Tech QQ

Windows Phone 7 Marketplace pass 5000 apps

After what seems to be a pretty productive December, the Windows Phone Market just passed 5000 apps.

Some time early December it had 3000 submitted apps, hence about 2000 apps have been submitted and passed during this month. Not at all bad for a new platform seeing it’s second month in service.

Not that a direct comparison is fair - but if memory serves me right, Android had a growth rate at about 10000 apps a month in July 2010. So compared to that it’s still some way to go – but at that time Android had gathered a considerable momentum and been a valid platform for far longer time(having seen it’s first device launched the 22nd October 2008 with the HTC Dream).

 

State of the WP7 ecosystem

The big question is if there are any one buying all these apps, cause what good is an app without buyers?

One important part in discerning that puzzle - is the sales figures for devices. Regarding the sales figures of Windows Phone 7 devices, all Microsoft has said so far is that 1.5Million devices was shipped to retailers and stores during the first 6 weeks after the Europe release(21st Oct). Question is how many of those has actually reached users?

Even if 1.5Milion devices feels like a low number, there might be a reason for that. Because one major issue, at least at the Europe release, was to actually be able to find a device at all. Here in Sweden we had absolutely no devices at all in stores for the official release on the 21st Oct. I know that in UK there was a different situation with release parties in stores and a lot of devices available. But I do suspect that the situation in the larger part of Europe was just like here in Sweden. And there is no real question in my mind that lack of available devices is hurting the sales.

 

The future of Windows Phone 7

We will see Microsoft’s real first test in early Q1 of 2011 in my opinion. As I’m very anxious to see how the first update will go.

I think the first update will test the support structure and show how prepared they are. We know the Windows update system has been running for a long time now, and I’ve never had any problems with it personally for any of my computers. Since they will use the same infrastructure for the phone updates I really hope it will give us a smooth experience.

If the update works well, it’s only a fact of trying to upscale the Windows Phone 7 team and get productivity up(not an all too easy equation though unfortunately). Reason I say this is that I think the updates needs to come with more content than now planned and I really think they need to come within shorter intervals than what the newly divulged release plan states.

 

With that said, I have to admit I love my Omnia 7. It’s the best phone I have ever owned and I can’t really see any contender out there that I would like to swap too at the moment.

With the Windows Phone Marketplace now closing in on 5000 apps, it’s quite hard to get an overview of it from the Marketplace within the phone. Enter Bing Visual Search.

One of the categories in the Bing Visual Search is Windows Phone 7 Apps. Here you can twist and bend the results, look at most downloaded, newest paid, newest free and top ranked. Add to this that you can filter it all by categories and subcategories, price and publisher. Basically an invaluable tool in your search for apps for the Windows Phone 7 device you got this Christmas! (Only beef I got with it is that it is only showing the top 3000 Apps for some strange reason, but since filtering apps rarely give a result set larger than 3000 – what do they really mean?)

There is however a small issue you might run into when you want to try this out – namely it won’t work at all. The problem is it’s not supposed to work for a great many countries Microsoft thinks. So if you live in a country where you’re not allowed to search the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, you have to pretend you live some where else. Here’s how you do it:

1. Go to Bing.com and click your country in the right hand upper corner.

2. Change your location to “USA – English”.

3. Now you’ll get(hopefully) a new header in the upper left hand corner saying “Explore”.

4. Pressing the Explore link will give you access to a lot of new toys, but click the one saying “Visual Search”.

5. After accessing the Visual Search just press the “Featured Galleries” tab just below the search row, at the end of those featured galleries you will find the link to the Windows Phone 7 Apps.

Now search and play around, find some nice looking apps and support some of the hard working developers.

Happy app hunting!

Hello everyone!

I hope you are enjoying yourself and getting some time off during the holidays.

I just wanted to write a short post saying that there’s not been a lot of activity here during the last two weeks. That’s due to me working during my spare time to relocate this blog.

 

That’s right, beginning with the new year I am moving the blog to a new platform(WordPress) as well as moving it to a different domain.

I’m currently laying the last hand on the layout, I need to tweak some more CSS files and a little more php before I feel ready, but it will be done soon™!

 

Thanks for this year, I wish you all Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

I wanted to deploy my app to my HTC Desire to see what it looks like on a phone but it wasn't quite as straight forward as I had hoped.

When reading the Android documentation it says that you have to turn on USB debugging by "go to the home screen, press MENU, select Applications > Development, then enable USB debugging".

Now I don't know if it's the Sense UI, me running it localized in swedish or that I'm running Froyo - but the above description proved hard to follow.

The way to do it for me was to open the apps tab, select Settings (Inställningar) then go to Programs (Program) > Development (Utveckling) then select USB debugging (USB-felsökning).

