Major Windows Mobile News

[Andy Sjostrom]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/</a><br /><br /></div>Smartphone Thoughts reports about a number of key platform improvements announced at the Professional Developer Conference. The improvements will enable developers to design and develop really interesting and new types of applications.<br /><br />In the post "Location, Location, Location (For Developers, That Is)" David McNamee writes: "There will be built in support for retrieving physical location information from the device. Microsoft’s Ori Amiga did a couple of demos that showed, in less than a dozen lines of code, how to retrieve address information from a Smartphone and use it in your application. The .NET Compact Framework will provide an abstraction over whatever mechanism the carrier uses to provide that data."<br /><br />David also reports that the native data store in Pocket PCs and Smartphones (CEDB) is finally going away! Good news for developers and users as this will pave the way for somethings much better: SQL Server CE. However, Microsoft chooses to call the SQL Server CE incarnation that will live in Pocket PCs and Smartphones "eDB". David writes: "This new data store will also be replacing the native PIM data store. The API will be very similar to the one currently available for CEDB, but it will not be completely compatible."<br /><br />Robert Levy reports about "Telephony Object Model for .NET Developers" writing: "the next generation of Windows Mobile will provide .NET developers with a unified model for accessing telephony features with managed code. Specifically, the features being made available through the .NET Compact Framework include access to the telephony UI, the ability to make and end calls, determination of the phone state, access to the call log, and notifications.". On the subject of unification of services, Robert writes: "In the next generation of Windows Mobile devices, developers will be able to receive notifications via window messages, CE message queues, application activations, and .NET event delegates. There will be a unified set of notifications for networking state, SM S, email, synchronization state, telephony events, device state, and event 3rd party events. ... In the next generation of Windows Mobile Devices, .NET developers will have easy access to email, SMS, contacts, calendar, and tasks through managed classes that wrap around the key portions of the native APIs. These .NET Compact Framework classes will provide mechanisms for creation, deletion, enumeration, sorting, searching, copying, and comparing."<br /><br />Robert continues his reports with some cool Windows Media related announcements: "Microsoft has announced today their plans to bring DirectX down to mobile devices in the next generation of Windows Mobile. First on the list of features are DirectDraw and Direct3D Mobile."

[Jimmy Dodd]

David also reports that the native data store in Pocket PCs and Smartphones (CEDB) is finally going away! Good news for developers and users as this will pave the way for somethings much better: SQL Server CE. However, Microsoft chooses to call the SQL Server CE incarnation that will live in Pocket PCs and Smartphones "eDB". David writes: "This new data store will also be replacing the native PIM data store. The API will be very similar to the one currently available for CEDB, but it will not be completely compatible."


This is good news for developers. SQL Server CE is much faster and more feature laden than CEDB. I don't know why MS insists on renaming things every couple of years, but I'm glad they are finally moving toward a real RDMS regardless of what they call it. It will be interesting to see if they will take this opportunity to create a new, simplified interface to programming ActiveSync synchronization as well.

[Bob Anderson]

Holy cow Batman!

While I don't even pretend to be a developer, this news is certainly encouraging to the lay person, and certainly will create a lot of hype as we wait for these new devices.

There for a while I thought Palm was going to catch up! I should have known better :wink:

[PR.]

Sounds interesting but I think we are going to be waiting at least 12-18months before the new Windows Mobile OS is shown off. Its going to be deeply embedded with Longhorn for that seamless interaction and thats not out til 2005+

[Mexico]

How about a true Close button?
How about reliable alarms and notifications? :wink:
All that stuff sounds great, but let's not forget the little things that count.

[Felix Torres]

In the mobile arena, development tool advances tend to reflect hardware on the horizon.

So by reading in between the lines of the announcements we should be able to get a good idea of what 04 will offer...
...and what is likely headed our way sounds like big-time fun...

1- MS announced the delay of the Media2go boxes, right? Nobody seems to have considered that these boxes, which will run Strongarm CPUs, WinCE, and sport 320 by 240 landscape screens, will be coming out at about the same time as the next release of Windows Mobile, which will now support QVGA screens in landscape. Can we add 2 and 2 and get four? Apple is putting rudimentary PDA functions into iPOD, so it would make sense for MS and partners to put in at least *some* PocketPC capabilities into the Portable media Centers, no? And a portable entertainment device should run *some* games, no?

