Database Info

IM Frustrations

For years now I’ve been standing firm by the pocket pc platform. In countless ways I think it is the way of the future for not only one’s phone, but the one device that we all carry around that does it all. I’m very pleased to say the platform has proven this time and time again. But there’s one grey area that just seems to be left in limbo with the improvements of everything else. This is IM! Back when I upgraded to my Cingular 8125 from my ipaq, I remember having the feeling something was missing. I had this new phone that could do it all, but it just wasn’t able to do it all correct, so I sought out on a search to find that perfect im app.
This was back in the days when agile was still in beta and was free. Aside from the ugly aim app that I had to download from the .uk site, this was pretty much the only option. But it was okay, it was a very good option. As time passed a few more came out, IM+ was around as well and a few other lack luster apps. I do remember paying for IM+ but wasn’t very happy with the UI and the way it worked with the soft keys so I kinda stuck to agile.
Then I got a whole of my 8525 when I came out. So I had this phone that could do it all (lol again) now with 3g included….and I still didn’t have an IM app to my liking. Agile and IM+ really started to look bad. Not to mention these were the days of the sidekicks! As much as I hate those things, one has to admit, they do what they’re supposed to do very well. The thing that really wowed me about the sidekick was its ability to switch to sms messenger for the aim when you’re on the phone. This was pure genius. It allowed you to stay connected while on the phone or not. Well….luckily we had a solution for that. It was called verichat.
Verichat had an option to enter your sms address and it would send you the messages via text if you were to be disconnected from the internet. This was all well and good, even though it worked…it was very slow. Not to mention the UI of the app itself was kinda slow as well…so I often got frustrated. So it’s about a year later and we have a few new comers. Among them are mundu, octrotalk and the latest and greatest palringo.
Once again I find myself paying for apps I’m not entirely happy with (no ones fault but myself.) But the life time membership for mundu wasn’t bad…it was only $11. Mundu has a very clean and welcome UI. Its features are definitely up to snuff, but it’s still missing what I think should be the basics. But overall this is a very good app. Octrotalk is still in beta….and by its rights a very good app. Even though I think the UI could use some polish and it’s still missing the “basics.” Now for my favorite of the bunch….palringo. This one is a almost a entire entity on its own, that just supports IM clients. The UI isn’t as pretty as mundu, but it’s still polished and the feature set is great….especially its support for push to talk and image I’m. But again….the basic.
What are these basics I keep rambling on about? Well…for one…lets start with displaying your contacts buddy icons. It kills me that none of these apps allow me to see my contacts buddy icons…and what’s even more annoying, I can’t set a custom pic for my icon in any app. This is such a huge feature and it needs these developers urgent attention. 2. I’d like to see support for fonts and colors. I should be able to import my favorite font to the phone and set size and color to be displayed to my contact when I’m in a conversation. Mundu touched on this a little but not enough. 3. Being able to read contacts away messages. Mundu and octrotalk does this but palringo does not….this should be a no brainier. 4. Just make it simple to navigate….there should be no reason I should have to take out the stylus. I should be able to scroll my list, start convos, switch between them, set custom away messages send images, so on and so forth with the soft keys.
Im not a developer, but I do know these few improvements shouldn’t be hard to accomplish. These are all standard on all desktop IM programs, other mobile platforms (like the sidekick and the iphone) and even web2 based sites (like meboo.com) And even if they’re difficult to develop….so what! Developers need to stop being lazy and get it done. I don’t care of if I have to pay $50 for the app. What really kills me inside is how the iphone came out, and within a few weeks it had 7 different I’m clients most of which had the basics down pat. Why does it take us 4 years in the ppc community? And we’re still not there yet. Anyone else feel this way? Is anyone out there listening???????

You need to re-format your post because it is not easy to read
What is your problem? Describe in 1 or 2 sentences ...