Then changing the current Run configuration and setting the Deploy Target Selection Mode to Manual did the trick. And as I feared my buttons wouldn't work at all, I have to say my black tinted buttons not only worked, but came out even better than I had expected.

The Visual Basic team has released Visual Basic for the Windows Phone 7 developer tools RTW. This release enables you to finally submit your apps written in VB to the marketplace.
For those that haven’t already started playing with the VB for Windows Phone 7 developer tools that were released in September a few tips are in place.
With the Visual Basic tools you can only develop Silverlight apps, the XNA framework is not yet supported, so if you need outstanding graphic performance for your game idea that will beat Angry Birds in sales – you will need to use the C# version of the tools.
The VB tools requires the Premium, Professional or Ultimate version of Visual Studio 2010, i.e. you can’t use the Express editions sadly.
Download the Visual Basic for Windows Phone Developer Tools – RTW.
Info about the release from the Visual Basic Team here (good read if you want the tools in any other language than English!).
More Windows Phone 7 related stuff on mobilemancer.

The Nexus S was officially announced today. As suspected from all the leaks the device is indeed produced by Samsung and it’s running the new stock Android 2.3(Gingerbread) OS.

A lot of the rumors flying around didn't hit home like a 8MP camera, 1080p recording, Bluetooth 3.0, dual core processor and HDMI connectors. But one new exiting thing showed up, namely NFC support!

If you are new to it, NFC is short for Near Field Communication and enables you to for example paying for your Coke by just swiping your phone near a vending machine. It’s pretty cool technology being used in among others the UK now, but at the moment mostly integrated to various card products.

The Nexus S will be running the anticipated Gingerbread version of Android. Gingerbread is version 2.3(or API Level 9 if you are a developer) of Google's popular smartphone OS that mostly brings a lot of optimizations for both performance and battery longevity. Other improvements are VoIP support, NFC framework, gyroscope support, multi camera support, mixable audio effects, extra large screen support for tablets and quite a few other additions.

For more information about what’s new in Gingerbread from a users perspective you can read the Android 2.3 User’s Guide.

Lucky us they are planning a release before the holidays, if I wasn’t so pleased with my Omnia 7 I would surely have tried to get my hands on one!

 

Nexus S - The Specs

A 4 Inch curved Super AMOLED screen(WVGA 800*480), sporting 235ppi and an anti-fingerprint coating

1GHz Hummingbird(Cortex A8) Processor

16GB iNAND flash memory (non replaceable, no SD card!)

5MP back facing camera (2560×1920) with flash and auto focus

720p Video recording capabilities

H.264, H.263 MPEG4 video recording

Front facing camera of VGA quality(640*480)

802.11 b/g/n WiFi

Bluetooth 2.1

63mm * 123,9mm * 10,88mm

Haptic feedback vibration

Three-axis gyroscope

Accelerometer

Digital compass

Proximity sensor

Light sensor

1500mAH battery

Talk time up to 6 hours on 3G and about 18 days of standby on 3G.

A comparison of Nexus S, Nexus One and HTC Desire from the Google phone gallery.

 

Pricing and Release date

UK: BPS 549,95 - 20 Dec at Carphone Warehouse

US: USD 529 - 16 Dec

Last few weeks the rumors have been running rampant about an upcoming PlayStation phone from Sony Ericsson, this accompanied by the mandatory photo evidence by Mr. Blurrycam.

But now it seems that some one has actually captured a video of it in good quality(can it really be possible???).

The video shows some handling of the device, the slide out keypad and some twisting and turning. A nice shot of the system info reveals the model to be named Zeus and running Gingerbread(Android 2.3). Check out the video below.

Apparently some one with a device has also taken a few photos and uploaded them to Picasa. From the pictures it’s discernable that the device has a 5MP camera and allegedly has an aperture rating of 2.4 and a focal length of 4.1mm

One of the persons uploading the pictures used to work as a software developer for Sony Ericsson, nowadays working as a consultant, but I’ll bet my hat he’s consulting for Sony Ericsson in Lund.

With personnel field testing the device, it’s just a question of when we’ll see an official announcement. It would be nice to see before Christmas, but that feels a bit early. Some rumors were discussing a February official announce, and that sounds more likely. Although I bet many would have liked to see this one in stores for the holiday season.

Intel demoed their upcoming Light Peak connections on IDF 2010 in San Francisco.

The data is transferred in fiber cables with a transfer speed up to 10Gbit/s – bi directional!

I can see why Intel haven’t started supporting USB 3.0 yet with this in the pipe, hopefully they manage to get it to production soon. See the video below for a presentation of Light Peak.

Today the Bing visual search places the Windows Phone Marketplace at 3000 apps. Good work all app coders out there!

We’re still missing some of the big names, but I hope they are working on their apps and are just a bit late to jump on the wagon.

I hate to say it, but I would love to be able to fling around those angry birds on my Omnia 7!

