As many of you already know, the long-awaited, high-end, albeit “disconnected” HP iPAQ 21x series is out - currently, the only (standalone) PDA to have a 4", good-quality (if they use the same, excellent screen as in the predecessor, the hx4700 – that is, not a cr*ppy one, heavily suffering from severe polarization issues like the one in the Dell Axim x50v/x51v) VGA screen – at a pretty nice price point, compared to the high-end PDA phones of, say, HTC.
Some (not all – see for example THIS) of the initial discussions talked about the new, high-end, 210-series being based on the PXA320 CPU, the best of the new, Marvel PXA3x0 series. This is why I really was looking forward to this device - after all, it would have been the very first VGA device to sport a PXA320.
Currently, there is only one Windows Mobile model out there with the PXA320, the LG KC1, but it's just an, in my opinion, pretty much mediocre QVGA phone - really nothing to write home about (no 4” VGA and it’s Korean and WM5-only – and I don’t know of “hacked”, “cooked” ROM’s making it English – albeit I haven’t searched XDA-Devs for more info), except for the high (806 MHz) CPU clock, which can come VERY handy when running for example emulators like Masterall's excellent FinalBurn, the various SNES or GBA emulators or Mplayer playing back HTTP RealAudio streams, all requiring as much processing power as possible.
Using the new PXA320 instead of the 310 would have been a decent decision. Not only because of the higher CPU clock (and, therefore, the higher maximal speed) and other goodies like the large(r) cache, but also because of the seemingly superior video decoding capabilities, which help a lot with decoding for example full (not just “plain” 640-wide VGA), that is, PAL/NTSC-resolution (720 pixels wide) H.264 videos (please consult the just-linked H.264 Bible if you don’t but would like to understand this paragraph). Incidentally, the H.264 PXA320 is so powerful that it’s even rumored to be able to decode 720p (that is, 1280*720) H.264 videos on even an underpowered Pocket PC (!!) without problems. Quite a feat, isn’t it? Not that there would be any point in watching 1280*720 videos on a 640*480 (or, at most, 800*480) screen – let alone the huge storage requirements of these x264 files, which, in many cases, exceed the file size capabilities (4096 Mbytes at most) of the FAT32 file system used on current cards (because, initially, they were designed for NTFS or other file systems capable of much bigger files).
However, HP’s decision for going with the clearly worse 310 is pretty much understandable (considering the price difference between the two CPU’s) and acceptable – as long as you resize & reconvert your H.264 videos to be no wider than 640 pixels. Then, assuming CorePlayer (the premium video player for all major mobile platforms) indeed, as is promised HERE, receives support for WMMX in version 1.2, you’ll see a dramatic increase in decoding efficiency of at least inferior video formats like MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 Part 2 (a.k.a. DivX / Xvid; not to be mistaken for the much more advanced H.264 / AVC!). This subject, by the way, is also thoroughly discussed HERE – I really recommend sonichedgehog360’s posts in there.
Note that, currently, the CorePlayer folks only promise WMMX support (which, again, doesn’t help with decoding H.264). That is, no hardware H.264 decoding support has been announced. They have stated they will announce if and, if it’s possible at all, when this kind of support is added to CorePlayer after the release of CorePlayer 1.2. This means don’t run out to purchase the new iPAQ if you’re a H.264 buff: CorePlayer may not receive H.264 hardware decoding support at all.
Of course, even if no H.264 hardware decoding support is added to CorePlayer, the new CPU platform is still vastly superior to the old, PXA270 platform. Just take a look at THIS and THIS (the PXA310 and PXA320 specs, respectively). Note that some of the online comparisons are plain useless. For example, the PXA310 quick summary HERE doesn’t even mention WMMX2 or H.264 hardware acceleration support (as opposed to the PXA320 quick summary HERE). The above-linked PDF files, on the other hand, contain much more dependable information.
Otherwise, the device is pretty nice and the fact that it is no longer based on a touchpad (as opposed to the predecessor, the hx4700) makes it much more usable in everyday situations (for example, gaming, e-book reading or Web browsing using the D-pad). It also sports USB host capabilities, which, unfortunately, is a very-very rare feature among current Windows Mobile models and was REALLY useful on the Fujitsu-Siemens (RIP!) Pocket Loox series (for example, the most versatilye WM2003SE device ever, the Loox 720) and some other models like the Toshiba e750+ - and some current ones like the (otherwise, isn’t that nice) Toshiba G900.
I plan to publish the further installments of my Multimedia-related Bible series (of which I've already published several chapters of) only after 02/21 - that is, after the impending release of CorePlayer 1.2 (only the Windows Mobile version, unfortunately - that is, the Symbian / Palm versions will only be released later. See for example THIS for more info on the release date of the Symbian version). Version 1.2 promises a lot of great goodies: UPnP support, RTSP support etc. I’ve chosen not to publish the final Bible before the release so that it doesn’t get outdated in the very near future.
