02:38 PM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

MobilePipeline reports on a new Forrester survey indicating users really don't want to combine their mobile phone and PDAs after all. For example, mobile phone users don't seem to think that they really want all those PDA features.

Many PDA enthusiasts have been saying this for quite a while, scoffing at the idea that adding a phone to a PDA is a always a good thing. Citing feature compromises, battery life, size, cost, and a host of other reasons the idea of independent devices is more palatable. But the industry experts have loudly and confidently proclaimed that the smartphone category will almost completely squeeze out the separate PDA and mobile phone categories.

Don't count out smartphones though.... pretty soon the compromises may start to disappear as technology improves. And consumers might not really know what they want. There was a time when people didn't think they wanted a microwave either!

Forrester's summary (buy the whole article for just $249) says...

PDAs and phones seem to be on a collision course as PDAs get connectivity, phones get bigger screens and richer operating systems, and device makers experiment with new form factors that attempt to marry the two. These integrated devices form the bulk of the "smartphone" category. However, the majority of both mobile phone and PDA users are consistent in saying that they are not interested in this marriage — each device fulfills a different need. While PDAs will continue to integrate phone features that reinforce the device's core functions and smartphones will appeal to PDA owners who crave a single device, the majority of phone manufacturers will pick and choose those PDA attributes that make sense for individual customer segments.

10:36 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Sunrise

Laurens, one of the most responsive PDA developer I know, has just released Sunrise 0.40-pre7. The release contains two important fixes related to plain text conversion and DLL linking on Windows XP machines.

Unless new serious issues show up, we should be able to expect a final 0.40 release soon (at least if you believe that Laurens' to-do list for 0.40 is empty now).

If you are new to Sunrise, click here to find out more about its top-notch features for website offline conversion.

10:30 AM by Gatton in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Once again Fictionwise is offering for free download the nominees for the annual Nebula award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. First up is a novella called "The Tangled Strings of the Marionettes" by Adam Troy-Castro.

Not sure if they only offer novellas for free or if they mix it up with some novels or short stories. Anyone remember from last year?

http://www.fictionwise.com/Z88070H1130/nebula2005.htm

09:25 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

All mobile news junkies listen up: GarishKernels has just released Egress V2.1 which has support for all RSS / Atom formats (RSS .09-2.0, RDF 1.0, ATOM 0.3), landscape mode, Today integration, background downloading, and a few other cool features.

New in V2.01 is the new channel wizard, caching of web pages for later display using PocketIE, support for downloading enclosures (Podcasting), a configurable item sort, and configurable item retention.

Looks like the market for mobile RSS clients is heating up. There are at least three good choices for PocketPC available now: Egress, PocketRSS and Newsbreak.

Egress is available for $12 (was previously available for $10).

09:09 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

In a press release Hitachi today announced "Mikey" and "Slim", two new babies in the Hitachi family continuing the company's quest for high capacity in smaller and smaller form factors. These two miniature drives are designed especially for use in mobile phones, digital music players, and PDAs. Could this mean a temporary end to flash-based storage devices?

Mickey: 20% smaller than a 1"-harddrive, expected to make its debut in the second half of 2005 at a mere 14 grams and in an embedded-only design. Capacities between 8GB and 10GB.

Slim: a 1.8"-harddrive, also expected to make its entrance in the latter half of the year with 30-40GB of capacity for the one-disk version (and up to 80GB for the two-disk version).

In the separate announcement today Hitachi added the Deskstar 7K500 to its product line -- the world's highest capacity 3.5-inch SATA hard drive at 500 GB!

[via Golem.de]

06:37 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

We were just contacted through e-mail and phone by a Microsoft representative to remove the material regarding Windows Mobile 2005 (Magneto). We honor their (actually very polite) request and removed all sensitive information from this post.

Don't be upset! It'll take only a few more months before we can enjoy the first new devices running Windows Mobile 2005!

In the meantime, feel free to browse our community for more news and interesting articles on mobile content and gadgets.

06:25 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Gabor Kovacs aka Picard has released a new test build (0.095d) of the upcoming BetaPlayer 0.096. The plugin supporting the Intel 2700 accelerator chip of the Axim X50v is now open-source! In addition, the final 0.096 will include the following new features and fixes:

+optional software volume handling
+windows ce shortcut support
+intel xscale lcd controller (flipping and hardware vertical scale)
+default install supports aac le,he,ps profiles
+intel2700g plugin added to main install (open-sourced)
+plugin sources are includeded in main source repository
-divx audio with windows media codec fix
-wince 4.x window media codecs on non pocketpc fix
-corrections with libfaad usage and mp4 file format
-another mpeg4 header parser fix
-avi framerate and opendml fixes
-taskbar can be hidden
-uninstall restores file associations
-user input thread priority changed (for buggy keyboard drivers)
-better handling of low memory situation
-perfering gapi over raw framebuffer with smartphones
-minor bugfixes

06:14 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Lounge

We're almost stifling a yawn this time around, but here is yet another prediction for 2005, and unlike some others one that is well worth a read.

Jeff from Writing On Your Palm writes that Windows Mobile 2005 (aka Magneto) will be better than 2003SE, but not enough better to really matter. Ultra-portable computers (UPS) such as the OQO will remain niche products. RIM will expand its smartphone market presence with the Blackberry device. PalmOne will remain profitable and focus on the consumer (not geek!) user. The HP iPAQ will be slowly discontinued in favor of upcoming UPS devices. Geeks will enjoy upcoming portable video recorders (PVR). The first PalmOS Cobalt-based smartphone will be released in 1Q'05 by Samsung. There will be a rebirth of PalmOS in the "feature phone" (less powerful than smartphone) world. There will be no PalmOS on Linux before 2006. Tapwave will continue to challenge the game console market.

I agree with Jeff up to the point of where he predicts that WM 2005 wouldn't be a big deal. Unlike the current version (WM2003SE), which is still based on Windows CE 4.2, WM 2005 will be based on Windows CE 5.0. Because of this change, Magneto will include:
- ActiveSync 4.0.
- Support for Security Zones in Pocket IE.
- Revisions to Pocket Word and Pocket Excel.
- Direct3D Mobile (D3DMobile), a graphics solution built on DirectX (mobile gamers and movie fans will love this).
- SQL Mobile database engine in both Smartphone and Pocket PC.
- Two-button soft-button interface for Pocket PC OS.
- Smartphone 2005 icon-based desktop similar to the ones used by Sony-Ericsson and Palm.

I am sure the Direct3D Mobile feature alone would be worth a switch to Pocket PC for a lot of game freaks out there.