool! It has all the things I had always liked and needed in a single device. Packing a GPS, a radio, 3G, WiFi in a nice package is just amazing. I can now listen to music, watch videos, find my way around using GPS and have a nice PDA. These are really cool things! No need to have my pockets filled with separate devices...
On the other hand, this phone costed me little bit less than 400 pounds. One can argue you can get a laptop for that price, but then again, a laptop is not a phone. The video issues has not been much of an issue for me, I encode my videos at QVGA and all is well. However, I do get *very* upset when I realise that there is hidden potential in the hardware platform which has not been utilised. What I found bad straight from the moment i used it, is that when i press the "phone-call" hard button, there really is a lag when drawing the blue rectangle above the dialpad, (I am talking about the area which shows the names of your contacts as you type the numbers below.) I mean, come on, so much CPU power, and I can see the blue area being drawn? The other things is that if a couple of applications are running, then the phone does not seem to be operating so smoothly. Again, in order to be fair, it is still very usable. However, as things stand now in the market, in terms of specifications this phone is easily on the upper part, so in my opinion it should be fast, not just "very usable".
My other bit of criticism is probably related to Windows rather than HTC cruise. I find this OS quite interesting on the device, there is a huge applications' base and the things that are missing can be coded by talented people. However, I find the platform a little bit of a pain to use in a pure phone context. Why do i have to check an option everytime I want to get back a delivery report for my SMS? Why do I have to hack the registry to make this permanent? I set a wallpaper in my phone, then I set its transparency, then I realise it is hidden by the today plugin, which I can of course disable. If I disable it I loose certain features which are accessible straight away. I can of course get a new plugin that matchs my needs. Why is it so hard to have tabs with incoming/outgoing/missed calls? This is a feature that phones that cost 10 times less have. Of course Windows 6.1 has this, but then I would have to "install" a new ROM. Simple question: Why do I have to do these things? Why dont' they get it right from the beginning? Don't get me wrong, I am a technology enthusiast and I am sure I will manage to set up the phone the way I want. A number of users out there will do the same thing. However, is this platform one that non-enthusiasts would find user-friendly?
Look at all those skins and modding. Really cool. And the moment you press a button on your really cool new Today plugin, an ungly Windows application will pop up.
I hope that my criticism will be received well here! I like the phone, Windows is cool on it, but I think Microsoft has quite some way to go in order to make their platform really simple to use and user-friendly (think iPhone for example, my parents could use that, but I am quite sure if I show them my phone, they will not know how to make a a phonecall with it!)
In many ways some requirements are contradictory: Being user-friendly means you may have to hide settings, having your platform run on a variety of hardware means you cut corners here and there. Hopefully Microsoft will get it right with version 7 and 8, screenshots look quite good.
As for HTC... They lost a little bit of their credibility with a couple of issues for me. First the sound issue with the french rom which was initially denied and then fixed by people in this forum, then of course the drivers issue. I intend to make good use of this cool phone and customise it to my needs, it just takes time.
For your information, I find these applications useful:
Coreplayer (obviously!)
TouchPal keyboard works good for me
WKTask (and get rid off that default task switcher)
MyMobiler installs on your PC and a little "daemon-service" on your phone, (which you can disable). Then it allows you to control your phone from your desktop.
PocketCM did not particularly appeal to me, so I removed it
FunContact was cool, and loved it. Unfortunately, two things were not so good:
a) Splash screen and loading time
b) sometimes it made my phone freeze
Thanks for reading this (long) post,
Michael
Good post...Here are my impressions as well.
I used to carry a Palm Tx and a Motorala SLVR. I have been looking for the most ideal device to "do it all", PDA, phone (quad band gsm, tri band umts), wifi, and gps. There was nothing realy that appealing on the market until I read about the HTC Touch Cruise.
I read about people's complaints about the "driver" issues and hardware acceleration, and decided to take the risk and bought the phone from a gsm seller online. The phone was unbranded and did not have any stupid carrier proprietary software.
For the most part, I am very happy with the Touch Cruise. I have dumped the palm pda and the slvr, and have not looked back.
