The Mobile Gadgeteer

The BlackBerry Curve with @Home UMA service convinced me to buy my first BB

My experiences with the T-Mobile HotSpot @Home service began over a year ago when I beta-tested the service in Washington State. I was mildly impressed with the service, but the poor phone selection kept me from adding the service to my account. I then received a free compatible phone that was an upgraded version of the Samsung model I beta tested with. It still wasn't a smartphone though and I wasn't willing to give up all the functionality I get with a smartphone device. Last month, T-Mobile announced that the BlackBerry Curve would be coming with support for the HotSpot @Home service. T-Mobile sent me an evaluation unit and after playing with it for a couple of weeks I am finally ready to add the HotSpot @Home service to my account and start using a RIM BlackBerry device for the first time in my 10 year mobile device history. What did I find so compelling about the BlackBerry Curve and the HotSpot @Home service? Check out my thoughts and the image gallery for all the details.

October 24, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

IMAP coming to Gmail, mobile enthusiasts cheer in anticipation

I just read an article over on Download Squad, thanks Kevin, that has me quite excited as a mobile device user who relies on Gmail. It seems that Gmail is FINALLY rolling out IMAP support. I started using Gmail 3 years ago and initially bounced back to Yahoo! because I needed an IMAP account to effectively manage my email from multiple mobile devices and PCs. I then went back to Gmail due to the compelling web interface and subscribed to a hosted Exchange account for my email. Still, even to this day, I have to forward my Gmail to my hosted Exchange and must managed Gmail email multiple times on the iPhone, BlackBerry, etc. With IMAP support my email will now be synced across all platforms and I will increase my productivity.

October 23, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Enterprise Software

Microsoft announces System Center Mobile Device Manager

Microsoft is really starting to gain serious traction with Windows Mobile in the enterprise arena and their latest announcement made today at CTIA shows how dedicated they really are. Steve Ballmer introduced Microsoft's System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 server. With this new server system IT professionals will be able to increase their management capabilities and improve their security functionality with Windows Mobile devices. The Mobile Device Manager will also enable OTA application deployments so companies can standardize their devices and roll out applications quickly and easily.

October 23, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Mobile OS

Nokia reveals glimpses of the mobile future

The headline was what appeared in my email inbox late last night so I immediately opened up the message to read what Nokia had to say about the future of mobility. Nokia was giving a briefing at The Way We Live Next event held at the Nokia Research Center in Oulu, Finland. You can actually listen to podcasts of the presentations, along with PDF versions of most presentations, at The Way We Live Next site. In addition to the presentations on the future of mobility, Nokia also demonstrated MOSH, Widsets, Point & Find, Shoot to Translate, and virtual worlds. All these functions were performed using a Nokia multimedia computer (aka smartphone).

October 23, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Dashwire mirrors your mobile phone content to the web

I recently had the chance to meet with Ford Davidson from Dashwire to discuss their new free service that is starting to roll out today. Dashwire is a service that mirrors the content on your mobile phone to a personal web account. I personally was quite excited about the service because I see it as a great way to manage my photos taken with my devices, stay in touch with people via SMS when I am at work and on my desktop PC, quickly update and manage my internet bookmarks/favorites, and enter contacts with a full keyboard right from my PC. At this time, Dashwire mirrors your photos, videos, text messages, bookmarks (Internet Explorer Mobile only), contacts, and phone calls.

October 22, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Enterprise Software

Run Palm applications on your S60 or UIQ device

I started using PDAs with the Pilot 1000 back in 1997 and there are still a few Palm OS applications that I find very useful that are not found in Windows Mobile or Symbian. One example of a program I use for my marine salvage work is Tide Tool that gives me tidal data around the world in both table and graphical formats. I was very pleased to read today on the StyleTap blog that StyleTap CrossPlatform for Symbian OS will be released in early 2008. I have tried StyleTap on Windows Mobile devices and it works brilliantly with Palm OS applications.

October 18, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Enterprise Software

Verizon's Samsung SCH-i760 includes a touch screen with unique keypad design

I had a chance to hold the Samsung SCH-i760 at CES 2007 in January, but there was no battery in the device to try it out. Now, 10 months later Verizon Wireless announced that the device will be available for US$349.99 after a US$50 mail-in rebate and two-year contract starting tomorrow. The Samsung SCH-i760 is a Windows Mobile Professional (touch screen Phone Edition) device with an unique dial pad on the front and a full QWERTY keyboard accessed via a slider.

