An errant pairing with Windows Active Sync the other day resulted in the unwitting destruction of the contacts, tasks and appointments in my Windows Mobile phone. Yes, Virginia, I am a crazy-ass glutton for punishment.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting for my replacement battery to arrive, since the phone, which is barely a year old, can't hold its charge in standby for 6 hours.

And to those few readers of my blog: If you need a smart phone today, buy a Blackberry or an iPhone. If you can wait, consider a phone based on Google Android. But whatever you do, don't spend your hard earned money on anything running Windows Mobile, no matter how nice it is.

I've been fooled twice, so shame on me.

Tags: cellular, windows mobile, iphone, blackberry, android

Michael Geist on Canada's wireless crisis:

Canadian wireless market is hopelessly behind the rest of the world with limited competition, higher prices, and less choice.

Tags: cellular, michael geist

The upcoming HTC Diamond looks to be a pretty nice device. The biggest draw will be the 2.8" VGA resolution screen. The dealbreaker will be that its operating system is Windows Mobile 6.1.

Where's my iPhone, Mr. Rogers?

Tags: cellular, htc

Photos of the Blackberry clamshell are now out in the wild. Gotta admit, it's probably the sexiest crackberry I've ever seen, but I still think I'd rather drink Apple's iPhone Kool-Aid.

Tags: cellular, blackberry, rim

This is a little stale, but ZDNet has a bit on searching google on a mobile without typing.

Tags: google, mobile, cellular

Businessweek has an interesting article on how the big players in the cellular biz are trying to outdo the iPhone.

The first thing they've got to do is to get rid of the clunky GUIs on their phones. To me, the biggest thing working against the iPhone is the lack of a keyboard. For this reason alone, I'm very curious in terms of the usability that Google's Android platform will offer.

I've been using Windows Mobile begrudgingly for the past 3 or so years. And I absolutely hate the OS. My phone crashes regularly (albeit less so since I've upgraded to Windows Mobile 6) and takes over a minute to boot. Until Microsoft realizes that the phone is not a computer and that phone operations take precedence over all other activities, they're not going to be #1 in the smart phone space.

Apple has taken a lot of flak over the rules around iPhone application development, especially for the one where apps have to quit when the user switches apps. Any Windows Mobile user will welcome such a rule, especially if he/she has turned on their phone's camera and switched away to another application. Invariably, the camera app stays on in the background and drains the battery. Windows Mobile users are stuck using the Task Manager to kill the app. How inane is that?

Interestingly enough, I've been very impressed with RIM's Crackberry offerings, but could never convince myself to go with RIM because of the relatively weak application support on the platform. Having said that, Windows Mobile may offer a million apps, but 999,900 of those apps will suck.

Tags: iphone, cellular, android

Michael Geist linked to this interesting blog entry on cellular data rates in Canada.

Tags: telecommunications, cellular, data rates

There has been a buzz lately about the idea of Telus considering the implementation of GSM in Canada. I hope it's true -- there's not enough GSM competition. I don't think it's any guarantee that we'll see the iPhone here any time soon. The biggest hurdle to the iPhone are the data plan rates. Given that there's a pretty strong oligopoly here in the cellular business, it's unlikely you'll see a $60 AT&T-style iPhone plan here any time soon.



I'm hoping we see some new entrants with the spectrum auction this spring. Having some new blood in the cellular industry is the only way we're going to see any decent pricing plans with data. I have a $5/month data plan with Rogers, and for that, I get a piddly 5MB of data. You would think that we could do a little better than this in Canada.

Tags: cellular, rogers, telus, gsm, iphone

The New York Times has an article on how mobile phone companies are trying to meet consumer needs.

I think they could start by making phones that get the basics right. You know it's a sad state of affairs when a $5 home phone can outperform your spanky $300 smart phone. Phone designers should make sure that they live with a phone for a few months before releasing it to manufacturing. To this day, I still can't figure out many of the design choices that Microsoft made with Windows Mobile. Hello! My phone is NOT a computer!

Apple is definitely going in the right direction with the iPhone, although their strategy isn't perfect either. If it weren't for my form factor preferences (sorry, but I really do need a hard keyboard), I probably would be iPhoned right now.

I'm really hoping that the upcoming Android platform is successful, since Google, like Apple, is a company that Gets It.

Tags: cellular, windowsmobile, iphone, android, google, apple

If you own a Windows Mobile phone, you know the pain and ugliness that is... well, Windows Mobile.

If you have felt even a twinge of iPhone envy, you can do the poseur thing with a nifty little app called Pointui. This little app will run on both smartphones and touchscreen phones that run either Windows Mobile 5 or Windows Mobile 6. Even cooler is that they have a version that will run on Windows Mobile 2003. I tried installing it on my now decrepit Toshiba e800 PDA, and it did look nice, though it ran a bit slow.

On my more recent HTC Excalibur smartphone, however, the UI was clean, pretty and snappy. Clearly it has its shortcomings (i.e., dialing, access to contacts), but it made me feel a little bad that I paid for software in the past that deliver Pointui's functionality with a little less pizazz. Fizzweather all of a sudden doesn't seem like that great a buy. There are plenty of Youtube videos that show the GUI in action. I picked one of a recent build below.



It's quite amazing to see a responsive, snappy and attractive app on Windows Mobile. Most of the apps out there truly suck ass, for a lack of a better expression.

Pointui is still in beta, but it definitely is a promising replacement for the Windows Mobile Today Screen. Best of all, Pointui is free.

Tags: cellular, windowsmobile, gui, pointui, fizzweather

I'm not a big fan of using my cel phone while driving, and I definitely don't want to be that annoying guy with the bluetooth headset that you always see. Besides, I've tried doing the bluetooth headset thing and found myself fumbling with it just a little too much.

Enter the Jabra SP5050 bluetooth speakerphone. I've been using this for a little over a month now, so I've gotten a little perspective.



The Jabra SP5050 is an elegantly designed speakerphone that easily clips onto your visor. The sound quality easily exceeded my expectations, and the usability is quite good, though not perfect. It is rated for 12 hours of talk time, and since I have had it, I haven't really found myself in battery jeopardy yet. Since the device is simple, there really isn't a whole lot to say in a review about it, other than the fact that it is really easy to use while you're driving.

Full disclosure: I use this more for receiving calls than making calls, so I never really set myself up with the voice dial feature, and I probably won't.

In a nutshell, it's a great little device, whether you're in the car, or in a boardroom.

Pros

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• Slick design
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• Great sound quality
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• One tap usability
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• Good battery life
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• Auto shut-off
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Cons

• Recharger is for the car only. I sidestepped this limitation by buying a car-to-AC adapter from Deal Extreme for a few bucks. I shouldn't have to do this, so it was a tad annoying.
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• Volume control uses awkwardly positioned buttons. I would have preferred a jog dial here. Very annoying and can require fumbling, especially if you can't remember which button turns up the volume and which one turns it down.
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• A little spendy at $100 bucks
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Rating: Highly Recommended

Tags: jabra, bluetooth, cellular, speakerphone