The Samsung Focus is finally available in Vancouver, Canada

I just stopped by my local Futureshop and discovered they finally have the Samsung focus in stock. They received one (1). And they wouldn't sell it to me "off contract" but if you're looking to become a new Rogers Wirelss customer you're in luck.

However I did discover that the BestBuy website is now showing them as in stock at the Cambie store - so it looks like the wait is finally over.

Now the question is - is it worth waiting until boxing day to see if they'll offer any discounts? FYI - the Focus retails for $499 US so we're definitely over paying north of the border.

Strangely, the HTC Surround is actually $50 less in Canada. This might be the one and only time I wish I was a Telus customer.

Continuing the search for a Windows Phone 7 device

After reading several reviews and first impressions of the retail Windows Phone 7 handsets I decided that I wanted to get my hands of a couple of the devices before shelling out $500 for a new phone.

Yesterday (being the last day of December) I decided to check in again with Future Shop, Best Buy and a Rogers Wireless retail store to see if anyone had any stock of the Samsung focus in Vancouver - still nothing. I did notice that Futureshop is now selling the LG Quantum with a slide out keyboard for Bell customers. Its a start but it still doesn't help me.

Today I took a trip down to Redmond to see if could get my hands on a phone south of the border. The Microsoft retail store in Bellevue Square is currently selling 5 phones for various carriers - and all of them are turned on and setup for display.


Samsung Focus: Thin, light and responsive. The color accuracy and brightness seems a little off but that could have been from the overly bright lights in the MS Store

LG Quantum: Looks like a good device but I'd like a larger screen and I'd prefer a thinner phone without a slide out keyboard. The display and responsiveness seemed good.

HTC Surround: I've used one of these devices before and its good (although a little thick) but I do notice just a bit of ghosting when scrolling through menus.

HTC HD7: A beautiful and thin device but substantially heavier than the Focus (its closest competitor feature-wise). I also has VERY vi sable ghosting on scrolling text, so much that I wouldn't buy the device which is unfortunate because it was my favorite of the phones on paper.

Dell Venue Pro: Another good phone but the weight and thickness make it uninteresting and I personally don't like the bottom slide out keyboard. The keys are smaller than the onscreen keyboard so I don't see the need for it.


After deciding that the phone I wanted to buy was the Samsung Focus I quickly discovered that the Microsoft store doesn't sell any phones unlocked nor will they provide any assistance with unlocking the phone. I was told that if I used AT&T service for 3 months they would then provide an unlock code.

I walked over to the AT&T retail store to see if I could get a different answer and they claimed complete ignorance and simply stated they don't sell unlocked phones.


It also looks like expansys.ca is no longer selling the Samsung Focus so I think my next step is to try ordering one online from Rogers.com for the inflated price of $599.99 Canadian ...

How to emulate the HTC HD Mini in Visual Studio

(Windows Mobile 6.1 & 6.5)

With the release of HTC's HD Mini, Windows Mobile developers now have another resolution to worry about. And its not unreasonable to assume that HTC will be able to move a large number of these devices with the popularity of the HD and HD2.

You can take a look at the specifications here:
http://www.htc.com/www/product/hdmini/specification.html

What's important to note is the screen resolution of 320x480 - this is the only Windows Mobile device that I know of that uses this resolution. What's also important is the screen DPI - which is most likely 128. QVGA devices like the Touch are 96dpi and VGA and WVGA devices are 192dpi.

Its also worth noting that this device has a height to width ratio of 3 to 2 where normal devices are 4:3 and the wide devices are 5:3 so you may need to make some minor alternations to your GUI code when supporting the mini.

Now I haven't been able to find an emulator for this device but fortunately we can fake it using the Windows Mobile 6 SDK. I had a clever friend that works in Redmond help me out with this so I big thanks to her.

Fortunately we can use the Microsoft Device Emulator to launch a recompiled emulator image and change the display properties. Now remember I mentioned 128dpi? There is only one emulator image that supports this and that is the 320x320 Square QVGA emulator image. You can try other images but the resources will be incorrect and the sizes of menus, icons, etc will be either too big or too small.

