SPB Mobile Shell Video

As you know i am a big fan of Spb Mobile Shell 3.5 .

Matthew Miller of ZD Net (Zed Dee for us, Zee Dee for my American friends) has produced a walk through video which you can see here.

I have a few days off so I'll load it up on the HD2

Now that's ridiculous

Blackberry down AGAIN !

Mind you it's only for 100% of all Americans - phew ! - I thought for a moment it was serious.

Don't worry , your emails are all held on a server in , well, Canada - good luck!

New Acers

My friend told me a month or two ago that Acer would be making a push into the Windows Phone space.

I now understand that there will be 3 or 4 Acer Windows phones introduced into the market in early 2010

Watch this space!

Oh, so it's a facial proximity sensor

I was impressed when the old Omnia 2 turned its display off when you put it to your ear and turned on again whn you looked at the screen. The HD2 does the same. I now understand that these devices have a facial proximity sensor - very cool.

By the way the battery life on these two devices continues to impress

Saw an article about RIM today

Can it keep up with Iphone & Android?

I don't think it can , but more to the point Windows Mobile is starting to get price traction in the Mobile email market

Of all those in the market I fear for RIM the most

Googlephone launching in the US

I see that a Googlephone is being released in the US. The Android powered device is manufactured by HTC and it seems to me that Google will get some traction in the consumer market based on its brand alone.

So, No Xperia X2 this year then

I was a big fan of the Xperia X1, still the best built device I have used. I was kind of holding out for an X2, even though I am quite impressed with the Omnia2 and the HD2 from Samsung and HTC respectively.

I hear though that our friends at Sony Ericsson have put the X2 release until January - something to do with software glitches. The good news is that the people at Sony Ericsson treat these things very seriously and will ensure that things are ironed out properly.

I'll look forward to having a play with the device in 2010 - this HTC HD2 keyboard is hard work !!

Omnia 2 Compass

So, there's a digital compass hidden away inside the Omnia 2

Have a look here - wonder what we might do with that ?

No more HTC HD2s at Voda

As some of you know I have my hands on an HTC HD2 at the moment thanks to a kindly distie. Cracking device - might be a bit big for me in the long run but we'll see (unless I can cook a ROM for the Omnia Pro)

I was surprised to see that it won't be sold by Vodafone any longer - perhaps they are too focused on the Iphone? (which the HD2 knocks ointo a cocked hat in many ways)

Cryptic

Here's a cryptic to make sure you're paying attention. Someone from M referred to a vnext that I'm not allowed to talk about

HTC Software fix

Whisper it, but I have my hands on an HTC HD2

I'll talk about it more once I have played around for a while, but I do know that there is a camera fix here (ROM 1.60 or lower, be careful now!) for the issue where the pictures taken by the camera display a Pink Spot

There's a ROM update here , although I'm not 100% happy that it applies to all devices

Remember a ROM update will flatten your device so Back Up!

Of course, I'll have to SPB the HD2 to get it to "Clint Class"

A PDA Database

I've found a really useful site that lists all (well I guess I haven't checked ALL) pdas/smartphones availabale on the market with their specs - very handy (it doesn't include the rugged devices).

Youu might have to be slightly careful with the specs as the site ius US focused, but it's certainly handy to have such a good point of reference

Oh yes, and the site is here

New Bing mobile

A new version og Bing is available for mobile devices

m.bing.com form your device or go here

So, paid-for Android arrives

I think that Android has the biggest opportunity for growth in the mobile space (subject to my concerns about distros) but I was very interested to see that Wind River (why is everyone on the West Coast except me) have released a commercial version of the platform

Relying entirely on Google is a slightly tricky strategy but it will be interesting to see if the market is actually willing to pay for the platform....

Bandwidth

I'm encouraged that some people are starting to question the idea of moving away from Exchange as their enterprise class messaging service. Firstly, all of those Exchange things that we know and love are simply not available in some of the more simple email systems (we have a checklist if you'd like one) but furthermore there are some infrastructure issues that impact organisations more than they initially consider.

Bandwidth is one such issue. If you have dozens or hundreds of people online, downloading stuff then your day to day functions like bandwidth need to be considered. Nothing worse than twiddling your thumbs waiting to log in to gmail. Like so many Microsoft things people look to change for changes sake and then realise that what they previously took for granted is actually quite cool and, well, seamless.

I have heard today that one organisation which has switched to Gmail and Google Apps is having to put in more internal servers to split the organisation into workgroups - surely that's the opposite of what the cloud evangelists say? Sure there's a place for cloud computing (we use it a lot) but we'll be keeping Exchange Server for a while yet.

More Good Stuff

Well, as you know, we are big Windows Mobile fans down here in the cellars, but we do act for Good Technology in the UK and our friends from Redwood City have just released Good for Android

I think that Android will take market share in the next year or two , most likely from RIM and Nokia, and it doesn't look a bad OS to me. Mind you, Linux is not a bad OS, the question is which Linux, which version and who controls the releases (and bugs)

If you're an enterprise user, we believe that Windows Mobile is still the only serious choice for custom apps and Microsoft connectivity but, if you're a consumer, Android is certainly on the radar

Off topic college football post

Hopefully you may have noticed that Alabama beat Florida at the weekend. The Crimson Tide go to the championship game against Texas!

HTC HD2

Now, my pal the Senior Developer has sent me this video review of the HTC HD2 from the bbc website

Now that is what I call a piece of equipment and it is nice to hear a reviewer praise a Windows Phone after reviewing it rather than the quite pathetic review I read in a commercial mag this week

The Satio is back

Pleased to see that Sony Ericsson have released a patch for their Satio smartphone which had a few , err, hiccups

We like Sony devices (excellent build/great cameras) and as some of you know I was a committed Xperia X1 user before the Omnia 2 arrived

The Satio is pretty pricy (dearer than an Iphone) and runs a Symbian offshoot OS (no wonder it had a few "issues" :-)

By the way I broke my record at BubbleBreaker on the train last night

Customer Service

Slightly off the topic of mobile but I heard a great report of an example of where bad customer service can cost an organisation more than one customer.

In 2008, Dave Carroll was flying United Airlines with his band Sons of Maxwell when a passenger sitting next to the window exclaimed that the baggage handlers were “throwing guitars out there.”

Carroll’s guitar was broken. He spent the next nine months in a service maze pursuing compensation. Eventually, customer service at United Airlines told him they were closing the incident and would not respond to any further emails.

Carroll vowed to write three songs about the experience and post them on YouTube, hoping to achieve a million views with all three combined. But he did much better. He hit one million on the first song within one week, and is at six and a half million views at last count. A media frenzy ensued and United’s market capitalization dropped $180 million over the next three weeks.

So, probably best to look after those customers!