Had a small problem consuming a REST service in my Android client today, the error message I got was:
java.net.SocketException: Permission denied (maybe missing INTERNET permission)

After trying to figure out if my URI was badly formated I realized it was an Android device issue. To enable your Android app to access the internet (and subsequently use HttpClient calls) you need to add the INTERNET permission to the apps manifest.

Outside of the application tag just add the following:
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />



Who would have thought just reading the error message properly would have solved the problem?

I've just started some Android development at work. I've never developed for Android before so there is a few things that takes some getting used too, and some stuff is quite a bit different from developing for Windows Phone 7. But it's fun to learn new stuff as allways!

I use Eclipse for development, and one of the few quirks I have run in too so far is the very annoying message of "Could not find YourApp.apk!". The exact output from in the console is as follows:

Android Launch!
adb is running normally.
Could not find YourApp.apk!

The solution was easy for me, just had to clean the project. If you don't know how, just open Project in the menu and select the "Clean..." option.
Then choose "Clean all projects" and click OK.

After this hopefully you can just press run and your project will deploy properly again.

LG Promised to shake things up with their upcoming Android devices. A leak regarding their prototype Star makes me want to believe them.

The upcoming Star is apparently based on NVidia’s Tegra 2 chipset, meaning it will run on dual core’s.

And it sports some otherwise nice hardware specs as well, a 8MP camera and promising 1080p video recording. It also has a front facing camera, a 4 inch screen, micro USB and a 1500mAh battery.

The person responsible for the leak ran Quadrant(free benchmarking tool available on Android market) on the device, it produced a score of 1759. In perspective my HTC Desire scores 1289(higher than the reference Desire shown in the Quadrant comparison view, most likely due to me running Froyo).

The LG Star is told to be destined for a early 2011 release, and the leaked device was running Froyo. Hopefully it will be upgraded to Gingerbread if it releases in 2011.

Just to bad this beast couldn’t be released for the holidays 2010 instead!

Are you a Sci-fi fan, or do you just happen to love stuff that looks alien. Or do you just want to creep out your colleagues at work?
If you have an iPhone and need a new charger cable, you are now in luck. Check out the vid below for a gadget that will charge(or eat) your iPhone and make those who see it want to give Sigourney Weaver a call…

Got a brand spanking new WP7 handset but no one to call and tell about it?

You can synch your contacts over from Outlook if that’s where you keep all your contacts. If you aren’t connected to an Exchange server you can export your contacts as a CSV file to Windows Live, and that way pull them down to your Windows Phone 7 handset.

How to do it is described in this Microsoft Support article with ID 2454811.

If you are coding Silverlight apps for Windows Phone 7 you have probably used the ApplicationBar for your menu needs. If it’s confusing you with the way it works, or even giving you NullPtr exceptions when you try to access it’s properties, it’s because it’s no Silverlight control.

Looking at the XAML for the template “Windows Phone Application” in Visual Studio, there is an ApplicationBar defined. If you have used that template and tried databinding the ApplicationBar then you will have noticed that it’s not working, or even producing exceptions.

If you need to control the ApplicationBar in any way and change things dynamically, you need to do this from the c# codebehind. Even if you name the bar (or it’s components) with x:Name in XAML, you won’t be able to reach those objects from the codebehind.

What you need to do is to work directly with the instanced ApplicationBar from the codebehind. Say for example you need to change the icon for button number 3 on the fly, this is the way to do it:
((ApplicationBarIconButton)(ApplicationBar.Buttons[2])).IconUri = new Uri("NewIcon.png", UriKind.Relative);

This is also very important to remember if you are going to localize your app, as you can’t databind the translations as you can with all other Silverlight controls!

In a recent communication from Microsoft to it’s registered developers, regarding the security of their intellectual properties, numbers about the current number of apps in the Marketplace was given.

According to the mail the 2000 app limit have now been passed. Not all bad considering it was launched the in Europe first on the 21:st October.

And there is surely a big number of projects being finished up, as many high profile projects we’ve heard about before the OS was even released haven’t been seen on the marketplace yet.

My own publisher approval process has soon passed a week, so there seem to be a lot more developers registering as well. I must say I think it’s pretty bad that you have to pay the publisher fee before you can unlock a phone to test apps on. Shouldn’t the publisher fee be paid when you want to actually publish something, not just try stuff out on your own phone?

And regarding the security of your apps developers – Dotfuscate, Dotfuscate, Dotfuscate!

Nexus S rumors buzzing of Gingerbread

Tech site Engadget have published a theory of theirs regarding the speculated next gen Google phone – Nexus S.

The theory says that the anticipated Nexus S is nothing but the Samsung GT-i9020. The 9020 series said to be closely tied to the Galaxy S series, the leaked device photos tell the same tale as well.

