Going on hiatus

I will officially be going on a month long hiatus starting today. I was going to post up my thoughts on Skyfire browser and some of the work that I’ve been doing on my desktop workstation but that’s old news now. I’ll be back after this month having finished my final year at high school.

-Best regards,
Soul_Est

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What were you thinking?!

I know I’m not the only one who uses their HTC Touch Vogue for more than just making phone calls so why must I suffer the inconvenience of not being able to use the internet while I’m on the phone? I understand that completely different frequencies are used for EVDO and CDMA networks that Telus, Verizon and a host of other carriers have set up and that the radio used in the handset must switch accordingly between them. That being said, I don’t understand why it has to be that when a phone call comes in, that whatever I was doing on the internet, be it email, or downloading that one important file needs to be interrupted by an incoming or outgoing phone call. I use a push email application called emoze for getting my email to my inbox without there too much of a drain on the phone’s battery. It (emoze) is set to reconnect to the main servers after having its connection stop working. The only problem is that this happens every time I get off the phone even though the Windows Mobile Connections settings dictate that program connection to the internet as needed. Further more, any time I try to get a connection in any program, I can’t connect. So my suggestions to Qualcomm and HTC are: 1. We are not still living in the late-’90s where in order to use the internet, you had to make sure that noone could use the phone when your connecting or while your surfing, 2. Even if a number has to be dailed in order to get online, it shouldn’t have to compete with a phone just get online, 3. EVDO is basically in broadband territory where cable, dsl, and other wired and wireless internet technologies lay. Having to choose between a phone call and an important email should be necessary. 4. If necessary, use two radios instead of having the phone trying to juggle all of its connections on one.

I was going to post a few screenshots I took after being on the phone and trying to sign in to MSN Messenger again after its connection was cut. You would have also seen the ones I took when emoze was trying to reconnect to its servers. Unfortunately though, the pictures got corrupted and I’m not ready to go over bluetooth yet. So I’ll post them up at a later date.

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Android on Vogue (P3050)!

Although this may be old news to many that are in the know and if this is so, please this post. If not, then read on since this may just become part of the future of smartphones as we all know it. In this thread at the XDA Developers Forums here and on this page here, dzo (Martin) posted that he got Google’s Android to work on a HTC Touch Vogue running Windows Mobile using the Handheld Reverse Engineering Tool or HaRET for short. I’ve played around with it myself and I must say that both this OS and OpenMoko are set to go way beyond what Windows Mobile has accomplished in the few years it has been around. I unfortunately can’t post up any videos or pictures of this slick, Linux based OS running on my device. Hopefully I can do so in the future as well as make calls and connect to the data network once better hardware support is added.

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Continuing on with the procedure

While at work on break, I installed ssj5trunks’ iFonz application (user interface) as well as Torch Mobile’s Iris Browser (based on the webkit rendering engine).

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I have begun the iExperiment

Sorry about the late post but I needed to finish everything first before posting
I’m now starting the iExperiment and will be doing the reviews as I go along. I first started off by hard reseting my HTC Touch.
After the device rebooted, I had to pull the battery to prevent Telus’ modification program from running, thus leaving me with the windows default today screen. I then went on to change around the default settings to suit and installed Schap’s Advanced Configuration Tool v2.1 as well as PHM’s Registry Editor; tweaking the settings as I saw fit in there too. After that Quick Menu 2.7 was installed to replace the default start menu.
I’ll post more as I continue to update my device. For all those attempting this as well, all .cab files as well as some .exe files are meant to be run on your PocketPC or Smartphone. The developer will normally state as to whether or not an exe file is meant to be run on the device or in Windows on your computer. For more programs and tutorials by many a talented person, visit http://www.xda-developers.com.

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iExperiment coming through!

As much as I would have liked, I’m not doing a lot of software reviews in a short time frame. Instead, I’m starting the iExperiment. I will be posting updates along with screenshots hosted on Flickr. I’ll try and keep these reviews within the KISS philosophy as the more words I add, the less time I have for editing and updates. Also look towards my other blog ‘Supporting the mobile as I’ll be posting updates on the computers I’m using to gather and organize the software I currently have and in the near further develop software for smartphones. Be back soon with an update on the iExperiment.

P.S.: Filed under, ‘Why didn’t I think of this before?’: Card Export for Windows Mobile (for it’s built-in drivers)(Card Export download) + WM5torage (an excellent application)(WM5torage download) = Working USB Mass Storage Device! No more card reader!

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Ready to switch to already?!

Yes everyone, you have read correctly. After only a few months with my HTC Touch I feel like I really am ready to swap it in for something else. The reason being that this PocketPC’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. It runs Windows Mobile and just like Windows on the PC, I can’t stand it except for certain tasks. The Touch isn’t slow when it comes to running said OS, but the touchscreen is another problem I’ve encountered with the device. The only good SIP (Standard Input Panel) that I’ve used so far TouchPal by CooTek can be quite hard and annoying to use as my thumbs are quite large and thus end up hitting the wrong keys. I could do better with practise, but these methods of input coupled with the cumbersome menus and programs that I’ve used from time to time (Outlook’s Calendar, Outlook’s Contacts especially) make this an uneasy experience. Using the device for messaging was for a while quite easy if not slow (stupid big thumbs!) but then I just dropped it since it took so long to tap everything in not to mention that I needed to add words to the dictionary for every fews words of IM speak. The Touch for me was great for a time but in order for it the improve my productivity, I need it to sprout a hardware keyboard (and no HTC, the Touch Dual or S720 aren’t gonna cut it). Plus it needs proper J2ME support. So for now I’ll be doing my software reviews until I have enough money to upgrade to a BlackBerry Curve 8330. Why the 8330? The 8830 is way too big for my hands plus the lack of a 3.5 mm headset jack, a camera, and space between the individual keyboard keys would make it hard to live with. The 8130 on the other hand while small and sporting a 3.5 mm headset jack, camera, and GPS (!) has the same 20 key keyboard layout that the TouchPal and default SIP have on my Touch and has too small a screen for my liking. Thus I’m going for the BlackBerry 8330. It has a full keyboard with enough space between the keys that I may not hit wrong keys, a 3.5 mm headset jack and like my current PocketPC a QVGA (this one being 320×240 instead of 240×320) screen and best of all PROPER MIDP 2.0 support. The last thing I like (and this is the same for all BlackBerries) is that they can do so much with just a few megabytes of RAM and ROM (although the OS does have its own set of quirks to deal with). I’ll be taking mine in silver please.

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