I’ve, in the meantime, purchased a BlackBerry 8800. This also means I’ll start working on the long-promised Push Mail Bible really soon, paying special attention to accessing BlackBerry servers from Windows Mobile and explaining the difference between BlackBerry and Microsoft Exchange, the advantages and disadvantages of both approach with a lot of never-before-published, real-life tricks and benchmark results.
Also, in my future Bibles, I’ll also elaborate on the differences between the BlackBerry (BB ) OS and Windows Mobile – as I’ve done with Symbian S60 in the last few weeks. This will be especially useful for both new WM users coming from BB and both WM software developers and Microsoft itself – just like with my WM vs. Symbian S60 comparisons.
Note that, in order NOT to completely mess up my all-in-one Bibles with the constant references to, currently, three mobile operating systems, I’ll use different text colors when referring to non-Windows Mobile operating systems. That is, if you have only had Windows Mobile devices and don’t want to know how a particular feature differs from, say, Symbian or BB, you will easily know what sentences / paragraphs / charts / columns in charts you can safely skip.
Note that, in the future, I also plan to add
- Apple iPhone – as soon as third-party apps (like CorePlayer, which is being ported to iPhone and already has a working (!), already MPEG4 Part 2 (DivX) video playback-capable prototype – see THIS, THIS and THIS for, for example, YouTube demo videos) become common on it and/or
- Android if and when it gets more support and/or
- (at least) Nokia’s Linux implementation when and if they release the rumored successor to their current, flagship Internet Tablet N810, which MAY contain a built-in phone unit. This, incidentally, will also allow for discussing Linux running on the, unfortunately, discontinued Sharp Zaurus line, of which I have the SL-C860 – a truly excellent, clamshell, VGA device with unparalleled screen quality. Yes, I’ve long been promising articles on Zaurii; now, with the advent of Nokia’s Linux platform on their Internet Tablets, I may indeed start paying attention / devoting articles / comparisons to the old, but still popular Zaurus platform along with the new Nokias.
With references to so many mobile operating systems, the new, colorized text will be a life-saver for people only interested in one (or some) of the covered OS’es. And, a gold-mine for multi-platform geeks & gadget freaks like me
There has long been a new and, on the protocol level, vastly improved, 6.x version of I’m InTouch, one of the best remote desktop and, particularly, PIM info / mail access tool for Windows Mobile. I’ve already made the tests & comparison to the previous version reviewed in the Remote Desktop Access Bible; as soon as the developers review / comment on the draft of my article, I publish it.
Bitbank Software have released the brand new, 4.0 version of their, for long-time Windows Mobile users, known VirtualCE PDA controller. I post a detailed review & comparison to SOTI’s highly recommended Pocket Controller and My Mobiler as soon as I get feedback from the Bitbank folks on my preliminary comparison & feature chart I’ve sent them. Speaking of My Mobiler, it has received a very decent upgrade – much more bugfree and has a lot of nice features – since I’ve reviewed it and, now, is pretty much recommended if you don’t mind the somewhat lower speed, particularly with VGA devices.
If you speak Finnish and follow one of the best, multiplatform Finnish mobility-related blogs (that of Tero Lehto), you may have already heard of Strategy Analytics Inc.’s 5-Star Safari Leads Mobile Browsing Experience. The results of the study have resulted in a heated discussion (and a lot of flames) in the Finnish blogosphere. I’ll also publish an article on this issue as soon as the author, Paul Brown, answers my last two mails asking for more thorough information on how the tests have been conducted, why Opera Mini was completely neglected and whether the testers were aware of the keyboard shortcuts of Opera Mobile. The latter is key to using Opera Mobile as effectively as possible – no wonder I’ve always, in all my Opera Mobile-related articles, strongly emphasized to learn its default button shortcuts – or redefine / reassign them if you’d like so. (The same stands for Opera Mini, by the way. If you do learn the button shortcuts, it’ll become the fastest-to-operate browser.)
I, along with the linked-to Finnish blog, feel Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) certainly doesn’t deserve the excellent (second) place, which is far better than that of both Opera Mobile and Nokia’s Web (Browser) in S60v3 FP1. The latter two browsers are without doubt FAR superior, in most respects, to IEM – if you learn to master their controls and shortcuts, that is. It’s the latter that I certainly lack from the users’ report in the Strategy Analytics Inc. report / summary. That is, it seems they didn't really try to learn to master all these shortcuts; instead, they used the menu system to access, for example, the favorites, go back to the previous page or enter a URL. In these respects, IEM is indeed easier to use (requires less screen taps / button presses) than both Opera Mobile and Nokia Web. However, if you do master the, on the Internet (for example, in my MS Smartphone Web Browsing Bible - see the related chart HERE, covering IEM and the two Operas on devices with a built-in dialpad), well-explained button shortcuts, the situation will be radically reversed and Opera Mobile / Nokia Web both become easier & faster-to-use than IEM. (The same stands for the non-reviewed/compared Opera Mini, of course.)
