Mobile Blog: Video, Media, Augmented Reality, Rich Media, IVVR

Getting the MWC mobile guide for your phone is a good idea to prepare for the congress while your flight to Barcelona and in order to avoid carrying the printed catalog on site. I noticed a problem with the installation page http://whatamap.com/mwc/install/.It says that you should access this page with your mobile for downloading the mobile guide. With my WM 6.5 device and Opera or Internet Explorer that does not work, unfortunately. It still says “You have arrived on the MWC 2010 mobile guide installation page with a desktop browser”. By using an user agent switcher for my Firefox I found out the correct link. There is only a Java-Version available, though: http://whatamap.com/mwc/s60/MWC2010.jad

Downloading the native Windows Mobile app

1. Search for MWC 2010 in Windows Marketplace application
2. Install the app via Windows Marketplace
3. It will appear in your phone menu

Update

I cannot find the mobile guide in the mobile marketplace by using “MWC 2010″ on my mobile. On the marketplace website it is not available as well: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/catalog/cataloghome.aspx?bin=1&device=0&os=0.

photo credit: marcopako 

One step backwards: Windows Mobile 7 should lack Adobe Flash support. We are all awaiting Adobe Flash 10.1 for mobiles which hopefully reduces cross-platform development costs. But (maybe) Microsoft will follow Apple’s strategy by restricting Adobe Flash support on WM7 devices. Read more on mobiletechworld.com

First of all, Windows Mobile is so close to Windows for desktop PCs that you might expect to install some of the applications you know from your desktop on your mobile. Media Player, Outlook and Office Mobile, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so on -it’s all included in WM6.5 Pro. What’s left? A good mobile media player! WM6.5 Media Player doesn’t like my DivX movies and some MP4 files. For DivX there is a solution: DivX Mobile Player for Windows Mobile. Note: Although DivX Mobile supports the latest DivX codec features, your mobile processor is limiting your mobile video experience. I’ve downloaded a DivX movie from the Internet and tried it on my phone: The sound was fine, but the video was choppy. After some experiments I saw, that a video bit rate above about 300 kbit/s is causing problems. For the technical folks: It is not really the bit rate, but the complexity of the encoding that makes the mobile processor go nuts. The higher the bit rate and the higher the complexity, the more likely the video, or even the sound will be choppy.

DivX Mobile Player is for free, but it doesn’t support native MP4 containers with h.264. Therefore I bought CorePlayer Mobile for $30. It’s nice, but not really worth 30 USD. It doesn’t offer as many codecs as VLC or mplayer, and it’s user interface is too desktop-alike. CorePlayer Mobile has a lot of submenus; you need about 4 clicks to activate the fullscreen mode! Unfortunately, VLC for Windows Mobile isn’t available yet: VLC forum.

photo credit: *kaetzchen

Recently, I bought the HTC Touch Pro 2. As advertised by HTC, it is a professional communication tool. By upgrading it with Windows Mobile 6.5 its performance and functionality seemed boosted. A couple of days ago a friend of mine (he is not really into the mobile market, though) just bought the HTC HD2. Realizing the HD2 has double of processing power and double of RAM compared of my TP2, I quietly regret my decision. The HD2 is extremely fast, especially when browsing web pages. The only drawback of the HD2, and all touchphones, is the missing physical keyboard by nature. As I type a lot of emails on the go, sometimes blindly, I need a physical keyboard. But maybe Samsung solves this general problem with its Touchwiz UI? I think, HTC is about the turn the mobile phones market upside down. They are already very successful in the business sector. As they will start to market their products more to consumers for private and leisure use, they might rule out RIM and their blackberry; while wresting market share from Nokia and Samsung.