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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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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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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