I also find that the lack of Opera Mini – currently, probably the most popular Web Browser even on Windows Mobile; see for example the latest voting results HERE, which also emphasize this – makes this report conveying pretty much questionable results. Finally, I also miss Netfront and, to a lesser degree, Thunderhawk and Picsel on Windows Mobile (and, the latter, on Palm OS as well). While, personally, I don’t particularly prefer these browsers (Opera Mini is far faster and more usable, particularly on a device with a dedicated dialpad – that is, a Blackberry, a Symbian phone, a MS Smartphone or one of the very few Pocket PC’s – for example, the Asus P525 and the LG KC1 – with a dialpad on the front), they still have a lot of fans.
As far as games are concerned released / announced since my previous all-in-one news post, Amiga Inc.’s Invasion is definitely worth mentioning, which has received a trial version available for download HERE. Note that, should you want to purchase the game, do it on Amiga Inc.’s own page, in there, the title only costs $5.99 – as opposed to the twice more expensive Clickgamer.
It’s the best and most enjoyable Space Invaders clone I’ve ever seen on Windows Mobile (see THIS, THIS, THIS and THIS for the alternatives) – for the price, a definite keeper. Its strengths are mostly the stylus-based control; the fact that you can also go upwards (should you want to kill your enemies faster – remember, your fire rate is restricted, as you can only have two missiles on the screen at the same time), the excellent animation, good sound effects and the in-menu, tracked, stereo, “scener” music (no in-game music, unfortunately).
Unfortunately, it isn’t compatible with pre-WM5 operating systems. Note that it’s one of the very few titles to support 240*240 square-screen phones.
Also note that, while the official homepage (or ClickGamer) doesn’t mention it with a word, it’s also compatible with the MS Smartphone platform: both QVGA and 176*220 devices (I’ve tested it on both my HTC Vox / s710 and Oxygen / s310). It runs flawlessly even on slow, non-overclocked TI OMAP CPU’s.
All in all, make sure you give it a try. Again, download the demo from ClickGamer, but purchase the game itself from the developer’s homepage to save some money!
Another gaming news: the new, in addition to the venerable and no-longer-developed Pocket Humanity, Civilization-alike, Revival (see the links to (p)reviews HERE), has still not been released. It’s promised to be released today, after some last-minute bugfixes. Hope they indeed manage to achieve this.
Emulation news: Masterall has released a preview of the brand new, 0.12 version of his EXCELLENT FinalBurn, by far the best (advanced 2D) arcade gaming console emulator. Make sure you give it a try – and provide feedback in the original thread. (And, if you don’t know the excellent games Finalburn is able to run, do check out the Arcade Emulation Bible!)
Are you coming to the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona? Then, we can even meet I’ll be there with my brand new, shiny Canon PowerShot SD950 IS (but will also take my Nokia N95 with me as another “video camera”) and posting long-long reports on the latest gadgets of the mobile worlds (mostly Windows Mobile, but, given that I’m really interested in other operating systems as well, I also plan to report on at least Symbian and BlackBerry). Yeah, be prepared for a LOT of news. (Megathanks for Hal Goldstein at Smartphone & Pocket PC Mag for the financial help; without him, I couldn't really attend the conference.)
A short offtopic thought (on high-end point&shoot digicameras): some time ago, I’ve stated I’d go for the SD870 IS mostly because of the wide lens and the excellent DP review. However, after reading through a lot of user opinions and direct comparisons of the two devices, I’ve realized the Canon folks still haven’t managed to produce a lens with flawless wide-angle. While some other manufacturers like Fuji and Panasonic have managed to produce a lens with better wide-angle; however, their Finepix S8000fd and TZ3 are suffering from some severe problems (for example, the, with Pana, ever-present, huge noise); so, I didn’t see the point in going for them. And, for portability / pocketabilty reasons (and the fear for the mechanical mirror’s getting worn out much faster than with a non-DSLR camera – I tend to take hundreds of photos a day, meaning several tens of thousands of photos a year, so, it’s a concern for me), I didn’t want to go with the, otherwise, tempting and great Oly E-510 either.
So far, I'm pretty much impressed with the camera. The 12 Mpixel CCD is definitely an overkill in a P&S camera with such a small lens system (it's the optics that puts a physical threshold on the maximal resolution, it seems) but is certainly a big step ahead of my old HP R717.