The rumors says it will be shipped with Android 2.3, code name Gingerbread, all so very fitting for this time of year. Let’s hope Google and Samsung goes official with the news before Christmas so that we got something more to be jolly about.

Gartner just released it’s Q3 report over mobile and smartphone sales. Mobile phone sales are up 35 percent and smartphone sales are up a whooping 95 percent and now totaling 19.3 percent of overall mobile sales.

Hardware wise Nokia is dropping about 10 percent market share. Apple continue to flourish with almost twice as many units sold as last Q3, but only increasing market share slightly. HTC is more than doubling the amount of sold units compared to last Q3, and almost doubling the market share.

Looking at the figures from an OS perspective the rise of Android is clear. Even though some have had very good sales (Apple) and other still doing quite decent (RIM) it’s obvious that Android is the strongest trend. Symbian is loosing almost 10 percent market share, RIM although selling over 3 million units more is still loosing 4 percent market share. Apple gaining about 1 percent market share even though doubling sales. Meanwhile Android sold over 19 million units more than last Q3 and thus increased market share by 22 percent to 25.5 percent.

This changes the placings in the top 5 sold units by OS category making Symbian still no1 at 36.6%, Android second at 25.5%, iOS third at 16.7%, RIM at 14.8% and at fifth place Microsoft Windows Mobile at 2.8%.
I’m predicting that Microsoft will rise considerably from the 2.8% to Q32011 with the sales of Windows Phone 7 driving their sales.

Windows Phone 7 so far is a very good OS, and has great potential with good performance and a steady influx of new apps to it’s marketplace. However, there are still a few things that feel very “v 1.0” about it so Microsoft needs to keep development pace up and start getting patches out there.

I’m very interested in seeing if the WP7 update process will be as good as the regular Microsoft PC OS updates, if so they’ll have a major advantage over competition. However, they need to start using it soon!

---

Article about smartphone statistics for Q4 2010.
More articles about statistics on mobilemancer.

If you, like me, just got your Windows Phone 7 device. Then you are probably installing it and setting everything up. If you are unlucky you might recognize this little box from trying to install the Zune software on your computer.

If you are running a Windows 7 N or KN version, the above error is due to Windows Media Player not being installed with these versions.

To get Windows Media Player just go to the download site and get the Media Feature Pack for the N and KN versions. (You have to pass the Genuine check for your Windows installation before you can download it.)

Then install the eventual patches that you might need after you are done installing the Media Player.

After doing this, Zune will install properly for you. Happy synching!

So I got this really nice new phone (that I have been looking forward to for the last eight months in theory), but I can’t call, text or send nasty pictures on it. Why’s that you wonder?

Well, after I unpacked my shiny new toy it turns out I have no net connection. All seems to be due to the SIM card activation somehow has gotten stuck in some step of the chain at Tre.

So far I’ve called customer service five times or so since Tuesday, and it’s still not fixed.

First call I manage to get a hold of a real knucklehead. He asked if I had dialed in the activation code from my phone. I then had to explain to him again, for the second time within 5 minutes, that my SIM isn’t working and that I have not network connection – hence I can’t dial! He then asked if I had called “the number” that was enclosed in the package and given my number for activation. I tell him there was no number enclosed that I was supposed to call. He proceeds to tell me that it’s ok if I can’t find it and says he can connect me to it. I hang on and wait, the number get’s connected - I get a voice saying “This number is no longer in use”. Total win!

Second call I manage to get a hold of some one with a little clue as to what is going on, and she even asks me for my to-be phone number. After looking it up she says there’s been a snag in the system but that it’ll be fixed during the day.

Very late that same day my SIM still isn’t working. Person number three at customer service explains these kind’s of cases takes minimum 24 hours to fix, but that the technicians have gone home for the day so “maybe tomorrow”.

Day after that early morning, I talk to person number four at customer service, “I see the case is in progress, I see 24 hours has passed so it’s probably done soon. Have a good day!” – Good day, yeah right…
Later that day I call again, person number five answers, but this time I rang tech support instead of customer service for phone contracts. –“Yeah the technicians are working on it, but these kind’s of things takes 48 hours.” I get as a reply.

I say: “48? Your colleague said 24!”. “Oh that’s wrong” he says, and that’s all.

Later that day (48h since first phone contact initiated has passed) I call customer service for contracts and ask for status. Still the same status they say. I tell them it’s about time for some compensation. The reply I got –“Call back when it works and we’ll see how this has impacted you”.

Weak. Very weak in my opinion. If you live in Sweden and are waiting for a Windows Phone 7 device, I highly recommend you to get one of the HTC models or the LG model. Just don’t get the Samsung Omnia 7 so that you are forced to go with Tre as the provider!

Can't reach Market, XBox Live or Zune?

If you live in a country that’s not one of the originally supported ones, you might face some issues when installing your Windows Phone 7.

