MDC 2004 Highlights

[Andy Sjostrom]

<i>Mobile DevCon 2004 rocked! Unfortunately, I was unable to attend in person, but I have heard so many cool reports from the conference. Krishna Kumar submitted a conference report which covers the highlights! Let's get to it! Kudos to Krishna Kumar! - Andy Sjostrom</i><br /><br /><b>MDC 2004 Highlights</b><br />Mobile Developer Conference 2004 provided the developers and mobile community in general with tons of insight into the direction Microsoft (and also its partners) is taking with respect to Mobile Computing. The 3 day l-o-n-g conference was filled with sessions that taught us what is available in the platform today, and what will be available to the users/developers down the road.<br /><br />So here is a bunch of highlights from the conference. I am emphasizing on the future direction. And most of it is in Developer Speak. I wish I could more justice to the information presented, right now I wanted to get the information out (and head back home). So if anyone has questions they can either post them on the discussion board or send me private mail, and I will try to answer them.<br /><!><br /><b>Bill Gates keynote</b><br />Well by now most of you must have read the keynote, if you haven’t, check it out over here.<br /><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/03-24-VSLive.asp">http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/03-24-VSLive.asp</a><br />- Future is all about Connected Applications (and products). Also seamless computing. <br />- Common set of development tools (Visual Studio 2005 aka Whidbey) for anything that is Windows<br />- Largest Market Share in Pocket PC space.<br />- Windows Mobile Smartphone is gaining strength, Market Leader in the enterprise smartphone market.<br />- Announced Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition.<br />- Proudly demoed the MPx. (He also mentioned the SPOT watch, that too right at the beginning of the talk, but I feel SPOT watches are over-rated in their current form. That’s my opinion :D I am not a watch person!!)<br />- Mobile2Market is going to make it easier for ISVs to take their applications to market. Registered ISVs can submit the app to the M2M developer portal and it will be made available (published) on partner sites like that of the carriers, Handango, CellMania etc. All in one click of a button.<br /><br /><b>Windows Mobile Future Stuff</b><br />- Lots of cool hardware/software improvements coming your way. Apart from performance enhancements, future releases will bring a lots of cool end user and developer features.<br />- Support for variety of screen sizes for both Smartphones and Pocket PCs.<br />- 1.8” to 2.9” screens 8O for Smartphones, Note current screen size is 2”.<br />- 2.7” to 4.1” screens for Pocket PCs (also 2.3” to 3.5” Square screens, they had slides showing screen shots of some prototypes/reference designs).<br />- Smartphones will have resolutions of QVGA 240x320 (current version supports 176x220)<br />- Pocket PCs will have VGA resolution 640x480 (current version supports 320x240). <br />- Pocket PCs will come in varying shapes, sizes and form factors – Clam shells, with (slideout) keyboards (yay!). They had screen shots of prototypes in the slides. (I will see if I can post them here later.)<br />- Support for peripherals – microdrives, camera, keyboards, secondary displays<br />- Home Screen implementation to be unified between Pocket PC and Smartphone. Next gen Home Screens will be XHTML based.<br />- Installer improvements, unified CAB files for Pocket PC and Smartphone.<br />- Configuration Manager to be extended to Pocket PCs. This will enable Enterprise or Carrier Provisioning.<br />- Future Windows Mobile release will be based on Windows CE ‘Macallan’, it will include CE .NET 2.0, SQL CE, Direct 3D/Direct Draw, MFC 8.0 and ATL 8.0 in the ROM.<br />- Future Windows Mobile will have support for Location, Camera, POOM, TAPI and SMS in .NET CF.<br />- Notifications Broker in the Future Windows Mobile release will enable developers to get notification regarding system state changes like battery strength, signal, wifi/gprs connection etc.<br />- New form controls in VS .NET 2005 - .NET CF 2.<br />- Pocket Watson for Window Mobile. This will handle application errors and exceptions. It will prompt the user if they wish to submit the error report to Microsoft.<br />- Changes to the Application/Code Signing, to enable more flexibility.<br />- And the future version will provide (standardize) an easy way to eject battery, for faster resets :D Just Kidding.<br /><br /><b>Third Party and Partners</b><br />- Motorola had a nice presentation that effectively demonstrated that they are committed to the Windows Mobile platform. They are committed to innovation and that you can expect more cool hardware/software from Moto. MPx line of products is aimed at the Enterprise market.<br />- I played with MPx (yes!) and MPx100. Both are cool but I am in love with MPx100. Moto will not talk about any other products or plans. No news on MPx220 or CDMA phones. But I was told that the best is still to come!! And yes CDMA market is not being ignored. <br />- Motorola has done a lot of in house research to identify what all features the phones must have (over and above Windows Mobile provided stuff). Things like Java, MMS, Digital Rights Management, Ringtones, Bluetooth profiles or ‘Dedicated Accessory’ for the MPx100 which will enable wifi/802.11 without taking up the SDIO slot !!<br />- Voice Over IP, Text to Speech, Push to Talk are all the stuff, Moto wants to bring to MPx line.<br />- Intel talked about Bulverde, the next gen mobile chip with SpeedStep and Wireless MMX. Most of the talk went over my head :-) but one thing I did gather was faster processor (software configurable speed for optimum power management), better power management, MMX instruction set which will enable superior audio/video/gaming experience.<br />- Checked out the Sierra Voq phone, surprisingly didn’t feel all that bulky in my hand. The keyboard is nice. But its styling is nothing compared to that of Moto’s MPx100.<br />- For whatever is worth, I would like to mention that I did talk to a Samsung Rep at the booth. Inquired about the 2003 update for i600. Answer is Samsung has the 2003 update working on the phone, it is up to the carrier (Verizon did not have a booth) to adopt it. I also inquired if it would be possible for them to open up the developer program a bit more so that developer can test/debug code on the phones (and access privileged APIs without the need for certificates etc). Also requested for more info on their developer web site. It is a work in progress, I have to initiate email conversation with the rep, after I get back home.<br /><br />Another interesting tidbit – 20 or more Mpx200 were given away by AT&amp;T to the participants, and I did not win one :( So I will be having a grumpy face during my entire 6 hour flight back home.