UPDATE (01/25/2008): PG frontpage
The WM version of CorePlayer 1.1.3, now, with the above-mentioned WMMX optimizations in place, has just been released.
It, among other things, has FULL HTC Kaiser / AT&T Tilt support (and support for all Qualcomm 7200-based Windows Mobile devices, for that matter - see for example THIS for more info on this issue). See for example THIS thread for more info on the Kaiser / Tilt opinions.
Note that it has a lot of other goodies as well; however, some of the advanced (mostly networking: UPnP, RTSP etc.) stuff is still missing. See THIS for more info on this - what the new version contains (of 1.2) and what it doesn't.
Well done, CoreCodec (Now, I only hope you'll release the Symbian version of 1.2 as well - or, at least, an interim, bugfix version just like 1.1.3 for WM...)
UPDATE (02/01/2008):
I, after more than a week’s waiting, still haven’t received any feedback from the Strategy Analytics Inc. folks regarding the lack of Opera Mini in their 5-Star Safari Leads Mobile Browsing Experience, which, in many Windows Mobile users’ (including me) opinion, is the most useful / quickest Web browser for the Windows Mobile platform. And, for other mobile platforms too – on my Symbian Nokia N95 and BlackBerry 8800, I almost exclusively use this browser to access the Web. Not including it in the test makes the entire report pretty hard to depend on – it’s like completely ignoring, for example, Ferrari (a top-performing car) when evaluating the cars of Formula-1.
And, of course, I’ve already elaborated on the bad ranking of Nokia Web (running on Symbian S60 3rd edition devices – that is, NOT on Windows Mobile) and, particularly, Opera Mobile (running on all major mobile platforms). Again and again, if you do learn the dialpad shortcuts and/or, with Opera Mobile running on a dialpad-less Pocket PC, use a third-party tool to assign its key functionalities (accessing favorites, current tabs, back etc.) to Pocket PC hardware buttons, they both become quicker and easier to operate than Internet Explorer. It’s clearly at this point (in addition to the lack of Opera Mini) that Strategy Analytics Inc.’s report severely lacks – it’s evident the test folks didn’t really make an attempt at learning the dialpad shortcuts / configure Opera Mobile for easy and much quicker access / use.
UPDATE (02/01/2008):
As far as running Invasion on MS Smartphones is concerned, you can’t use any of the dialpad buttons for firing (or controlling the ship). This makes the game pretty hard as you will need, in addition to pressing the Action button to keep firing, use the D-pad to control the ship. On Pocket PC’s, this isn’t an issue because, there, you can use the touchscreen for the latter. (Unless you have a 2.8”, non-Intel Xscale-based HTC phone – that is, almost all of their 2.8” WM5 and WM6 phones, including, for example, the Trinity, the Kaiser and the Wizard. Then, the well-known touschreen CPU usage bug will make the game pretty slow. Unfortunately, the HTC folks don’t seem to be bothered about the bug – I’ve been reporting it for two years to them but, so far, they haven’t fixed it.)
What's the best web browser for HTC touch pro? Unlocked with a customer ROM on it, but it just came with I.E. I really liked the opera mobile browser previously on the phone, but I wanted some input. If opera is the best, where is the best/newest/fastest version of opera mobile avaliable?
on experience Opera mobile 9.5 or 9.7 is the best browser
check the official thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=486502
opera mini is my favorate...
The new Opera Mini 5 beta looks pretty awesome.
Definately Opera Mini 5. For sites that use AJAX and other script-heavy technologies, Opera Mobile 9.5 (or 9.7, test it first on the device as its buggy).
In my experience, best is Opera 9.5 as provided with a lot of current (cooked) ROM's. Fastest is Opera 9.7 with Turbo enabled. This is being shipped with some of the newest ROMs (Tom Rhodium Manila 2.5 Build 23016 v1.0 for example).
Of course is Opera Mini. It's the most popular mobile phone web browser in the world. I use it on my diamond 2. It's awesome! And it's my favorite.
With Flash support IExplorer
Without Flash support Opera (mini v5 beta/mobile 9.7 beta), iris Browser v1.19 (but I don't know if it's free too)
Skyfire is only QVGA and NetFront is outclassed by previous browsers
D'rath
Opera Mobile if you use a lot of Touch Screen and turn off the G-Sensor stuff that automatically orients screen (which seems to do it at the least random movement sometimes).
I personally prefer Opera Mini only because it's more kb shortcut friendly (as opposed to touch my screen I like using the kb for quick favorites and other functions)
UCWEB is best for me, faster than Opera... Skyfire if you want to browse YouTube.