Shout About Mobiles

Before the release of the HD2, I was lucky enough to get a play on it, and I loved it! You could actually see the effect that the 1 GHz Snapdragon processor had on making Windows mobile 6.5 run like it should do. Everything on it ran smoothly, but it made me feel very annoyed because I had only recently got the Touch Diamond 2. GRR! Although my Diamond 2 looked nicer (in my eyes anyhow), the HD2 had the power that just made the OS run effortlessly, plus it had the better specs to back it up and would make the recently announced WM7 run like a dream.

So, you HD2 users where happy, smugly sat waiting for their new OS to be officially announced and made available for them to enjoy and show off.

It seems with every new announcement about Windows Mobile 7, that this would still be the case until, as it turned out, that the HD2 had too many hardware buttons to make it work! Apparently, 5 buttons is just too many, and Microsoft is aiming at 3 buttons and no more it seems.

All the rumours before the announcement were stating that WM7 phones would need to have a home key, a Windows key, a back key, plus the call and end call keys. However, this just shows how you can’t put too much faith into rumours - they are just rumours after all.

Looking at some of the Windows Mobile 7 phones that have just been announced, they do just have the home, Windows and back keys, so it shouldn’t be that hard to attach the call functions from the screen to the hardware buttons on the device.

However I’m sure that certain Windows fans out there will hack the WM7 OS to make it work on the HD2 (this is not an encouragement to you lot, just an understanding that it will probably happen). And it’s just not the same to have a hacked version as it is to have the official product.

Alongside the TV phenomenon of HD, it seems that phones are now desperately trying to catch up with the HD revolution - at long last!

There seems to be a good collection of phones now that enjoy the ability to record in loving 720P recording. Strangely, after so long of only allowing the worst possible video ability, it seems that

Sony Ericsson are really trying to push this feature; the Satio has an update to unlock it on the device and the newly released Vivaz, having the service straight out of its shiny box.

Although we have had phones for a while now that can display and play HD films, it is good to see the video camcorders actually catching up. It’s good to see this is now an option for avid fans, so that those who want to take memories of whatever they are doing (from sporting moments or their mates successfully pulling off great tricks - or in the case of my friends, trying and failing!), they can.

The only question now is how long before we see it pushed up to the 1080i that all those graphic lovers are coveting so much.

After a spate of sleep and tiny phones a few years ago, phones then got big and bulky again as manufacturers tried to pack it with feature after feature. But it now looks like Phone Style has come full circle, as we seem to have a wave of new “mini phones” making their way onto the market.

The release of the N97 Mini pretty much killed off the N97 straight after its launch, and now Sony Ericsson are releasing Mini versions for its X10 and its X10 Pro, we can probably expect a similar effect on this range. So it seems that phones are going to start heading back down towards the Samsung Ultra range…

Don’t get me wrong, I loved my Samsung X820, the fact that I had to actually put my hand into my pocket to check the phone was still there, rather than just patting my pockets, did get annoying after a while. The trend seems to be that manufactures are making large phones, and then just when people start to buy them, its little brother comes out from the gym having burnt off lots of millimetres!

But it will be interesting to see what people find more important: that all important screen size (if you see how little space you get after the keyboard pops up on your touch screen phone, you will understand why HTC have put a 4inch screen on their HD2), or the sleek style a small phone?

Oh how the mighty have fallen!

I find it amusing that every Windows fan (I include myself in this group by the way!) will have (probably) teased an iPhone fan at some point, because of the iPhone’s lack of multitasking (this was the one feature that Windows had the upper hand with when comparing products to Apple) – but it now seems that we Window users don’t even have that to boast about.

Although Windows may have been ugly and stylus based, it worked as a business phone, as it could do everything a business phone needed to do. It could even do a lot of it at the same time, making working ‘from your phone’ much easier.

However, it now seems that, with the release of Windows 7, we have to hold our heads in shame as Microsoft is blatantly following in Apple’s footsteps by reducing the options of what the phone can actually do.

BOO!

There are rumours that Windows updates will be unleashed later down the line, once they know that the software is stable enough to cope with what is hoped for the new OS, but what good is a rumour when choosing your next phone? Contracts these days last longer than some marriages, so I want to make sure I always get a good one, that will last!

When you look at the specs of what the OS needs as a minimum to run (1 GHz processor, 512mb ram), and think that this is for NONE multitasking usage, you’ve got to be asking yourself how much processing power will it need to run two programs at the same time?

I can see a future with people with burnt ears from having to use their phones to make calls…

I am an avid MMS user - whether it is a picture to remind a mate of their shenanigans the morning after a night before, or as a way to get someone’s opinion of a new top I am thinking of buying - I find MMS to be an important feature in a phone of mine.

However, I can’t help to worry that this ace little  feature is slowly being taken out.

Over the last couple of years we have seen the networks slowly remove MMS from their text

bundles, with the promise new mms bundles to replace them later on - yet we still haven’t seen these materialise, and it is certainly not well advertised any more.

It is true that Vodafone offer a bundle of 50 MMS, however stores don’t seem to know this exists, and I had to find out through their eFourm service (very helpful) to get the information.

At the moment, the release of the new OS platform phones (mac osx, web

os, maemo), means that MMS is becoming a thing of the past. All of them are coming out with no default mms service as a standard feature, so it seems that we are being pushed more and more towards email as a way of sharing, rather than MMS.