The Mobile Gadgeteer

Asus officially announces launch of Asus Eee PC 900

We heard about the second generation Asus Eee PC at CES back in January and today Asus made the official announcement for the Eee PC 900. This next gen device improves in a couple of areas with a larger 8.9 inch display at 1024x600 resolution, 1.3 megapixel webcam, and more storage capacity.

April 16, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Hardware

Mowser ends, but the mobile web must live on

I am sure most of the mobile-focused readers of this blog have read or read about Russell Beattie's The end of Mowser blog post that has turned into an "End of the Mobile Web" debate. I am sorry that Russell's mobile initiative didn't work out, but as I'll talk about below this same method appears to have worked for another company and I think we are just beginning to see the start of the mobile web. While there are those who say the Mobile Web must die since mobile devices today have the horsepower and hardware to bring us the full web on the go, there are many more millions of people who do not have these devices and need the web mobilized or they will never experience it and it may indeed die a slow death.

April 15, 2008 by Matthew Miller in iPhone

fring VoIP and IM client is now available for the Apple iPhone

I've written about my favorite mobile VoIP client, fring, several times in the past on this blog and was very pleased to receive the news from Gil that fring is now available on the Apple iPhone. This current version is for iPhones that have been jailbreaked to run 3rd party applications and you will also need a WiFi connection to use the application.

April 15, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Apple

Willcom D4 runs with an Intel Atom processor in a sleek form factor

I am a big fan of ultra portable devices and particularly enjoy using my Fujitsu U810 with long battery life. I just read about the Willcom D4 UMPC over on the CNET Asia Crave blog and have to say this looks like one impressive device. It is one of the first devices running with an Intel Atom processor. Akihabara News was able to get some hands-on time with the device and posted over 80 photos showing it off in all its glory.

April 14, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Windows

Run Google's Android OS on your Windows Mobile device

I had a chance to play with the generic Google Android device that has been floating around at Mobile World Congress a couple of months ago. Now, you too can play with the Android OS on your Windows Mobile device as you can see in the videos posted by Leigh Geary on Coolsmartphone.com.

April 14, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

MobileTechRoundup show #129, The HP Mini-Note show

As I blogged about earlier this week, James Kendrick has had an HP Mini-Note PC for over a week to review and most all of MobileTechRoundup show #129 was devoted to our discussion about the device. Kevin and I don't have one, but something happened during the show that may soon change that. After our long discussion on this new ultra portable device, we talked a bit about T9 versus QWERTY on mobile phones.

April 11, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Enterprise Software

QWERTY or T9 text input methods, which do 968 prefer?

I have been using converged (mobile phone and PDA functionality in one) devices for a few years now and most of the Windows Mobile devices that I have preferred have been ones with QWERTY keyboards (either slide-out or always available). I only had one type of S60 device (E61 and E61i) that had a QWERTY keyboard with all of the others having a standard phone keypad. I think my thumbs have grown accustomed to QWERTY keyboards and I have always kind of looked for them over other devices. I recently read an article written by Rita El Khoury (aka Dotsisx) on Symbian-Guru.com titled, "I Like T9, How About You? that really prompted me to take an honest look at how much text I really enter right on my mobile phones and whether or not a QWERTY device is really required to enter this text.

April 10, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Software that can improve the UI on your Windows Mobile device

We all know that the iPhone has an amazing user interface, but it is debatable on whether or not the iPhone meets the essential needs of the business and power user. Many folks in the enterprise have Windows Mobile touch screen devices that have advanced functionality that can do just about anything you want on the go. However, there are times (some may say all the time) when the interface is a bit clunky and requires you to dive too deep into the geeky details. Joel over at Geek.com put together an interesting feature article that looks at different software solutions that can help improve the user experience on your Windows Mobile touch screen device.

April 10, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Palm's 3rd quarter losses increase from $31 to $57 million

Larry posted the news about Palm's third quarter report and unfortunately, I am following up his report with more bad news for Palm. Palm just filed an updated third quarter report that increased their net loss from the previously reported US$31 million (30 cents/share) to US$57million (57 cents/share). The expected loss was only 14 cents/share so this is not good news for Palm.

April 8, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Linux

HP announces the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC

There have been rumors of an HP mini-notebook/UMPC type device in the works and my MobileTechRoundup podcast co-host James Kendrick seems to be the first to post his thoughts on the HP Mini. He also posted a video of it in action. He has been playing with the device for a week so has had lots of time to play with the device and put together a great hands-on article. Check out the HP press release for the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC designed for the education market expected to be available later in April.

April 7, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Tablets

Walt Mossberg says 3G iPhone coming within 60 days

There has been a lot of speculation on when the 3G version of the iPhone would be coming, but today Walt Mossberg appeared to let the cat out of the bag in a video where he states that the 3G iPhone will be released within 60 days.

April 5, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Hardware

MobileTechRoundup show #128, CTIA, S60 gaming, ULCPC, and WM 6.1

I was all excited about Sprint's XOHM WiMax after talking with Sprint at CES, but as you can hear from James and Kevin in MobileTechRoundup show #128 they were right to predict that rollout may be coming later than originally stated. We also talked about the excellent new, and free, Opera Mini 4.1 beta that is available for any Java-enabled mobile device. There was confirmation of rumors at CTIA this past week and we talked a bit about Windows Mobile 6.1 and the new IE Mobile application. I had to throw in some S60 news too and talked about the new Astraware game and N-Gage 2 releases. Velocity Mobile and their two new sweet devices was another topic of conversationg. Windows XP also looks like it may be around for a couple of more years, but only if you buy a ULCPC (listen to the show to hear what that stands for). We closed with a teaser about a product we plan to discuss in our next show that James is currently testing.

April 4, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Enterprise Software

Hands-free software applications and services for your mobile phone

My fellow MobileTechRoundup podcast host, Kevin Tofel, is a freelance writer and one of his articles just appeared on the New York Times that I thought some of you may be interested in. The article is titled Souping Up a Cellphone for Maximum Multitasking and after reading the article I think another title could be How to Maximize the Use of Your Cellphone With No Hands. Kevin talks about some services available for your mobile phone that let you manage voice mail, dictate reminders, search by voice, get directions, and capture info and turn it into PDFs.

April 3, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Opera Mini 4.1, Astraware game for S60, and more mobile software and services from CTIA 08

All the news coming out of CTIA and from the mobile world this week isn't just related to operating system upgrades and hardware. There has also been some great mobile software and services news that I thought you may find interesting. Astraware announced their first S60 game, MOBIVOX launched some new features for their product, fring and Boingo joined forces, and Opera posted the public release of Opera Mini 4.1 beta.

April 2, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Ex-i-mate CTO leads Velocity Mobile into the Windows Mobile market with two powerful devices

I expected to hear about Windows Mobile 6.1 and some new device announcements out of CTIA this week, but was caught off guard when a new Windows Mobile company appeared and announced a couple of devices that look quite compelling. Velocity Mobile announced that they were designing and selling new devices manufactured in Taiwan by Inventec Corporation and were launching with the velocity 103 and velocity 111.

April 1, 2008 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Matthew Miller

Latest Posts