The new MSN Messenger mobile is amazing.
1. Intuitive and Easy navigation: Right/Left tabs between the conversations. Up/Down navigates buddies and messages.
2. Emoticons
3. Supports sending images.
4. (Amazingly useful) Supports sending Voice Clips. This is probably one of the most wow features about it.
5. Displays information about contacts, including the IM picture.

shaharprish said:
The new MSN Messenger mobile is amazing.
1. Intuitive and Easy navigation: Right/Left tabs between the conversations. Up/Down navigates buddies and messages.
2. Emoticons
3. Supports sending images.
4. (Amazingly useful) Supports sending Voice Clips. This is probably one of the most wow features about it.
5. Displays information about contacts, including the IM picture.
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while this is true. im looking for an all-in-one app. but you are correct...i did enjoy the msn live.

rzanology said:
What really kills me inside is how the iphone came out, and within a few weeks it had 7 different I’m clients most of which had the basics down pat. Why does it take us 4 years in the ppc community? And we’re still not there yet.
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Click to collapse
My current thoughts exactly. I'm crying inside.
I really hope that people at Palringo will get it "done" and not leave behind a client that will miss the important features. It's really amazing that some companies even charge for their poor inexcusable clients.
I also agree that those avatar images are more important than many would think. Last time i chatted with my ppc, i had three "Timo" persons online. Had to ask which one which was. I've gotten used to just look at the avatar.

I feel the same way! I LOVE having IM on my phone.. but it just seems like no single company can get it right on the PocketPC. I don't understand what the is the problem! My favorite two right now are Octrotalk and Mundu. I tried Palringo, but it lacked a couple critical things for me.
Octrotalk Pros
1. Today plugin that shows status
2. Doesn't crash... ever.. it stays connected for days
3. Fairly simple to change custom status text
Octrotalk Cons
1. No custom status text on the today plugin.. ARGH, so simple, I've requested it three times!
2. No profile pictures, come on... just add them!
3. Having Gtalk be the conduit for the other legacy IM clients still causes problems with my other IM clients like Trillian... I get duplicate contacts often
Mundu Pros
1. Supports profile pictures! Yippee
2. Displays custom status messages next to names on the contact list
3. Supports group conversations across IM mediums! woot!
Mundu Cons
1. No today plugin... I really like that feature in Octrotalk... just make a simple one line plugin that says status and custom message, ie. "Online - Mobile!"
2. No WM5 soft key support, I HATE tapping the screen.. even more so when the interface has a TINY menu bar.
3. Doesn't display the current custom status message for YOURSELF anywhere that I can find.

Also don't forget to read the IM Bible at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=295677 - it might contain info you aren't aware of.

Menneisyys said:
Also don't forget to read the IM Bible at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=295677 - it might contain info you aren't aware of.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i'll tell ya what....that disconnecting thing annoyed the hell outtah me. Im gonna try to check off the "always on" connection option in HTCustom and see what happens. I think thats the same reg hack.
But i've been through your post a few times...maybe one too many times.

Spb New Pocket Plus 4.0 - is worth a look

<< Plug Alert >> (I am not affiliated with Spb in any way.) (But if they give me free products, I wouldn't mind. )
I didn't see a thread about this announcement, so I thought I mention that Spb Software House has a new version of Pocket Plus. It is smaller, faster and has some really cool new features. I personally like the IE7-like tabs in PIE and the 'touch-like scrolling of Contacts and PIE. (Interestingly, if you use Spb Contacts, I can't seem to get it to scroll.)
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/pocketplus/?en
I have been a big fan of Spb. I know now that I've been on the XDA forum for a while that some of the features of the Spb products are available for free, but I think they do a great job of putting it all together.
I loaded this yesterday and I've been busy with work, so it is a little early to review. Has anyone else looked that this. Post your comments here.

I love the new "Smart Scrolling" feature... You can scroll your contacts and web sites like on TouchFLO.. Great stuff..

I have been using SPB Plus for the past two years. Downloaded this new version and in just one hour I was convinced to purchase the licence key.
I am specially impressed by the reduction in memory usage over the previous version and also the large tabs fit for finger operation and finally the way it handles third party today screen plug-ins.