I just spent the last 2 weeks traveling to UK (London), Germany (Frankfurt), and Italy (Padova). As a mobile phone, the Touch Cruise functioned flawlessly and had 3G connections where they were available. Couldn't have asked for better features out of a "world" phone.
The TomTom GPS also ran quite well (Western Europe maps). Had to drive alot in Frankfurt and never got lost. Even traffic reports were right on the money.
As for a PDA, it blows the Palm syncing and calendar features out of the water. I used to be a Palm pilot only person, but Palm has become a dinasaur in their attutude to features and interface. The pocket pc has in my opinion surpassed them.
As a portable media device, it does kind of ok . Core Media Player is a must install, microsoft's media players still suck and are not usable and dont support all codecs. This device is not really ideal for video in my opinion. You have to re-encode videos to QVGA for ppc level quality, then video will play fine. You cant simply take a wmv file and dump it on the device to view, it wont work. As for music/mp3's, it works great. I got on a 10 hour flight from UK to US, and used it play music and games, and still had 40% battery charge left over and used an hour of GPS on the way home, with 20% left over.
In all fairness, the HTC could run a little faster, but I blame Microsoft and HTC for hogging up the cpu and not using hardware acceleration.
Since media (video) is not high on my list of required features, I am quite happy with the HTC Touch Cruise.
darkazally, I tend to agree with you really...
I guess if one did not have such a device before or had a really old one, then HTC Cruise is really super. On the other hand I can see certain people's frustration with Cruise. It is mostly people who owned 3 or 4 PDAs before and were probably expecting to be blown away by its specs; I kind of sypathise with them....
I read in an article written by someone at Microsoft, that companies tend to overload Windows with their own propriatory software and then the whole experience goes downwards. He mentioned that for the next versions of windows mobile, they intend to post stricter requirements just because of this situation.
As I also read in these forums, people who got their devices from O2 (just to mention a single company), seem to have more issues with HTC's performance...
I enjoy using the phone everyday and I am in the process of customising it to my needs, though it takes some time!
Uhhh mymobiler is amazing thanks for posting that! That is frickin sweet!
Great review, I tend to agree.
As far as PIM Management, I came from using two devices, a slim panasonic phone and a Xircom Rex 6000 PDA in the early part of this decade (circa 2001), like you I converged them into a Sony Ericsson phone (T610>T616) which had limited capabilities and lacked a lot of features my Rex had. In 2006, I got my first Windows Mobile smartphone, a Qtek 8310 (HTC Tornado), and now I have the HTC Touch Cruise.
Ever since getting into Windows Mobile, I thought that HTC/Microsoft had delivered great functionality, but poor usability and way too much lag for such high powered devices. Take for instance the settings panel. There are probably over 8 programs (4+networking icons, 3+ button config icons, ect) in there that only have one check box, when I'm sure HTC/Microsoft could very easily put them into one or two easy to use program with a Help feature.
But at the end of the day, I don't care if no one can use my device as long as I understand it. Additional consolation is provided in the fact that this phone looks so damned sexy
My Own impression
First of all, I'm new here & let me introduce my self...
I'm Richard & i'm from Indonesia.
I've waited for +3 months, before I decided to buy HTC Touch Cruise.
My other candidate are Atom Life & Nokia N82.
Soon (2 days) after my pal (who own a PDA shop) introduce me to Touch Cruise, I bought it
First impression is luxury.
Second impression........Windows Mobile sucks......
I have done hard reset for 4 times now....due to mis configure the registry....
I've done quite intensive test on my Touch Cruise, including Video,Audio,GPS,3G & Internet,Battery life & Applications.
This is my score (0-10):
1. Stability : 3 -> Typical Windows product
2. Looks : 9
3. Dimension : 8
4. Features : 8
5. Usability : 8
6. User Friendliness : 6
7. Battery Life : 7
Average score : 7
The Driver issue doesn't bothered me yet, so I'm very pleased with my new Touch Cruise
NOTE:
FYI,try not to uninstall anything from your TC.
Microsoft Windows product tends to leave "garbage" into the Registry & it will slow down your TC.
