Touch Screen Gadget

Windows Mobile 6.1 improvements

Posted by admin | Category: Smartphone, Windows Mobile

Microsoft recently introduced Windows Mobile 6.1, an upgrade of the Windows Mobile operating system.

It adds new features and capabilities to the previous (6.0) version, enhancing your Web browsing and day-to-day use of Windows Mobile. It also adds new features and capabilities of interest to the enterprise users. This article looks at some of the more important enhancements.

Improved Messaging

Microsoft has made some significant enhancements in the Messaging application. For enterprise users Microsoft added Exchange Auto-Discovery, which makes it easier to set up synchronization with Exchange. Users are now able to download e-mail from all accounts at the same time. Microsoft added auto-complete for e-mail recipients, which makes it easier for users to enter e-mail addresses on small keyboards and touch screens. Also, Windows Mobile 6.1 added the ability to select multiple e-mail items in the list so you can easily delete or move e-mail. Finally, Windows Mobile 6.1 includes optimizing the bandwidth utilization for Exchange, POP3, and IMAP4, which is very important to enterprise wireless data users.

Other enhancements to WM 6.1

A number of enhancements made to Windows Mobile 6.1 are of particular interest:

• Bluetooth headset auto-pairing: Makes it easier to pair your device with standard Bluetooth headsets.
• Bluetooth phone address profile: This enables the transfer of phone book information across phone-enabled Bluetooth devices.
• Network Time (NITZ) Description: Automatically updates the time on a device when it moves into a new time zone or receives a Daylight Savings Time (DST) change from the cellular network.
• Cut, Copy, and Paste capability added to Windows Mobile Standard (non-touch screen) smartphones.
• Enhanced "Getting Started CD" not only contains user-installable versions of Mobile Device Center and ActiveSync, it includes software that helps the user set up their device and an application that makes e-mail setup easier by exporting their Outlook settings from a desktop PC to the Windows Mobile device.

Managing Mobile Devices—System Center Mobile Device Manager

Last fall, Microsoft released a new server to manage Windows Mobile devices called System Center Mobile Device Manager (SCMDM). SCMDM actually adds Windows Mobile Devices to Active Directory and provides group policy management of the device security as well as a separate VPN connection optimized for Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile 6.1 is required to support SCMDM. SCMDM is covered in detail in the Enterprise section on page 55.

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Verizon VX6900 on sale

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Smartphone, Windows Mobile

Verizon Wireless said its XV6900 touch-screen smart phone is available online today for $349.99 after a $50 rebate and with a two-year service agreement.

The XV6900 runs the Windows Mobile 6 Professional operating system, providing access to Office Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile and other applications.

It operates over Verizon’s EV-DO 1xRTT wireless network and is equipped with Bluetooth 2.0 for hands-free headset support, Verizon Wireless said.

The device, which was shown at CTIA Wireless 2008, joins a growing number of devices that would compete with Apple’s iPhone for its touch-screen capabilities and general size and shape.

The Verizon Wireless XV6900 smart phone, with its touch-screen capabilities, is viewed as a rival device to the iPhone. (Photo courtesy of Verizon Wireless)

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178M Touch Screen Phones to Ship by 2011

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Multi Touch, Smartphone, Trend Watch & News

Attendees of last week’s CTIA Wireless event saw major mobile phone makers like Sony Ericcson, Samsung and LG all tout new touch-screen-based devices. By 2011, handset makers will ship some 178 million phones with touch screens according to new predictions from Multimedia Intelligence, a market research firm. Compare that to the "rounding error" touch devices represented in the context of the entire handset market in 207, in which 1.12 billion devices were shipped, and you see a very significant jump.

One major catalyst for this change: Nine months ago, Apple took the entire mobile industry by storm when it released the iPhone. Apple’s first smartphone, based on its innovative and easy to use touch screen user interface (UI), already has made the company the number three smartphone maker in the world based on sales, according to research company Canalys. And it only sells one device, compared to the dozens of devices sold by its rivals, like Nokia and Research In Motion, numbers one and two in the market, currently offer.

Though handsets with touch screens had been available for years from companies like Palm and HTC–Apple even offered a PDA called the Newton throughout the 1990s–none had combined touch screen tech that doesn’t require the use of a stylus with such a simple and innovative UI.

With the iPhone’s success in the market–Canalys says Apple sold some 2.3 million units through Q4 2007–came a huge consumer appetite for touch screen tech, and Apple’s competitors have been quick to try to meet that demand.

Before CTIA, HTC debuted devices like the T-Mobile Wing and Sprint Touch, both of which have touch screens. LG released the touch-based Voyager. Palm’s Pilot and Treo devices, which have been around for years, have all featured touch screens. GPS maker Garmin plans to release a touch-based smartphone. And even BlackBerry-maker RIM is rumored to be working on a touch screen device.

At last week’s show, Sony Ericcson showed off its Windows Mobile-based XPERIA device, which has both a touch screen and a slider keyboard, not unlike the one found on T-Mobile’s popular Sidekick device. Then Samsung surprised the crowds with an iPhone lookalike called the Instinct, which will be available soon from Sprint. And LG showed off the Vu device with its touch screen and AT&T mobile TV support.

And the growing trend won’t likely stop at handset makers. AT&T recently said it would soon staring using Microsoft’s Surface desktop PC, which is users control by touching its large surface touch screen.

Panasonic recently unveiled a digital camera with a touch screen UI

And iSuppli recently predicted that global shipment revenue for cutting-edge touch-screen technologies will rise to $4.4 billion by 2012, up from $2.4 billion in 2006.

[cio]

Basic Instinct for a sexy touch

Posted by admin | Category: GPS Navigation & Guidance System, Mobile Phone

Samsung has launched its new completely touchsceen phone called Instinct, exclusively with Sprint. The new iPhone competitor boasts a high-tech look and design. Further it features a large, vibrant touch screen featuring localized tactile feedback, called haptics, allowing the virtual QWERTY keypad and other operations to become a sensory experience.

Moreover, the Instinct is also equipped with a Voice to Action button that offers many functions to be undertaken using voice activation including call, text, picture messaging, traffic, movie, sports, news and search.

Some of the other key feature of the Samsung Instinct is Visual Voicemail that allows users to listen to messages in their order of preference and manage them with a simple tap of the screen. Also the new phone features corporate and consumer (POP3) email, multitasking capabilities that allow the user to play music in background mode while surfing the Internet, texting or playing games, a 2.0 megapixel camera with camcorder expandable microSD memory of up to 8GB, Bluetooth integrated world clock, SMS voice and text messaging with threaded text and picture caller ID.

The latest phone measures 2.17 x 4.57 x 0.49 inches and weighs less than 4.5 ounces.

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iPhone-like device from Sprint

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Trend Watch & News

Sprint Nextel Corp. on Tuesday said it is betting heavily on a touch-screen phone that appears to be the closest thing the U.S. market has seen to Apple Inc.’s vaunted iPhone.

The Samsung Instinct will be available in June for a yet undetermined price, Sprint announced at CTIA Wireless, a cell-phone industry trade show in Las Vegas. Executives hinted that the price would be substantially lower than the $399 for the cheapest iPhone.

Sprint, which has been losing subscribers, will spend $150 million to advertise the Instinct when it launches, compared with $30 million for a typical product introduction, according to David Owens, the company’s director of devices.

Like the iPhone, the Instinct lacks a keypad and has just a few buttons. Most of the functions are accessed by touching the screen.

A few touch-screen phones appeared on the U.S. market last holiday season, after the iPhone’s debut in June.

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