So lets cut to the chase, assuming you have Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 installed and the Windows Mobile 6.1 SDK you can launch the emulator from the command line or by using a Batch file with the following command:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Device Emulator\1.0\DeviceEmulator.exe" "C:\Program Files\Windows Mobile 6 SDK\PocketPC\DeviceemulationV610\0409\PPC_USA_GSM_QVGA_VR.BIN" /memsize 256 /hostkey Left-Alt /video 320x480x16

or for 64 bit systems:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Device Emulator\1.0\DeviceEmulator.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Mobile 6 SDK\PocketPC\DeviceemulationV610\0409\PPC_USA_GSM_QVGA_VR.BIN" /memsize 256 /hostkey Left-Alt /video 320x480x16


(Launching the emulator at 320x480 - Windows Mobile 6.1)

You can also try the 6.5 image but I wasn't able to get the start menu working, presumably there are additional resources needed for the 480 high screen:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Device Emulator\1.0\DeviceEmulator.exe" "C:\Program Files\Windows Mobile 6 SDK\PocketPC\DeviceemulationV650\0409\PPC_USA_GSM_320x320_VR.BIN" /memsize 256 /hostkey Left-Alt /video 320x480x16


Once you have it up and running, you can cradle it just like any other emulator, it will show up in the Device Manager at the bottom with an ID string in the "Others" section.


(Custom emulator shown in the Device Manager)


(Debugging Calc Pro with the custom launched emulator)


Good luck and feel free to post questions

Further reading:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb630224.aspx

HTC Touch Diamond and its DDR Memory

Recently I was looking over the hardware specifications of the new HTC Touch Diamond and noticed that HTC is claiming the use of DDR memory.

Over the weekend I had a little free time so I created a Windows Mobile benchmark application so I could do some comparison testing. It just so happened that a colleague of mine had a Diamond on order.

I thought a fair comparison would be the Dell Axim x51v as its just about the only really usable VGA Windows Mobile device I've used.

I'll provide some benchmark numbers later this week but I'll let you know the summary now. Not surprisingly, the Dell x51v was a fair bit faster on integer and floating point calculations when compared to the HTC Touch Diamond. However, when testing memory performance the Diamond was almost twice as fast - so it appears that the HTC is making good use of the DDR memory. Now the big number - the HTC posted frame rates for normal drawing operations that were almost 3 times faster than the speedy Dell.

I should get a chance to put the Diamond through its paces but I think its fair to say it this is an excellent choice for gaming and multimedia.

Coming soon: benchmarks with the new Palm Treo Pro as well as several other windows mobile phones.

Experia, Touch HD, Diamond and Diamond Pro Video

I think the title says it all. I'm personally in the market for a new Windows Mobile phone and this video covered the four phones that I'm interested in.

The video is about 8 minutes long and gives you a pretty good feel for the sizes of the devices.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAfrsZ1INV8

All four phones are Windows Mobile Professional Devices and all four have high resolution screens. The Touch HD and the Experia have a screen resolution of 480x800, the Diamond and Diamond Pro have a resolution of 480x640.

If you're shopping for these phones you may want to keep in mind that there is better software support for VGA devices (480x640) than the WVGA devices.

Also a key feature (or lack of) on the HTC HD is the lack of a directional pad. This means you're going to be controlling everything using the screen, it also means many games will be unplayable. However for a device this cool you may be willing to overlook it.

I'm currently leaning towards the HTC Touch Diamond - I'm ready for a small and "cool" phone.

As always, if you're looking for software for any of these phones check out
http://www.wireless-gaming.com & http://www.wireless-apps.net in the Windows Mobile Touch section.

Cheap(ish) HTC Touch Diamond at NCIX

Just stumbled across this deal at NCIX. "Only" $689.99 for a brand new HTC Touch Diamond.

On sale at NCIX only until Nov 4, 2008
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=32364&vpn=DIAMOND%20QUAD&manufacture=HTC&promoid=1019

edit* - a friend of mine just informed me that you can get the same phone from PDA Plaza for $675 - www.pdaplaza.ca

And note - these are Canadian prices.