Choose wisely before installing & if you have to uninstall,search & delete any leftover inside the registry.
d4rkkn16ht said:
1. Stability : 3 -> Typical Windows product
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Click to collapse
What's wrong with stability? I'd have to agree that it is probably not the best device overall, but I didn't have a single stability issue with it. Maybe, you've got a defective one?
You know, there are certain lag things that I don't think are due to video drivers. I mentioned this in another thread "Why the lag" but I used to have a Cingular 8525 and supposedly that device had video drivers. It still lagged with a phone skin when you hit the phone button. Rotating the screen was still slow. I hate little things that lag like that. it should be smooth navigation / interface.
The device doesn't have a cohesive feel to it when we have to customize the **** out of it to get it to work the way we want to. You're right when we make a today screen look good then all the underlying apps are ugly windows apps. Your transparency issue, that can only be done from within the Windows picture viewer not the HTC photo viewer. You need to install your own video player. The HTC video browser app only shows videos with certain extensions. It's like you have to have a specific app for every little thing and then it feels like there isn't a streamlined feel to the device.
I gotta give credit to HTC for trying to improve the interface with their apps, the Windows interface is archaic. It's just the combo of the 2 doesn't allow for a polished interface.
hambola said:
The device doesn't have a cohesive feel to it when we have to customize the **** out of it to get it to work the way we want to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On the other hand, thanks to HTC for a platform that allows us to do so and even greater kudos to all the xda-developer wizards who make it possible (and relatively easy for the most part).
Not enough can be said for xda. Although I'm a new poster I've been reading these forums for about a year now. Helped me out greatly with the 8525 and is proving to be helpful with the Cruise.
>You're right when we make a today screen look good then all the underlying apps are ugly windows apps.
I am happy we agree on this, I just wish it had a little bit of the Apple touch on it, that's all....
>Your transparency issue, that can only be done from within the Windows picture viewer not the HTC photo viewer.
All I wanted is a kind of minimal interface, so I can set my own wallpaper and not have it hidden by the huge HTC today plug-in. I have installed spb shell for a couple of weeks now and it looks great. I also discovered the HTC Home Customiser which looks cool, so, that's nice too.
>You need to install your own video player...
I think HTC should actually write a very generous paycheck for the people that developed CorePlayer. Without that one, Cruise would be a *little* bit of a disaster.
Overall I guess Windows is a versatile OS with lots and lots of space of customisation and at the end you do get it right, it just takes a lot of patience and resets to get there...
rev3nant said:
What's wrong with stability? I'd have to agree that it is probably not the best device overall, but I didn't have a single stability issue with it. Maybe, you've got a defective one?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After some intensive test, I found some irritating bug that caused stability issues.
Quick Menu sometimes disappeared after running several applications.
System Hang at random cause.
Some system settings cannot be changed even if you've already change it.
Redundancy in Registry Entry that can cause stability issues if you change the entry. (not considered a bug if you don't change it)
and some other (not quite sure yet...)
Have you tried a different ROM?
Got a company iPhone 3G yesterday and it's an intersting experience how different the devices and their OSes are. Think that's nothing new for the most but I like to share my impressions ...
The iPhone has an impressive build quality, feels very good and solid in your hands. The cold real glass touch screen paired with the chrome border and the smooth back are nicely put together. But it's a little too big, not thick, it's just rather a bigger phone. For surfing the web it's better to be big but for daily use the small dimension of the diamond appear to be more slick.
Safari is incredible in terms of speed and responsiveness. There are definetely moments where Safari isn't reactive but compared Opera it's another league. I am wondering that Opera who is doing browser development on embedded devices for years isn't able to build something similar. Just the time of the first connection and request is MUCH MUCH shorter than on Opera (both tested on 3G). I don' know if this issue is Opera's or WM's IP stack's or the radio ROM's fault. Site rendering, zooming, clicking on links is SO MUCH better than with Opera. I think that's clearly Opera's fault. The non-capacitive touch screen of the Diamond CAN BE reactive, look at TouchFLO on udK's latest BETA. Anyway and the larger screen is more comfortable despite its much lower resolution. But that's again a trade-off when it comes to transportation.