When you start connecting your phone to different services (under settings-> email & accounts), the very first Windows Live account that you provide will be the one that will control your connection to Marketplace, XBox Live and Zune.

If you, like me, live in one of the countries that’s not supported yet, then using your current Windows Live/MSN account will most likely lock you out from these services. To enable connection to Marketplace, XBox Live and Zune you should just select “create new account” when the phone asks for a Windows Live account.

After you create a Windows Live account as the first used account, you will have access to all the services, even though not living in one of the supported countries. When done you can then add the Windows Live/MSN account you use regularly together with other mail and/or facebook accounts.

If you already setup the phone the way you like it but used your regular MSN account and now can’t connect to the Microsoft services above, then you unfortunately have to reset the phone to factory settings and start over again but following the above process. Resetting the phone is done by going to Settings –> about, then pushing the “reset your phone” button.

After being pretty disappointed that they had no devices in store on the 21:st that was supposed to be the release day, I at least managed to sing up on a list for the Samsung Omina 7 device at the local 3 shop.
On Tuesday the 26:th this week I had a package to go grab at the nearby candy shop. My Omnia 7 had arrived, and 8 months of wait were done!

A bit of unpacking revealed a handset, USB cables, hands-free set with extra plugs for different size ears, battery, charger, warranty, user manual and a brief “How to get started” pamphlet.

As all electronic gadget manuals say – “Charge before use”, I actually took my time to charge this one. The two hours I waited for it to charge before I could start playing with it felt like an eternity…

After a few minutes I notice I had no network connection after installing the SIM-card. As I couldn't get that to work, and Tre:s webpage kept telling me I wasn't a registered customer(?) I finally managed to reach customer service today, just to hear them say there had been a misstake and that my account hadn't been activated properly. That should be sorted within 24 hours they said, so tomorrow I might be able to make my first call with it.

I've had quite a few other setup snags, but more about that some other night when I have more than 5 hours sleep ahead of me.

At the Google campus a new statue has been added to the previous pastry themed statues. This time it was time for the Gingerbread man to make an appearance.

Are we closing in on the next major build of Android already?

Aparently there's still people using VHS vcr's. The guy in the following video has a whole collection of them even. Except from a collection of VHS vcrs he's also got a unique presentation style as well as a cool accent and maybe the nices hair-do this side of Halloween!

Check it out in the vid below.

Windows Phone 7 release in Sweden

Today is the 20th, the day before Thursday the 21:st October. I've been looking forward to Thursday the 21:st October for quite a while now.

My plan was that I would go out and try out the four new Windows Phone 7 devices being released here in Sweden on the 21:st. Because even though I have been following the development of the new OS and the new devices closely this year (well, since February) - I still haven't been able to decide on which of the four devices being released here, on the 21:st, that I want.

I went to the largest mall in town today. I vent to four different stores to check about availability tomorrow. I talked to Telenor, Telia, The Phone House and Tre. When inquiring weather they will start selling Windows Phone 7 devices on the 21:st the personnel looked puzzled. None of them seemed to have a clue about Windows Phone 7. In three places they asked: "What model are you referring to?". To which I replied:- "I don't care, ANY ONE of the four being released!". All three looked at their screens for a second and emediately replied -"No, sorry"...

How lousy is this?
Tre is even the preffered launch partner and they even have dibbs on the Samsung model being sold, no other of the companies will even be allowed to sell that. (Yeah I know, I should have replied "Any of the three being released" in two cases above, but I was starting to get annoyed)

We've all read the fantasy figures Microsoft was supposed to use to promote Windows Phone 7, guess very little of those found their way to Sweden...

Hopes and dreams shattered I was moping about, but a friend pointed out to me that Dialect actually had WP7 commercials on their web page. And after checking it out they have even listed the models with price and all. Check it out if you like at Dialect.se. So for tomorrow my hope probably stands and falls with Dialect, wish me luck tomorrow.

Tre first to launch Windows Phone 7 in Sweden
In a joint press release Microsoft and Tre announce that Tre is going to be the official launch partner for Windows Phone 7 in Sweden.

"We're very proud to have been trusted this by Microsoft. Microsoft smartphones have always had a strong position in this country, especially among our corporate customers and we are very impressed by what we've seen of Windows Phone 7 so far"  - Says Nicholas Högberg, VP of 3 Sweden.

No specifics about what phones are going to be released are published, just a statement that "phones from among other HTC and Samsung will be released".

Read the full press release here. (In swedish)

What happens if you mix the Japaneese phenomenon Hello Kitty with other characters form popular culture?

Digital artist Joseph Senior sought to find out. Check his Flickr account for some great interspecies mixes with interesting results!

During the the process of Oracle buying SUN not a lot of SUN people have been very outspoken.

In what's probably the first really outspoken interview eWeek manages to get a chat with James Gosling, the father of Java. You can find it here.

