Kevin Daly
08-21-2003, 07:09 AM
I just got back from the New Zealand leg of Tech Ed 2003 (better than last year, and lots of good sessions, although one of the highlights for me was Ari Bixhorn's presentation on Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks. For sheer entertainment value if nothing else).
Anyway, Telecom New Zealand had a very interesting Pocket PC Phone Edition device on display which the person on the stand said would be released before the end of the year.
In New Zealand we have both a CDMA network (run by Telecom NZ, which last time I looked was largely owned by a consortium of US companies) and a GSM network, run by Vodafone. Vodafone sell the PDA Otherwise Known As The XDA under the name of the QTEK 1010, but do not by any stretch of the imagination market it, presumably because they are not really interested in trying to sell anything to people who are old enough to vote.
Telecom NZ have been stuck with flogging the somewhat uninspiring and kludgy (as well as Guaranteed Not To Be Upgraded To Windows Mobile 2003) Audiovox Thera...but the latest device appears to be a slightly modified XDA (more on the slightly modified in a bit). When I pointed out to the Telecom guy that that looked suspiciously like the competition he said it was a CDMA version that would be going on sale towards the end of the year, and he confirmed my suspicion that it was running Windows Mobile 2003. He said there weren't any more details because they haven't gone on sale yet (and I'm thinking "Yeah, but there's one there for God's sake"), but he did mention "mumble mumble" which sounded oddly like built in GPS. I thought at the time that he meant it had an SDIO slot that could be used for a GPS card, or something like that, since something as specialised and expensive as GPS seemed an odd choice to build into a device of this type, but from talking to someone later who'd had a look at one it seems that what it actually is is a geolocation facility of some sort, whereby the location of the device can be determined (rather than GPS as such, or at least in the form you can use with an application. I have no idea whether it does the satellite thing). Anyway, I think that's what the protrusion is on the side opposite the one with the antenna (otherwise known as "the left").
I can say that it doesn't look like the photos I've seen of the XDA II, since it doesn't have the black bits around the buttons, which I personally think spoil the look of the new XDA a bit compared with the original.
This is particularly interesting to me since current a Compact Framework web service client I wrote for retrieving certain scientific data is being tested on a Thera on and around Mt Ruapehu, successfully last time I heard (the Thera was leant to us by Telecom: we were a bit worried as to whether they fully understood where it was going to be tested, and were imagining having to say things in future like "What do you mean we weren't supposed to use it on a volcano?"). Anyway, a WM 2003 device with CF in ROM, probably a faster processor and so on would undoubtedly be a better platform.
Not to mention way more cool.
0X
Anyway, Telecom New Zealand had a very interesting Pocket PC Phone Edition device on display which the person on the stand said would be released before the end of the year.
In New Zealand we have both a CDMA network (run by Telecom NZ, which last time I looked was largely owned by a consortium of US companies) and a GSM network, run by Vodafone. Vodafone sell the PDA Otherwise Known As The XDA under the name of the QTEK 1010, but do not by any stretch of the imagination market it, presumably because they are not really interested in trying to sell anything to people who are old enough to vote.
Telecom NZ have been stuck with flogging the somewhat uninspiring and kludgy (as well as Guaranteed Not To Be Upgraded To Windows Mobile 2003) Audiovox Thera...but the latest device appears to be a slightly modified XDA (more on the slightly modified in a bit). When I pointed out to the Telecom guy that that looked suspiciously like the competition he said it was a CDMA version that would be going on sale towards the end of the year, and he confirmed my suspicion that it was running Windows Mobile 2003. He said there weren't any more details because they haven't gone on sale yet (and I'm thinking "Yeah, but there's one there for God's sake"), but he did mention "mumble mumble" which sounded oddly like built in GPS. I thought at the time that he meant it had an SDIO slot that could be used for a GPS card, or something like that, since something as specialised and expensive as GPS seemed an odd choice to build into a device of this type, but from talking to someone later who'd had a look at one it seems that what it actually is is a geolocation facility of some sort, whereby the location of the device can be determined (rather than GPS as such, or at least in the form you can use with an application. I have no idea whether it does the satellite thing). Anyway, I think that's what the protrusion is on the side opposite the one with the antenna (otherwise known as "the left").
I can say that it doesn't look like the photos I've seen of the XDA II, since it doesn't have the black bits around the buttons, which I personally think spoil the look of the new XDA a bit compared with the original.
This is particularly interesting to me since current a Compact Framework web service client I wrote for retrieving certain scientific data is being tested on a Thera on and around Mt Ruapehu, successfully last time I heard (the Thera was leant to us by Telecom: we were a bit worried as to whether they fully understood where it was going to be tested, and were imagining having to say things in future like "What do you mean we weren't supposed to use it on a volcano?"). Anyway, a WM 2003 device with CF in ROM, probably a faster processor and so on would undoubtedly be a better platform.
Not to mention way more cool.
0X