Just saying that the Diamond can be reactive with the right ROMs it's still awesome how much more reactive the iPhone's GUI is: Just swipe the main menu to the left or right a few times (screens are following your finger instantly) and you see what can be done with the right hard and software setup of a mobile device.
Great: the auto completion of recipients. The iPhone looks in your contacts and at the company server for matching namea the same time. SO SO FAST and stylish!
And now I'll make it short: what I am missing
- A2DP: all my devices at home are A2DP devices (3 devices) and it's damn convinient just to enter a room and within seconds you have music, a stylish remote and flexibility. My Diamond is my central music source, all the newest music on it (as my previos WM6 device). Second source is the notebook with my full collection also connected via A2DP with all the devices. Sorry but an iPod connector is so 80ies in times of A2DP
- A2DP tweaking - independently of the question if the iPhone ever will have A2DP I'll enjoy to be able to tweak the sound quality of a WM device to its max. Don't think that an iPhone will ever provide the flexibility when I look at the OSX A2DP stack (more a beta)
- Disc drive mode for syncing media - sorry but I don't want to manage iTunes or anybody to sync or handle my music and other media. Connect the diamond and you get asked if you want an ActiveSync device, a disc drive or an Internet sharing device, that's a PERFECT usability. Choose the disc drive option and go with high USB2.0 transfer speed.
- No calendar events with invitations, YOU CAN NOT invite participants?! Did I missed something? Crucial point, probably something for their next update
- E-Mails are not read/unread marked or do I have to change the settings?
- Smartdial, such a great feature on WM6, still ten times faster calling somebody with the Diamond
Still the GUI is amazing (loving OSX's font rendering) and I am happy that Apple raised the bar for mobile devices' OSes and hope that competitiors come with similar responsiveness & style but I doubt that. Apple showed the direction where mobile devices will go: replacing desktops/notebooks for many use cases.
Finally, the iPhone feels like a dinner in an high-class restaurant. You get four courses of finest french cuisine in a styled environment and pay 400 bucks for two persons. You are entirely impressed but still hungry because of small portions on big plates. So the next time you just get a Big Mac, french fries and a Coke when you are hungry, no style but you get what you asked for. That's Windows.
mttcee said:
Finally, the iPhone feels like a dinner in an high-class restaurant. You get four courses of finest french cuisine in a styled environment and pay 400 bucks for two persons. You are entirely impressed but still hungry because of small portions on big plates. So the next time you just get a Big Mac, french fries and a Coke when you are hungry, no style but you get what you asked for. That's Windows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
fantastic description
mttcee said:
... the next time you just get a Big Mac, french fries and a Coke when you are hungry, no style but you get what you asked for. That's Windows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah,
not so fantastic description!
People forget too fast how much you can do with Windows Mobile! Installing or programming real offline application for exsample - or customization! The iPhone on the other hand: cut off your internet / 3G and you have most likely an useless (but yet expensive) toy with cool animated menus ... - ... however, still useless!
Junner2003 said:
The iPhone on the other hand: cut off your internet / 3G and you have most likely an useless (but yet expensive) toy with cool animated menus ... - ... however, still useless!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Pssst, The Cold War is over,
you can come out of your nuclear bunker.
If you would recommended three, or even more, pieces of software for my Windows Mobile device, what would those be?
Bing -- powerful, versatile, and easy to use. Tons of info at your fingertips. Come in VERY handy for me more times than I can count.
Evernote -- taking notes isn't very useful if you can't find them later or forget to look at them. Using Evernote on my PPC and desktop means my info is always available in a quick, searchable way. Also very handy for taking photos of things I want to remember (like a magazine article) and making sure it's accessible on my desktop. OneNote is decent as well, but I prefer the way Evernote works on PPC (and being 100% free is a bonus too).
Skyfire -- there's no shortage of decent web browsers on WM, but Skyfire's ability to handle pretty much any site you throw at it makes it really useful.
Also, it's not really a program per se, but an Exchange-synced calendar and contacts list is, I think, a HUGE must-have. I use Google Sync, and having my calendar pushed both ways makes it 10x more useful than any USB-sync system ever was for me.