October 18, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Samsung

Boingo and Nokia announce mobile client with low monthly access fee

Nokia likes to label their high-end mobile devices as multimedia computers rather than smartphones and with the features and services they continue to offer it looks like these devices are really more computer than phone. In what I think is a great move for Nokia, they have partnered with Boingo Wireless, Inc. to offer the Boingo Mobile client for S60 devices and Internet Tablets. With one of these devices and the Boingo Mobile client you will now be able to connect to any Boingo hotspot throughout the world, and there are tens of thousands of them, for a low US$7.95 (EURO5.95) monthly fee.

October 17, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

Nokia announces N810 Internet Tablet with GPS and OS 2008

I enjoy using the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet for web browsing from the couch and for making Skype calls. I would use it even more if I didn't have so many mobile devices floating around and think it is a great mobile terminal. Nokia just announced the Nokia N810 as a successor to the N800. The N810 will be available in mid-November for US$479 and it looks like there is another candidate for my self-purchased Christmas gift.

October 17, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Enterprise Software

iPhone and iPod Touch SDK coming from Apple in February

There have been rumors and dreams of an iPhone SDK for real 3rd party applications and today Steve Jobs revealed that there will be a SDK for developers in February. I think the timing of his statement was intended to try to take a bit of steam out of the Nokia touch technology announcement made yesterday. While I have hacked my iPhone and have 3rd party applications on it now, I am looking forward to official Apple support for these applications and hope developers are not too angry at some of the actions Apple has taken with iPhone updates. Luckily, the developers have been busy unbricking iPhones so everyone should be able to get their iPhones back up and running again.

October 17, 2007 by Matthew Miller in iPhone

Sprint announces the Touch by HTC

I checked out an HTC Touch back in June and though that HTC did a very good job of taking an existing operating system and pushing the limits with some innovation. At the time the HTC Touch was only available outside the U.S. as a SIM-unlocked device. Today, Sprint and HTC announced the Touch by HTC for the Sprint network. A significant improvement over the Touch I tested out is the support for Sprint's high speed EV-DO wireless network. The Touch by HTC for Sprint will be available after 4 November for US$249.99 with a two-year subscriber agreement and a US$100 mail-in rebate.

October 17, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

S60 touch technology announced, watch out Apple

I saw a sign at the S60 Summit that listed S60 touch interface as an upcoming feature. I think the introduction of the iPhone really pushed manufacturers to speed up development of technology they had under wraps and today Nokia officially announced the S60 touch user interface would be coming in 2008. Rafe has a YouTube video of the presentation at the Symbian Smartphone Show over at All About Symbian that has me personally very excited about 2008. Imagine something like the iPhone, but with more functionality and an open architecture for virtually unlimited customization and expansion to your needs and desires.

October 15, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Apple

Amtrak and T-Mobile offer WiFi at select stations, Sounder trains have free WiFi

Amanda sent me a press release from T-Mobile today announcing that T-Mobile HotSpot service is available in five major Amtrak stations on the East Coast. Passengers who are waiting for their train can now surf via the T-Mobile WiFi network at the Washington D,C, Union Station, Baltimore Penn Station, Wilmington Station, Philadelphia 30th Street Station and New York Penn Station. If you have T-Mobile cellular service with the US$19.99 monthly unlimited data plan you can surf for free as part of that plan too. With a device like the new BlackBerry 8320, that I am evaluating right now, you can also make and receive UMA calls at these stations. At first I thought the press release was going to tell me you could surf via WiFi on the trains, which I just happened to discover does work here in Seattle.

October 15, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

The Nokia N95 8GB is now shipping

I keep going back to the Nokia N95 and find it a very capable smartphone, with a couple of issues (battery life and RAM) that are fixed with the Nokia N95-3. The N95-3 also adds 3G for U.S. owners (AT&T only) so it looks like a great upgrade from the N95. Nokia just announced that the N95 8GB is now shipping and should be available to consumers very soon. I was debating about getting one of these with the 8GB flash drive, but think I should get the N95-3 with the 3G support since I can easily add a 6GB microSD card for less than the price difference in the two devices.

October 15, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Hardware

The Qwest Fusion brings a high quality EV-DO capable Smartphone to customers

As I mentioned in a post I made in August, I left Qwest Wireless several years ago to move to T-Mobile with their more powerful smartphone devices and more extensive national network. Since that time Qwest has partnered with Sprint to provide nationwide coverage. They have also expanded their device lineup and just recently launched two powerful Windows Mobile devices, the Qwest Fusion and HTC Mogul. Actually, Qwest was the first in the U.S. to launch the Fusion (aka HTC Libra) device. I was sent a Qwest Fusion HTC 5800 device to check out for a couple of weeks and while I am not ready to switch back to Qwest, if I was with them I would be fairly happy with the latest offerings.

October 14, 2007 by Matthew Miller in Mobility

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