At last, I was able to afford an iPhone 3G without an expensive data / phone plan (meaning a much higher starting price). Of course, I've been playing with the device since then. See my review HERE.

Let me welcome all my readers to the first part of my Mobile World Congress reports. Note that I’ve started writing this report yesterday evening but, having no Wi-Fi at my hotel and Vodafone Spain’s problems, I couldn’t post it right away. Therefore, in order for the most important news to be presented right at the beginning, I have broken up this article to a brand new conference report (see the first few paragraph) and, then, a more complete description of what has happened yesterday. It’s the last section that elaborates on the Showstopper party yesterday, with a lot of info & screenshots on Opera Mobile 9.5 and several other technologies.

Today, first, I’ve met the great folks from Spb Software House. Vasily demoed the latest Spb Mobile Shell, which I plan to review some time in the future, along with all the other shell enhancers, including those of the XDA-Developers folks.

i-mate news

After this, I had the pleasure the meet top i-mate folks. The first question I asked, of course, was the recent DigiTimes / Pocket PC Thoughts news on i-mate’s switching back to HTC. I told the i-mate folks that, with the major problems with the HTC Qualcomm video drivers and HTC’s refusing to fix the problem, how disappointed the WinMo folks have become with HTC.

The major and indeed REALLY-REALLY welcome news is that i-mate is NOT returning to HTC but keeps on bringing out their own handsets. Great news!

I’ve also asked about cancelling the, compared to the latest Marvell PXA310/320 CPU’s, already-dated PXA270 series in their later models and (even silently, just like for example Dell did with the Dell Axim x5) upgrading to the PXA310/320. They stated they’re investigating all these things and the possible upgrade. This is pretty much promising.

Nokia with WinMo devices? Not now

Third, I’ve met John Starkweather from Microsoft. My first question was, of course, the talks with Nokia reported by several sites. My previous remarks, over at PPCT, on a Nokia-manufactured camera / gaming / GPS / entertainment machine are worth checking out to see why I’d welcome Nokia to re-release the N95 or the N82 with Windows Mobile on them if and only if they provide the same high quality add-on software enhacing these devices on Symbian.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing to report on. That is, in the future, it’s highly unlikely Nokia comes out with WinMo phones. But this doesn’t certainly mean this won’t change in the later future.

However, the Sony-Ericsson folks have just announced a multimedia-friendly WVGA touchscreen device, the XPERIX A1, of which you can read more at, for example, on our blog or at PPCT and at XDA-Devs. I'll post other, related threads too when I have the time.

I’ll definitely pay a visit to the S-E booth here to see whether they have the device in here. If they do, I definitely post some comparative pictures in here.

Microsoft’s press conference

Microsoft’s press conference took place at 3PM local time in Hotel Catalonia Plaza, which, fortunately, is just at the other side of the Espana square, facing the entrance of MWC and is, therefore, easy to get there. In addition, it has a more or less working Wi-Fi network, which isn’t really the case with the press section of MWC, where I’ve wasted at least one hour desperately tryng to access the Internet. (Finally, I had to use a local PC and transfer files to be uploaded by a storage card). Pretty much stone-age, I know.
This event will surely be thoroughly covered by other mags, so, I only very shortly sumarize it. First, the most important announcement was Microsoft’s announcing they would invest far more effort on gaming and entertainment. (For the platform’s gaming capabilities, they’ve used the Amiga Inc. game I’ve reviewed some days ago and also called very cool.) I really hope this indeed materializes – at least via the non-HTC players; most importantly, Sony.

They have also announced having acquired Danger. This, however, won’t mean Microsoft starts producing hardware like the T-Mobile Sidekick.

MSN Direct

The MS press conference has also shown MSN Direct in action. After the conference, I’ve also had an appointment with the MSN Direct folks so I could learn a bit more about it.

It’s like a fully-fledged RSS client with the following goodies:

1. It uses some kind of a push protocol, which, while being really bandwidth friendly, still promises updates in realtime
2. It integrates nicely into the MS Smartphone today screen.

Note that, currently, only the MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard) platform is supported and the client is in no way can be installed on a touchscreen Pocket PC. The sole reason for this is the programmatic difference between accessing the Today screen on the Smartphone and the Pocket PC platform. Nevertheless, they promise a Pocket PC version very soon, which I’ll also announce when it becomes available.

Should you have a Smartphone, you might want to check out ne.msndirect.com

1. As has been announced in excellent Windows Mobile site MoDaCo, you can, if you’re living in the UK, get the class 4 (!) Sandisk 8GB microSDHC with a free high speed Sandisk USB reader for £44.41 shipped. If you’re living outside the UK, the price will be somewhat (about 3 pounds) higher. It’s a very nice price, particularly if you’re situated in the EU, where no additional taxes / customs will be added to the price.

Some software-only news:

German multiplatform mobile site Mobile2day.de has MASSIVE rebates in the next few days (until 01/26). You shouldn’t miss them – all the selected quality software titles cost 5 (FIVE!) euros only, instead of their original price.

For example, today (01/23), you can get the following Pocket PC titles:

1-2-Remote 1.1.0: a pretty capable multimedia PPC -> PC remote controller.

http://www.aximsite.com/articles/link.php?id=22

(Note that the German Pocket PC Magazin has nothing to do with the American Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine (that is, the one you're just browsing) – the two Best * Awards 2006 contests have nothing to do with each other. As opposed to the Best Software Awards of the latter, Germany-based Pocket PC Magazin prefers collecting users'/readers' votes as opposed to a Board of Experts.

http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?t=224670

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0c1b0a88-59e2-4eba-a70e-4cd851c5fcc4&displaylang=en

I've added a new, large section to my IBM J9 article on both the Dell Axim x50v/x51v compliance of the excellent Google Maps and the relocatibility reports on J9's files/cache in the main memory.

Leading Pocket PC gamer site PocketGamer.org has frontpaged my

http://mamaich.uni.cc/

http://www.aximsite.com/whatcanidowithmyaxim/

http://ebooks.aximsite.com/

The well-known mobility-related site, BrightHand, has just switched to the vBulletin engine. This means the engine will be far more known for many users and far more standardized.

A bit of warning: as has also been explained here, the old links to the forum are not valid any more. This is a major pain for me because I've posted a LOT of information only in BrightHand and, later, linked these threads from other Pocket PC sites / my articles.

http://www.aximsite.com/boards/awards.php

http://www.smartphonemag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=20330

http://www.smartphonemag.com/blogs/menneisyys/112005IRCClients.asp

1. new compatibility information (along with new screenshots) of WLIrc2
2. new bug reports (and ways to avoid them) of wmIRC 2.1

I've updated my article on configuring and using Toonel to greatly reduce Internet (Web/mail) traffic; added a completely new section for making the installation much easier and also added some additional notes (speed/static memory requirements) on CrEme.

Also, there's a lot of new information in my review of NetFront 3.3 TP 1.03, the best alternative Web browser.

Finally, I'm leaving to center-north Finland, to relatives, in some hours

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