Opera Mobile
Advance config
Live messenger
for mention just some of them
It will depend on wich ROM are you running: wm 5, 6, 6.1 or 6.5
My faves...
Google Maps, like it love it. Complete app and comes in handy everday.
Opera- Used to use skyfire, till i got a wvga phone. Skyfire is terrible on wvga phone.
Vito Communications suite- This will cost you about $25 but I honestly couldn't function with out this setup. Winterface, funcontacts, SMS-chat are all amazing beautiful programs, ridiculously fluid and add a new higher level of clean fluidity to windows mobile. depending on the phone, I'd upgrade to an extremely light ROM and put this bad boy on right away and call it a day.
ThumbCal- if you've ever used winmo calendar you know. This is extremely finger friendly...amazing app.
s2p- windows media player is old and outdated...s2p is funtimes, finger friendly although very iphoney...if you're looking for the complete package
Kinoma play- total package app. nuff said
s2v or image viewer 0.9- s2v is iphoney but an awesome picture viewer. Image viewer is a lesser known picture viewer but doesn't skimp on the quality. Has an smooth feel an i think uses opengl..not sure though.
Quickmenu- not too sure if this fits your liking especially with what htc has done in making changes to the start button, but I have havent uses my phone in years with out quick menu. its a do all app that can be a launcher and task manager...my personal must have
WKtask, e-natives, taskfacade- no personal preference here since what I really want would be something similar to the PRE, but wktask is non obtrusive, e-natives is more HTC menu like, taskfacade is more graphical. whatever you like.
I could go on for a while here...but there are some of my faves with alternatives...its what i love most about winmo, the only reason I wont leave, so much customization
typo said:
Bing -- powerful, versatile, and easy to use. Tons of info at your fingertips. Come in VERY handy for me more times than I can count.
Evernote -- taking notes isn't very useful if you can't find them later or forget to look at them. Using Evernote on my PPC and desktop means my info is always available in a quick, searchable way. Also very handy for taking photos of things I want to remember (like a magazine article) and making sure it's accessible on my desktop. OneNote is decent as well, but I prefer the way Evernote works on PPC (and being 100% free is a bonus too).
Skyfire -- there's no shortage of decent web browsers on WM, but Skyfire's ability to handle pretty much any site you throw at it makes it really useful.
Also, it's not really a program per se, but an Exchange-synced calendar and contacts list is, I think, a HUGE must-have. I use Google Sync, and having my calendar pushed both ways makes it 10x more useful than any USB-sync system ever was for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im with you on Skyfire but the must have is Total Commander
SK Tools. Best 16 bucks you can spend.
Hi, I'm wondering if anyone can tell me from experience of any decent looking, finger-friendly apps that completely integrate with the M2D interface (working with the messages tab & people tab)?
I've tried a few, and done a fair amount of hacking, but nothing so far is a very smooth or seamless setup. There's always SOME sort of bug or thing that doesn't quite work how you would hope.
I just want to be have it work 'pretty much' like the built-in Microsoft apps (as far as launching from the tabs properly, opening a SMS message from a contact, etc) but just be MUCH nicer looking and working than the typical Microsoft interface (does MS not have enough money to even hire 1 decent interface designer???).
- I have iDialer/iContact working as the default contact app currently, and like this pretty well. But it just launches the default Microsoft SMS app when you want to text someone.
- I have Vito SMS-Chat as my default SMS app (as much as possible), but even when I was able to get it to open from the Messages tab, it only opens to the main screen, not right to a specific message or person.
- I'm trying Vito Fun Contact as the contact app (as it 'should' interface well with SMS-Chat), but it crashes Touch-Flo upon closing every time.
There has to be SOME sort of decent setup for this! Even if the default apps were re-skinned nicely it might be acceptable.
THANKS!!!
Hmm, I dont think you'll get that kind of integration anywhere.
Really??? In the world of Windows there's really nothing that works & looks well? I try to find reasons not to pick up an iPhone, but it gets harder the more time I spend searching for decent solutions.
How about new HTC phones with WM 6.5? Does this offer any better apps or solutions? Or is it still the same old 'junk' underneath the hood? I'm considering getting a Touch Pro 2 once Win 6.5 is running well on it if it's any better than what I got.