And during JavaOne, The Basement Coder's managed to get Gosling to agree doing a podcast with them. The background noise is pretty bad as it's recorded in a cafe during lunch hours. But if you can listen through the clip it's got some interesting stuff in it. You can find the podcast here.

Gosling is not holding back in these interviews and is dishing crap out to Oracle, IBM, Google and a few more. Nothing really concrete about what Oracle's has in store for Java came out unfortunately, most likely because he's not privy to that information, as it turns out he wasn't really in the loop after Oracle took over.

One good quote regarding Oracle and Java was: “There’s only so much damage Oracle can do, because so much of their business depends on Java. It’s in their best interest to treat it well.”

Bodes well for Java I think...

In an ironic twist of events the site 80% of all teens are dependent on being connected too all their waking hours is down.

That's right folks, Facebook is having technical difficulties and is unresponsive, slow or even in some places completely unreachable.

Except from spreading angst among teenagers, it's also creating problems for other internet user, since almost every site and it's mother have added the Facebook "Like"-button it's pulling down some other sites in the social vacuum it has created.

Can this be the end of internet as we know it??

For those who got their interest piqued from the HTC presentation yesterday about the Desire HD, HTC now got a very nice promotion video out.

Check it out below.

Today the HTC event in London went off. I was watching the live blogs and hoping for a great Windows Phone 7 device to be revealed.
But no such luck as no Windows Phone 7 device was mentioned at all it seems...

Instead the HTC Desire HD and Desire Z was announced, both Android handsets with HTC Sense on them.

They talked a lot about improvements to Sense, and question is if they aren't building in too much stuff into sense, just making it harder for them to upgrade older phones to new Android version when they roll out. Although that might not be a priority as it would be better for them if people that wanted the latest versions all went out and got new phones.

The specs for the devices:
HTC Desire HD
4.3" Screen (what kind of screen was not divulged, but most likely slcd)
1 GHz Snapdragon processor
SRS and Dolby Mobile
8MP camera with dual-LED flash
720p video recording
802.11n Wifi
Estimated price 579€

HTC Desire Z
3.7" Screen (most likely slcd)
800 MHz Scorpion processor
5 MP camera with LED flash
720p video recording
Landscape keyboard with "z-hinge" that make it fold out from the screen
802.11n Wifi
Estimated price 499€

Both handsets to be available from next month on "Vodaphone markets" (and no further explanation here unfortunately).

Is reading all those tweets taking up your time?
Do you wish the information was more condensed and more factual?
Now there is hope, and it comes in the form of "Flutter"!

A short demo session by the Windows Phone 7 application manager at Microsoft was recorded by lockergnome. The demo in itself is fairly boring and no news are exposed, the device used are interesting news on the other hand!

The device used is the Asus device that there only have been a few leaked photos of so far. It looks way different from the Asus prototype device that was used as far back as the unveiling of Windows Phone 7 back in Barcelona. I held the Asus prototype at the developer hub in Stockholm, and this new version seems to be half as thick almost.

I like the sleek black look, I just hope it got some decent specs to taunt my curiosity even more.

Check out the vid below.

Yesterday I finally got my HTC Desire, I've been waiting for it for about 9 weeks now.

I've been playing around with it a bit and I must say it's a really nice piece of hardware. The only thing that's annoying me so far is the small top status bar where you click and drag down to see incoming updates about messages, calls, installed applications and so on. It seems the bar isn't really the same size as my fingers and I have a hard time "gripping" it. (And I who got such thin sleek coder fingers!)
When playing around with the device I found an option for tethering and got a bit surprised. After checking the info tab my suspicion turned out to be true. It was actually shipped to me with Froyo already installed! Sweet.

I was thinking that I would have to update it when I got it, but it seems this batch was already updated before shipped.

Pocket-Lint is reporting today that several high ranking sources are reporting on an early October launch of Windows Phone 7.

The big launch event will be held in New York and broadcasted over the world. This event is set to be held on October 11:th. Wp7 devices will then be available later that month.

And the good news about Windows Phone 7 doesn't stop with that today. Apparently Gizmodo got some photos of the upcoming Samsung i8700 unit from a tipster.

It looks pretty cool, a lot better than the old Omnia prototype that have been floating around. Let's hope this device is one of those being released in late October!

Microsoft says the revolution is coming - the question is when?

We know the Windows Phone 7 release is to be in October in Europe, question is what date. Come on Microsoft, spill the beans!

Since the announcement about Windows Phone 7 (Series) in Barcelona earlier this year, the fans have been speculating about a HD3. That is, some kind of follow up to the mighty HTC HD2 that is running WinMo 6.5.

The HD2 was big and chunky some claimed, but it had great hardware specs and gathered quite a following among the hardcore smartphone fans. A lot of mock-ups and prototypes form fans have been floating around since then, some of which actually has been mistaken for the real McCoy by some blogs and tech sites that wrote news about a HD3 leak - hehe.

