Wireless Archive

Microsoft has laid out a new roadmap for the development of Windows Embedded at the Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley 2008. The Embedded roadmap outlines the "renaming of its family of products and plans for new solutions in key device categories". Kevin Dallaes, general manager of the Windows Embedded Business, explains: "With today's strategic road map announcement, our aim is to present the evolving Windows Embedded product family in an intuitive fashion, making it easier for our customers to choose the right platforms and tools for their needs."

No matter where I live, it always seems that I don't have good mobile phone reception. All I want is to be able to take calls that ring in on my mobile, which is my main business line, without having to stand in the corner, on tiptoes, and have to apologize to clients when they can't hear me or the call is dropped. Is that so much to ask? Hey, why don't I get those calls to ring through on my landline handset? That would be a great solution. Not so fast!

Motorola split into two groups today in order to save their falling mobile business, but the real kicker is an insider's email that Engadget published. It has it all, from suicides to golf scores and how all that brought a giant down. Good afternoon reading, albeit sad. Update: My personal rant/editorial on the situation, describing the failure of Motorola to understand the importance of their EZX Linux-based phones and how this drove their business down.

"Pocket-lint has learnt from sources close to the matter that Microsoft will announce the much-rumoured refresh to its mobile phone operating system, Windows Mobile, on 1 April 2008. An improvement over Windows Mobile 6 released in February 2007 the new version, unsurprisingly named 6.1, will be a stop-gap measure to keep both consumers and industry happy until the launch of Windows Mobile 7."

The upcoming Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring release will boast the easiest ever support for synchronizing with Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices in any distribution. The adventurous can already try out the support in the current 2008 Spring pre-release repositories, by following the instructions here. Mandriva has uploaded a video demonstrating how easy it is to synchronize with a Windows Mobile 6 device right out of the box with Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. Support is included for synchronizing with both KDE (KDE PIM) and GNOME (Evolution). Similarly easy synchronization is also possible with many Nokia phones and with Blackberry devices.

"The iPhone (or iPod Touch) is a 667MHz computer (albeit one that is only running at 412MHz) with 128MB of RAM and between 4 and 32 GB of flash. For software, it is running a pared down Mac OS X with its standard compliment of a FreeBSD-based userland over a Darwin kernel. While some people wonder why anyone would attempt to use it as a Unix workstation, to me and many others it seems ludicrous not to."

GigaOM takes a look at the breathless posturing coming out of the Mobile World Congress about the sunny future of using mobile devices to use the Web, and examines it with some skepticism. The verdict: "There’s too much variation in operating systems and end devices." Because the platform situation is so balkanized, it's too difficult to build any kind of platform that will work consistently across mobile platforms.

Gizmodo has a video of Nokia's prototype touchscreen-based Symbian S60 interface. The first devices might be ready as soon as end of 2008. In the meantime, Nokia announced their highest-end S60 smartphone, the N96. It's pretty similar to the N95 that we reviewed last year, but with the addition of a DVB-H receiver for digital TV signals in Europe and Asia, 16 GB of flash storage, and the N-Gage gaming platform built-in.

"A few weeks ago, I wrote an editorial commenting on how horrible browsing the Web is on most mobile devices. Amazingly, there's already a solution for this problem, at least for some users. It's called Skyfire, and it is far and away the best web browser for Windows Mobile I've ever seen." More at Brighthand.

Hi-Mobile.net sent us over one of the highest-end phones ever released, the Nokia N82. A rich smartphone, running the latest version of Symbian OS and S60 3.1 is sure to raise some eyebrowses as the model resembles in feature-set (of its time) and overall looks of the very successful 6680 that was first released in early 2005. In fact, the more I look at this model, the more I get the feeling that a product manager walked in at an engineering meeting one Monday morning and proclaimed: "Gentlemen, we need to resurrect the 6680".

A lot of details have leaked on Microsoft's next major revamp of Windows Mobile, version 7. "Windows Mobile 7 will use touch gestures, similar to how the iPhone does. You will be able to flick through lists, pan, swipe sideway, draw on the screen. A lot of emphasis has been put on making navigation easier and doing away with scrollbars, including a new scroll handle that allows for multiple ways of finding items extremely fast. Windows Mobile 7 will use motion gestures, something the iPhone does not. It will not use an intricate and complicated series of gyroscopes and accelerometers. Instead, it will use the camera on the phone to detect motions and create appropriate actions. You will be able to shake, twist and otherwise manipulate the phone and get things done. The phone will be able to perform actions when placed face down on a surface, and it will know when it is in your pocket or bag."

The major competitor of unlocked iPhones in Asia and Europe is the LG Prada and Viewty phones. TimTechs.com sent us in a LG KU990 Viewty unit for a review and we give it a whirl.

To counter the success of the iPhone, Microsoft is revamping its mobile operating system, according to Ars Technica. "Never one to back down from a challenge, Microsoft is busily preparing both a minor UI refresh (Windows Mobile 6.1) and a major new release of the operating system (Windows Mobile 7.0). A gallery of screen shots from the 6.1 refresh compiled by Boy Genius shows an emphasis on simplification: the screens are more task-oriented and have less clutter than their immediate predecessor. A new and clearer font adorns the UI, and new features such as zooming, copy and paste in Internet Explorer, and auto-configuring ActiveSync for e-mails are sure to be welcome additions to the platform. In addition, Microsoft is making it easier (and more Windows-like) to switch tasks by adding a standardized task manager to the platform."

An article series at embedded.com discusses how to choose an operating system for tiny, low-power, memory-constrained wireless embedded devices: "The smart sensors used in wireless industrial and building automation applications are often characterized by energy restrictions, small CPUs, and small memory footprints. The limited resources of the hardware make special applications necessary, which in turn create special requirements for the system software." Part 1, and part 2.