I'm interested to know how many people would like to see a WisBar Advance Desktop build for Android. Just let me know. Thanks!
+1
I think WAD was a very cool launcher in WMobile
Fantastic loved it on win mob
Sent from my Pulse Mini using Tapatalk
I loved wisbar!
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using Tapatalk
Well, so far it's looking like there's at least a little interest. I'll get started.
Count me in a interested. Never ran wm without it!
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk
Its funny that you mention it. I just visited the wisbar forums thinking there may be something about it coming to android. Before switching to android I had purchased and used Wisbar and WAD. As good as WAD for WM was, it just never really worked perfectly. And thats only because of the limitation of WM and the hardware not WAD itself.
I think android is the perfect platform that would be ready to embrace WAD. I will be looking forward to using it in the future I think WAD for android will be what the long term goals of WAD for WM had striven for.
I'm glad that you finally decide to make an android version of WAD2(I've ask for that a long time ago in your forum).
I hope that this best wm UI will come on android devices very soon.
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I use WAD (now 2) since a long time. I could not do without it. It is the only reason to stay at WM6.x.
If there would bei WAD2 for Android, it would be great and I think I would change over to Android too
Interestng...I also used WAD when I had a PPC device. I would be interested too.
I would be interested too... On WinMo Wisbar Advanced Desktop was amazing!
Thank you everyone for your interest. I've been doing some thinking about this as it will be a major step for me as I've been a long-time supporter of Windows Mobile (I've been around since PPC2000).
Given how powerful Android is, I can only think of one UI limitation at the moment: since there's no taskbar with an ever-present start menu, I'll have to make the app-drawer/launcher available on every page. At least, that's probably the best way to go right now unless someone has a different opinion/preference.
Another thing I was thinkg about: do you want a variable number of pages (being added through Menu > Add Page) or should I add a preference like some other launchers have to specify the number of pages?
These are very good news.
I can't wait to be able to use WAD again. I just hope that HTC Tattoo will be supported.
As for pages, I prefer the way of wm WAD2(pages added via menu).
So, I'm thinking about approaching this from a different direction than I did with Windows Mobile.
The first major change is I'm thinking about using a scripting language to describe how things are laid out and how they behave rather than just dragging and dropping items. The reason is two-fold:
1) This will give the script designer more control about how things look and how they work.
2) We won't run into the problem of shortcuts that open apps and widgets that are not installed on someone else's device (a major shortcoming of WAD2's).
So, the language would say something like: create a folder at x, y. This "button" will open it and this button will close it. You would also be able to specify an area where shortcuts could be added, such as "create a shortcut grid at x, y", but you would not be able to specify the shortcuts (this would be left up to the user who is using your theme).
One downside of this is that the layouts would have to be created on the desktop and then uploaded to your phone.
The other downside is that this would severely hamper the ability to launch specific apps using scripts. But, this is really a limitation of Android itself as, unlike Windows Mobile, not every device comes with the same core set of apps. And, for the apps that are included in most devices (such as the calendar), the intents to launch them may vary depending on the OS version (i.e. the calendar changed in between Eclair and Froyo).
I'm just brainstorming here. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to let me know. Right now I'm in the planning stages to see how close I can keep it to Windows Mobile, but at the same time implement new technologies in order to make it the most robust launcher around.
hells yeah man!!! i used it on my tilt for a while.....i think its ironic how similar android really is to winmo...just more refined but very similar in the idea
I found this thread quite late but i can just say +1. =)
I would really like to see Wisbar Adv Desktop on Android. Hope you are making good progress
I just finished asking your to offer support for android on your forums.
Feel free to plus one over too, guys.
http://forum.lakeridgesoftware.com/showthread.php?p=106717#post106717
See it for the first time. +100000
I used to love making themes!!
Sent from my X10i
Awesome. Back in the days WAD was one of the best applications for WM, I've always been impressed by how much one could do with it.
I like the idea of creating themes on the desktop and then uploading them to the phone, because creating themes has always been kind of difficult and work-intensive.
You can map the app drawer to the home button or you might even be able to implement the ability to create shortcuts that open the app drawer.