Today this legend lives on courtesy of Engadget, claiming they have gotten their hands on the UK carrier O2's upcoming release plans. In this Excel sheet the model HTC HD7 is listed. So it seems the HD2 might actually get a successor, but renamed to HD7 to fit the new smartphone OS better.

Personally I of course hope this is true, even if it's not the killer smartphone I'm praying it will be, then just for the sake of seeing some new hardware that we might not have seen any leaks about before. Secrets are fun and according to the leaked document we'll see if there is any truth to it on the 18:th October at latest.

Today Microsoft announced that WP7 has gone RTM. That's right, it's now in release candidate status and the final image is being shipped to all the hardware vendors. It feels like the wait just got a little bit shorter :)

Even a small improvement in the Facebook handling have been implemented, amongst that more ability to filter the import of contacts and the ability to post to a users wall straight from the people hub.

One impressive thing is the figures of testing hours published:

Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released. We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes. We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready.

I am eagerly looking forward to see the different retailers and networks starting with the promotions for their offerings here in Sweden. So far I think I'm leaning towards the LG E900 if it's to be released here, but as always we'll have to see what HTC hardware becomes available here as they have produced some pretty cool hardware lately.

Are you getting one and if so what model? Leave a comment below!

As I was coding on my app for Windows Phone 7 I ran in to an issue and found no reference to it on the web, so I thought I would post about it.

I was making a test page to show what's in the Isolated Storage, to verify that my writes was working as they should. When writing this test page I used a textbox and wrote some results too. I wanted to use the SelectionChanged event to catch the selection but I could not get it to work.

After scouring the web I couldn't find any one with similar issues except people posting about a bug that was firing off two events instead of one for the SelectionChanged event. I could debug and see that the event really fired. But I could not get it to return any value other than an empty string.
The code used was a simple:

private void textBox2_SelectionChanged(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
      {
          textBox1.Text = textBox2.SelectedText;
      }

The screenshot below shows the selection but lack of resut in the upper texbox.


Since I only wanted to select items from this textbox I had set the property IsReadOnly to true. And it seems there is a bug in the beta tools, because when setting this property to false the event returns the proper value. So, using a textbox which is editable will enable you to receive the proper value. The screenshot below shows the event having returned the proper value after the textbox control has been marked as editable.


Now I know this isn't proper usage of a textbox, showing static texts and making them selectable should be handled by a listbox, but some one still might try this out so the information could be pertinent.

The LG prototype device has been a common sight for a very long time in the Windows Phone 7 scene. Then lately the product monikers C900 and E900 has surfaced, but not very much have been known about them except that C900 will be a slider and E900 won't.

But now the guys over at Android.com.pl has gotten their hand on two examples and published some specs.

The E900 allegedly has, A Qualcomm QSD8650 processor - that's right folks it's time for some 1.3GHz goodness! The QSD8650 supposed to be about 30% faster than it's 1GHz brother, but at the same time be about 30% less power hungry (using only 10 milliwatts in standby). Except the usual required stuff it sports a 3.7" screen and handles HD video recording and playback.
The price figures given by the site says 300$-400$ when released later this fall.


The C900 is a landscape slider model, comes with a QSD8650 as well and ofcourse the usual bells and whistles. Price said to be about 300$ at launch.



Here's a small vid of them booting side by side, although it seems the C900 crashed. If this is anything to go by the E900 boots in about 25s which is pretty good.

So, the blog has been pretty dead lately. It's due to me having had my usual summer vacation and also started a longer session of parental leave.

During the vacation I have managed pretty well to take a break from computers and my other interests, spending time with my girl friend and our lovely daughter.

But now the summer is over and it's time to pick up where I left off. I still have a pretty long period of parental leave to go, but I'll try getting back to the blog when the kid falls asleep and my parental duties ends for the day.

A lot of fun stuff has been going down during the summer. And what is catching my interest mostly is the Windows Phone 7 action that has been going on.

We've seen a few official hardware devices being displayed (going to update the WP7 Hardware page when I get time).

The most enticing thing to happen this summer feels like the statements that WP7 will definitely be launched in Europe during October.

We heard the rumors about this before, but it still felt hard to believe. So it seems we're going to get Windows Phone 7 released here in Europe before the US get's it later in the fall. Maybe a good tactic from MS, making sure the initial snags are ironed out before the release on the all so important American market.

Device vice, I have been waiting for a HTC Desire all summer, but the queue seems endless. So we'll see if I get my hands on a WP7 device before I get my first Android unit.

So with this post, dedicated to Giles, I proclaim that I am back from hiatus and eagerly diving in to all subjects mobile again :)

A friend sent this Taiwanese animation. Even though my Taiwanese is a bit rusty these days, I still found it amusing and feel I should post it.