Tried the trial version:
good point - doesn't take too much memory to run.
Bad point - occupies 2.9 meg of device memory.
good point - runs other plugins within tabs.
bad point - no need for Ilauncher anymore.
good point - tabs in IE.
bad point - smart scrolling doesn't work very well ( I do have touchflo rom so maybe this is interfering with it).
bad point - only lets you put 6 tabs on today screen.
good point - you could run Ilauncher in a tab and have more tabs to launch things.
good point - skinable.
overall I like it, i'm going to run the trial version for as long as possible but on first impression I may switch to this it is fast and flexible enough and integrates well with other programs.
I would recommend you try it. (I;m not affiliated in any way either).

need help with my fuze experience - by an ex Blackberry user (long)

Hi Guys,
First thank you all for such a great community. XDA truly "sold" me the HTC fuze...as I was very excited about such an excellent user base. I lurked here for a few days before I bought, and have lurked a few more days while I have played with the phone, so far with very positive experiences...
So here is my question...
I am an ex blackberry user...4 years running. Had the 7290 and the more recent 8800. I liked the phones but were frequently frustrated by things such as lack of home-brew software (or at least lack of software easy to find and well supported), lack of a decent web browser, lack of an attractive UI (albeit theirs was very functional) and lack of 3G (on att at the moment). Now I know that the BB Bold fixed some of this, but to me its the same ole blackberry tricks (do email real well, slack off on the rest), and I was really ready for a highly extensible smart phone.
Enter the HTC fuze...
I love the apps, love the idea of custom ROMS, love that it runs a very common platform (windows mobile, important as some companies write apps that only run on windows mobile), and love the sheer power of the HTC fuze (can easily browse filesystem, look at memory usage...its essentially a very small laptop), but I have one primary complaint...it does all these cool things, but IMO it does NOT do email/messaging/contact management well...and worse, I have not been as impressed with the web browser as I thought I would be (using opera, have not tried IE...also some of this is my fault, I am trying to use fat-client web pages vs mobile web pages, which are faster and just perform better). Now before I get flamed, let me clarify that I am using the Energy Rom 3.0, so some of my griefing may be self inflicted. That being said, here are some specifics of what irritations Ive ran into with messaging/email/contact management...ill list them out categorized in order of importance (can you tell I am an engineer?)
Email
1. No heads up display of new messages on the home screen (have to poke around to the email area to see if you have new messages)
2. Does not enter an @ and . symbol when hitting spacebar key while typing email address in "To:" field (ex-blackberry users will sympathize)
3. I get too many emails for the graphical envelope to be useful...it looks cool, but when I am 30 emails deep i really don't want to have to click menu to get to all messages, just let the mail icon take me right to the goodies please...
4. read/unread/replied messages are not well represented (could be that it is just different that the blackberry feel, but a different color or something would be nice...the standard is bold/yellow/dark is unread and light/white/shadowy is read...and replied as some sort of representation as well
There are a few others but those are the main ones
Messaging
1. Clicking the message, and then immediately beginning to type (as in to reply) will take you to the address book!!, in order to start a new message! It is beyond me why it does not just start entering text as a reply for your current message you are viewing, and this is a huge annoyance!
2. Found this the other day...replying to an MMS message by clicking gives an error (wont deliver) but hitting menu and then reply will then prompt for "MMS or SMS reply?" and the message goes through fine...irritating!
3. Tapping spacebar twice does not place a period, although not capitalizing the first letter in a sentence auto-capitalizes - this is a blackberry feature that is not here and i miss it :'(
4. Once again lack of proper heads up in the home menu....why is the clock giant??? Looks cool but waste of space...I would rather have a breakdown of my messages/emails/missed calls with limited details so I can see whats going on, on my home screen.
5. General slowness when going from the message browsing with the envelopes to the reply, detailed view.
Contact Management
1. Adding a contact is no where near simple...and there are too many "mines" you can accidentally click in the process which will do odd things like add an address book entry with no name in it, or call someone!
2. The "people" tab is useless...i removed it (not really a complaint as I fixed it...but I just don't understand that concept of favorites....that being said my background is in database administration so all data is good data to me, the more the merrier...explains my 500+ contacts, half of which i prob dont need but keep around just in case)
3. Last name first???? Blackberry was always first name last...further more, I entered a business the other day in my contact list, and it put the second part of the business name as the last name, leading to a very odd address book entry...I did not like that bit of assumption on the phones part.
So I guess you could probably sum up all my complaints into 3 things:
1. I am way too used to blackberry shortcuts and having a hard time weening myself off
2. There are 10 ways to do the same things and get to the same places on the phone, and some times a few of those ways are less buggy/intuitive than others...why not just have the best methods enabled only?
3. Too many buttons take you places you did not intend to be...its not one way in one way out of each module (mail, messaging, ect.)...its 5 ways in, 10 ways deeper, uh....im lost, how do I make a phone call? (I'm being facetious of course but you get my drift)
Anyways, I am not trying to slam the phone, it is slick, sexy, and free (refurb through an ATT deal), but I just need some ROM/tweak/psychological suggestions to make it "fit" me better.
Thank you all truly,
Crackberry addict in serious withdrawal