Concerning the number of homescreens, I think Menu > Add Page is a bit more convenient and less likely to mess things up (since removing non-empty home screens could create issues, as it did with some launchers).
chmckay said:
Thank you everyone for your interest. I've been doing some thinking about this as it will be a major step for me as I've been a long-time supporter of Windows Mobile (I've been around since PPC2000).
Given how powerful Android is, I can only think of one UI limitation at the moment: since there's no taskbar with an ever-present start menu, I'll have to make the app-drawer/launcher available on every page. At least, that's probably the best way to go right now unless someone has a different opinion/preference.
Another thing I was thinkg about: do you want a variable number of pages (being added through Menu > Add Page) or should I add a preference like some other launchers have to specify the number of pages?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just stumbled over this.... is it for real?
WAS with all the functionality will be ported over to Android? This will be the killer app taking all other launchers / home screen apps out of biz.
I am here to betatest!
chmckay said:
So, I'm thinking about approaching this from a different direction than I did with Windows Mobile.
The first major change is I'm thinking about using a scripting language to describe how things are laid out and how they behave rather than just dragging and dropping items. The reason is two-fold:
1) This will give the script designer more control about how things look and how they work.
2) We won't run into the problem of shortcuts that open apps and widgets that are not installed on someone else's device (a major shortcoming of WAD2's).
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Hopefully you can get the HTC Sense Widgets to work as well at least on HTC devices where this should not be a violation of copyright laws. I will gladly offer to borrow you a european HTC Desire for testing purposes if that is of any help.
I second your notiong of requiring a script language, but of course it would take one that is not laid out for programmers but also still understandable for regular designers. Search around here in the Forum for SlickUI and KiteUI, both which are still deep in the "maybe wel will do this stage" for some decent ideas on how people imagine their ideal design, and therefore gfgiving you an idea how much flexibility your framework needs.
Things that should really be in the to-do-list: radial icon menus. That means you assign say 6-8 icons to a WAD icon placed on the homescreen, upon tapping this the home screen blurs and the assigned icons circle around the pushed icon. This is a terrific way to organize similar apps IMO, much better looking than the folder blocks we have gotten used to.
WAD actually was one reason I found it very hard to aprt with my WM phone. Thie level of adustability had not been reached before. People who do not know what the heck I am creaming my pants about should use google image search for "wisbar advance desktop". It was a pure naked framework, allowing beasically every freedom any designer could wish / hope for.
Anotherr important thing to note is the touch features which have come quite a long way since WM6.5. You would need to extend the framework in order to allow rotating dials for menu control, swipe movements for changing screen left to right and vice versa.
If you could actually manage to pull the old stunt where you made an app run constantly on a "homescreen" it would be awesome. Imagine 3-5-7-whatnot screen with widgets laid out side by side, but a simple upward stroke brings you into the already preloaded browser (from which you return with the back key into the regular homescreen).
God, I am bursting with ideas.
As I said, I will beat test all days long if you need someone.
So, the language would say something like: create a folder at x, y. This "button" will open it and this button will close it. You would also be able to specify an area where shortcuts could be added, such as "create a shortcut grid at x, y", but you would not be able to specify the shortcuts (this would be left up to the user who is using your theme).
One downside of this is that the layouts would have to be created on the desktop and then uploaded to your phone.
The other downside is that this would severely hamper the ability to launch specific apps using scripts. But, this is really a limitation of Android itself as, unlike Windows Mobile, not every device comes with the same core set of apps. And, for the apps that are included in most devices (such as the calendar), the intents to launch them may vary depending on the OS version (i.e. the calendar changed in between Eclair and Froyo).
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I'm just brainstorming here. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to let me know. Right now I'm in the planning stages to see how close I can keep it to Windows Mobile, but at the same time implement new technologies in order to make it the most robust launcher around.[/QUOTE]
#Pinch to zoom and similar gestures will go a long way in allowing to extend the possibilites and ways the users can interact with the interface. Instead of an always visible appdrawer you could just use a gesture predefined that will launch the app drawer
Should we make a thread where all former WAD users and upcoming UI design freaks post their wishlists?