It's the antenna saga in animated for...

The Droid X is going on sale tomorrow, and some one is spending money on commercials.

Question is if they are trying to scare you in to buying it?

Check out the new vid below.


Happy shopping spree everyone who's going to get one tomorrow :)

Did you enjoy the recent TomTom enhancement where the dark Sith Lord himself, Darth Vader, lent his voice for your navigational pleasures?

Then you might like this one as well, not a Sith Lord this time mind you, but smaller, meaner and greener!

Check out the vid below.

Fell like getting a new bootscreen for your Android device? Feel like flaunting your views of Apple?

Go to xda-developers to download it and find out if your ROM supports it.

Interested in Windows Phone 7?

Microsoft is currently holding it's World Wide Partner Conference and in a short while Andy Lees will take the stage and discuss Windows Phone 7.

To see it live go to digitalwpc.com.

Rumors this week is buzzing about a handset codenamed HTC Ace.

The blogs are not in unison, but it's speculated it is an European version of either the HTC Evo 4G, or the HTC Droid Incredible.

Let's all join hands, chant a little, and pray it's the Evo 4G!

A very good friend of mine said he had ordered a case for his new iPhone 4, mostly cause the phone just felt very fragile with all that glass totally exposed around the corners.

But it seems you aren't safe even if you fit your great looking new iPhone 4 with one of Apple's own 29$ bumpers, but you can always enjoy the stylish upgrade while it lasts...

The current statistics graph over released Android apps looks like this according to AndroLib.com:


This coupled with the pace of new app releases means that Android Market will likely pass 100,000 apps this month!

Not bad considering the total number of available apps was around 6000 just a year ago. For reference, June 2010 saw the release of 15288 apps during that month alone!

Just had to post this as it made me chuckle.

Featuring Apple’s unibody design, iHand is precision-carved from a single piece of European beechwood. So it’s lighter than a standard medical prosthesis, yet 12x stronger. You can grip iHand either of two ways: by placing your fingers around its palm, or by grasping the aluminized Extender that telescopes from the wrist socket.

The XBox live integration on WP7 looks promising, but the avatars could be a bit more animated perhaps.

This is what the Aura project is trying to remedy. A collaboration between Carnegie Mellon university and Microsoft, the Aura project is aiming to make your avatar reflect what you are doing and reflecting your activities, be it from your calendar or social network updates.

Check out the video below.

The question is if this will be worked as an app on WP7, or if it actually will integrate with the other apps and programs. It would indeed be nice to see it, as in the demo, reflecting what you are doing based on for example your calendar info.

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More info about the project can be found here.

Rumors of a man turning in his phone to an AT&T have been reported by BGR. The reason you can see below.


Apparently the phone had caught on fire when it was being hooked up to a computer. Apple said, when in contact with the store, that it looked like a faulty port and wasn't the users fault.

Earlier this summer HTC claimed that the Desire, Legend and Wildfire would see an update to Froyo(Android 2.2) by early Q3.

Now early Q3 is here and no signs of updates. Eric Lin of HTC says in response to a question regarding if the Froyo release is in vain with the claim of Gingerbread being delivered this year:

I don’t think so. I don’t know what Gingerbread involves, but I would believe that we would be done with our Froyo updates before Christmas. And since Google hasn’t made any announcements as to when Gingerbread is going to come out, I’m not going to make that guess, it could be Q1 of next year.

The reason for it taking time is of course for HTC to change and test that all their added features a UI works with Froyo.

So eagerly skinning and changing a UI for the users added experience is a great thing, but question if the users aggravation of having to wait longer for the updates evens it all out?

Two weeks have passed and no upgrade for the iPhone 4 as promised have been delivered.

Now it seems Apple have confirmed for Gizmodo (are they still talking to each other??) that the upcoming software update won't fix the antenna issues as first stated on Apples forums.

The software fix is coming withing a few weeks they now claim, but it will only fix the erroneous bar representation of the coverage.

Too bad, so sad. With all the hopes and dreams crushedwe advice the following:

• get a couple of meters of duct tape and wire around your phone
• some band aid on your fingers (see below)
• try to cover that left corner in your favorite color nail polish

Conflipper has been at it again. This time he's dug up some XML files from HTC's own site and they collaborate the assumptions that HTC's rumored Mondrian and Mozart are indeed Windows Phone 7 handsets.

The XML files lists them as using Internet Explorer 7, which will be available for Windows Phone 7 to start off with, as it is unlikely it will be ported to the Windows Mobile 6.5 track due to Microsoft working on the successor of Windows Mobile at the moment and not investing time in Mobile 6.5 upgrades.

The devices also seem to have Bluetooth support as well as will be shipping with MMS capabilities. And they seem to be slate devices without keyboards.

Now, if we only could get to see some real pictures and specs from HTC soon...