Ok, so piece by piece:
Email:
1. For a pop-up for new email messages, go to start>settings>sounds&notifications>notifications. There you can choose messaging: new email message, and select display message on screen. This will give you a pop up at the bottom every time you get a new email. you can do this for all those other events that are in the drop down too.
2. Don't know of anything to do this
3. There should be a inbox button for your i think left soft-key. Two clicks isn't much more than 1
4. Don't know of anything
Messaging:
1. This happens jut because of lag in the system. You have to wait until everything loads up to start typing. Sounds like you need a cooked rom
2. Bug?
3. My phone does what you ask, although I am running 6.5. My settings in input have "enable auto correct" with a check mark next to them. Don't know if this solves the problem in 6.1
4. Regular Today screen. Try something like TouchFlo Detacher, which allows you with the soft key button to easily and quickly switch back and forth between the regular today screen, which would have all that info that you desire, and touchflo. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=480475
5. Cooked rom, bigger pagepool
Contact Management:
1. Sorry this is just winmo. Contact entry area is not exactly the most finger friendly menu. Try the stylus. I know what you mean, though.
2. Basically the people tab is just for people you call on a daily basis, and it looks cool lol
3. You can change that in the contact's settings where it says "file as"; I like first name first also, so I just changed it so that was the way it is displayed.
Overall Points:
1. It is difficult to go from blackberry to winmo, but everything does have a slight learning curve.
2. Most view this to be the beauty of winmo. You have infinite possibilities, since everyone likes to do things differently. If microsoft wanted to assume that everyone wanted to do everything the same way and that there was one, best, all-powerful way to do things, then they could just merge with apple
3. Lol don't understand this one
Any more questions, I'd be happy to help

thanks
hey,
thanks for the detailed reply. got most of the answers i needed...I am using a cooked rom (energy 3.0) which runs WM 6.5, but it comes with the Manila skin. After doing some research I think I need to ditch that and start from there...any other pointers?

You could try to use the default WM6.5 home plugin instead of TF3D, it may suit your needs better.

Killer-apps or essential software for Windows Mobile?

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.

How did you hardcore androider's adapt?

I'm looking really hard at the 1520 on sale Friday.
Love Android...really love Google Apps actually but am in love with the 1520.
Played with it for about 30min today.
But you former androider's who switched and actually live with Windows now, how was the adjustment, honestly?! What do you really miss?!
Thanks

rockky said:
I'm looking really hard at the 1520 on sale Friday.
Love Android...really love Google Apps actually but am in love with the 1520.
Played with it for about 30min today.
But you former androider's who switched and actually live with Windows now, how was the adjustment, honestly?! What do you really miss?!
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought I was going to miss the customization of Android but I haven't yet. My 920 and 1020 are silky smooth and reliable. Apps? Every app that I used on Android I have on WP8. Even the 3rd party apps are excellent for those mainstream apps not yet on WP *cough* Instagram *cough*
I've had multiple iPhones and Androids and I will not be going back to either for the foreseeable future. Good luck with the 1520, it's a sweet phone!

Thanks for the response.
I'm gonna miss Google Now for sure! No windows equivalent I don't believe.