2- MS announced DirectX for Windows Mobile; obviously this ties in to the ATI and NVidia announcements of 3D graphics chips for mobile use and a chance to compete with the NGAGE phones. But it wouldn't take much to add it to the Portable Media Centers, no?

3- Handango just pre-announced the MS Voice Command app for PocketPC, which is obviously derived from the MS Speech apps beveloped for WinCE automotive use. Which means that not only is the PocketPC API-set being spread among other WinCE efforts, it is also bringing in tech from the other groups within MS. Which, frankly, is long overdue...

Add it up and what do you get?

A merging of PDAs and portable entertainment?
A new generation of PocketPCs and kindred devices that share common APIs for apps, 3D, Audio, media, and natural language interfacing?
Smartphones with QVA screens so they can run PocketPC apps?
Communicator PDAs with Smartphone-quality communication functions?
Media players that run PocketPC games, both 2D and 3D, as well as music and videos?
Or PDAs with built-in Hard drives?
Certainly the case volume difference between, say an iPAQ 5xxx and a 19xx allows for both a 1.8 in HD and the battery capacity to drive it, no?

Combine all the various elements MS has in their Window Mobile tool kit and you get a pretty compelling leap over anything PALM or Apple are currently offering or planning to offer.

Suddenly, it makes sense, doesn't it?
The lack of major developments for the last year, I mean...

MS may have simply been consolidating the PocketPC platform and moving it down in size and price to make room for a new generation of converged portable hardware.

Granted that this is all just reading between the lines, but the timing of all these new products comming out at the same time argues for a common agenda, no?

And, since MS is not bowing out of portable computing gadgets, they have to counter the moves that PALM and Apple are working on, no? Well, what better way to smack them both at once than by combining their markets into one? Suddenly Apple (and Nokia) will need to match PDA-level apps and games, while PALM (and Sony) will have to match the Media and gaming capabilities of a DirectX portable platform.

The pieces are in place; the only question is, will the various MS OEM partners use them...

[Foo Fighter]

I am thrilled that MS is bumping resolution to VGA, but I can't help but wonder how this will impact battery life. All those extra pixels gotta suck up juice from somewhere. :?

Will it support 320x480 as well?

[Jonathan1]

Dang it. :( I've been sitting on my Jornada 568 for a year now waiting for something like the iPaq 4150 to come out. Now that some of the specs of PPC2004 is showing up I have to question if I really should buy it or wait.
We all are well aware that you can wait forever for the next best thing but it sounds as if the leap from PPC2003 to 2004 is so drastic that it may warrant holding off 4-6 months. (Assuming it comes out in that timeframe.)

PS- Yes I’m well aware its not called Pocket PC anymore. I like Pocket PC better then Windows Mobile. So :razzing:

[GadgetDave]

Microsoft’s Ori Amiga did a couple of demos ...
Robert continues his reports with some cool Windows Media related announcements: "Microsoft has announced today their plans to bring DirectX down to mobile devices in the next generation of Windows Mobile. First on the list of features are DirectDraw and Direct3D Mobile."

In fact, at the end of his demo, Ori showed a PPC app that had 3 3D objects floating around the screen with amazing clarity, shadow and highlight detail - like a Win2K screensaver - looked AWESOME!

[MikeB]

Good news for developers ...... The API will be very similar to the one currently available for CEDB, but it will not be completely compatible."


That doesn't exactly sound like good news for developers.... 8O

[heliod]

Good news for developers ...... The API will be very similar to the one currently available for CEDB, but it will not be completely compatible."


That doesn't exactly sound like good news for developers.... 8O

This is the point that makes it afraid, since it affects the PIM databases.

This means that if MS doesn't take care of getting developers to put out versions of their software for 2004 even previously to the release of the version, we will go back to the situation in which there are 0 (zero) third-party applications available for Pocket PC.

[Kevin Daly]

I just fished out my notes from the PDC and added the info I took down on updates included in the 2004 version of the Compact Framework to the "Details Being Released On Next Version Of Windows Mobile" thread.
Almost certainly a case where cross-posting would have been justified (and less annoying than what I'm doing now), but I'm still a bit jet-lagged after a 12 and a half hour flight.
Anyway, the developers among us may find it of interest if you don't know it all already (I know it now and I'm sure as hell interested).
There's some goodies coming to be sure.