I just switched. Before I had a HTC HD2 (first several custom Windows Mobile 6.5 ROMs, then Android) and then a Note 1 with several custom ROMs and Kernels (stuck with Slim ROMs btw. for the last months).
So far (after almost two weeks) the things I miss most are:
- decent toggles to quickly switch on and off things like WiFi and Bluetooth and to see their current states (be it as live tiles or centralized inside an app)
- decent battery analysis tools (percentages are only refreshed every 30 minutes; OS limitation) to check for battery eating applications
- the swype keyboard (best voice recognition (esp. punctuation and capitalization); but plain typing and word prediction on WP8 are superb!!!)
- seperate volume levels for media and notifications (about to come in the black update, due in a month or two)
- custon notification sounds (SMS, Mail, etc.; you can set custom ringtones and alarms though)
- ascending alarms (best way to wake up in the morning; so far I mady my own ascending alarm sound in Audacity)
- a way to get a preview of the newest messages across all message options (WhatsApp, SMS, Mail,...) on the lockscreen (so far you can display only one from a single program that you have to set beforehand)
- an easy way to close an application (now you have to exit it via sometimes quite a lot of presses on the back key; but the black update will bring this option)
- seemless integration of playback from web-videoplayers (although even Google took its sweet time to get even close to that...)
As for the app situation... The selection IS smaller, esp. when you are a pro user. Also the general quality of implementation is somewhat lacking in many cases (I guess its the lack of competition, als well as OS limitations (see custom sounds and settings access)). But for day to day use I have no serious complaints. Normal users will be more than fine and even I can live with the omissions and compromises.
I will stay with my Lumia 1020 and keep it as my only phone (my Note is currently going up on ebay). The build quality is superb, the main Nokia apps are as well and the Windos Phone 8 UI actually feels more modern than Android. Clean, responsive, effective.

ThoroSOE said:
I just switched. Before I had a HTC HD2 (first several custom Windows Mobile 6.5 ROMs, then Android) and then a Note 1 with several custom ROMs and Kernels (stuck with Slim ROMs btw. for the last months).
So far (after almost two weeks) the things I miss most are:
- decent toggles to quickly switch on and off things like WiFi and Bluetooth and to see their current states (be it as live tiles or centralized inside an app)
- decent battery analysis tools (percentages are only refreshed every 30 minutes; OS limitation) to check for battery eating applications
- the swype keyboard (best voice recognition (esp. punctuation and capitalization); but plain typing and word prediction on WP8 are superb!!!)
- seperate volume levels for media and notifications (about to come in the black update, due in a month or two)
- custon notification sounds (SMS, Mail, etc.; you can set custom ringtones and alarms though)
- ascending alarms (best way to wake up in the morning; so far I mady my own ascending alarm sound in Audacity)
- a way to get a preview of the newest messages across all message options (WhatsApp, SMS, Mail,...) on the lockscreen (so far you can display only one from a single program that you have to set beforehand)
- an easy way to close an application (now you have to exit it via sometimes quite a lot of presses on the back key; but the black update will bring this option)
- seemless integration of playback from web-videoplayers (although even Google took its sweet time to get even close to that...)
As for the app situation... The selection IS smaller, esp. when you are a pro user. Also the general quality of implementation is somewhat lacking in many cases (I guess its the lack of competition, als well as OS limitations (see custom sounds and settings access)). But for day to day use I have no serious complaints. Normal users will be more than fine and even I can live with the omissions and compromises.
I will stay with my Lumia 1020 and keep it as my only phone (my Note is currently going up on ebay). The build quality is superb, the main Nokia apps are as well and the Windos Phone 8 UI actually feels more modern than Android. Clean, responsive, effective.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the information as I am looking to switch, I have a note 2 and iPhone 5. The 1020 would be my work phone. I now take a lot of pictures with many in low light. As people know Samsung and iPhones are not good performers in low light. One thing I would miss is the ability to insert word documents and excel files into replied emails and also adding in multiple ones. However I have had many of the iPhones, which have this same limitation,

I admit, it a a strange ommission, to cripple the email apps in such a fundamental way. But as far as I know, that is because there is no file manager in WP so there would be no mechanism, to choose the files you want to add. Sadly this is one of the many sore points, that lead to the pro crowd bashing WP. Missing even basic features, that f.e. my old Nokia N82 had no problems with, is simply astonishing. I really hope, this will get better soon, scince I really like the WP disign philosophy so far (or at least most of it).

I personally do not miss anything. Its just a period of understanding of how wp8 works, and its completely different from android.

I really miss the Hangouts app.
Really really miss it.
IM+ is kind of a replacement, but it doesn't support group chats and the video function...