[delfuhd]

This makes me verrrry excited for the future :multi:

[popabawa]

Nice summary! Thanks :)

Home Screen implementation to be unified between Pocket PC and Smartphone. Next gen Home Screens will be XHTML based.

Cool. The current XML home screen implementaion on SmartPhone is very nice & flexible so this sounds purrr-fect. Bet it's not implemented in WM2003 SE though is it? ;)

Iain.

[Jon Westfall]

Sounds like we will become much more active here in the Coming year. Great report!

[manywhere]

Nice summary, thanks for posting it! :)

Sounds like nice improvements on the Windows Mobile side. I wonder if the improved CAB installation will allow one to choose to which location it will install when you're running the CAB straight on the device. Would be nice if they've fixed that. ;)

All the other goodies makes me wanna code some more! :D Too bad the features aren't instantly there... 8)

[Ryan Joseph]

This all sounds very cool, except for the error reporting...that drives me crazy in XP and the thought of having that in a PPC isn't very appealing. :roll:

[Jonathan1]

That's a very nice laundry list of features but the big question on my mind is when will these features make their way from concept and R&D into our hands. Its all well and good to walk onto a stage and say here is what we are planning to do to our OS and our devices its another when they say we will have this deployed within one, two, etc time.
Don't get me wrong I think Second Edition will be a marked improvement in several areas but overall between PPC 2000,2002, 2003, and 2003SE the OS has been evolutionary not revolutionary. I think we all want to see an OS coupled to a device that will cause us to:

:jawdrop:

The only device that did this for me was my original iPod 3635. I was completely floored by its capabilities. Since then *shrugs* Nothing has blown me away. I want that feeling back and maybe its just me but the Pocket PC has entered the era of the beige box. The specs and form factors for these devices are boring with the exception of devices like the Toshiba E805 many of the devices we have seen the last 2 years are boring. Smaller in some cases but boring.

I seriously hope that the above list becomes a reality in short order and that SE with its various supported display sizes and landscape configurations renews an interest in OEMs to go in new directions with their hardware.

[Jimmy Dodd]

- Future Windows Mobile release will be based on Windows CE ‘Macallan’, it will include CE .NET 2.0, SQL CE, Direct 3D/Direct Draw, MFC 8.0 and ATL 8.0 in the ROM.

I am looking forward to CF 2, but having SQL Server CE in ROM is a big boon to developers. It allows us to utilize SQL Server CE in many more apps without asking users to eat up a couple MB of precious RAM.

- Future Windows Mobile will have support for Location, Camera, POOM, TAPI and SMS in .NET CF.

It's good to see that MS is adding these as there has been a lot of grumbling about their absence in CF 1.


- New form controls in VS .NET 2005 - .NET CF 2.

Any more detail on this Andy?


- And the future version will provide (standardize) an easy way to eject battery, for faster resets :D Just Kidding.


:lol:

[JonnoB]

One of the interesting things I found in Motorola's presentation is how they will be using memory.

Instead of having 64mb of internal flash that is used for storage and program memory, they will have 64mb of storage memory and 32mb of program memory. These are seperate and there will be no slider to set memory usage. The OS (WM2003SE) apparently now supports this configuration as Moto said they worked with MS on it. So, the MPx will have 32mb of ROM, 32mb of program RAM, and 64mb of storage RAM. It makes sense to me.

[jkendrick]

The only device that did this for me was my original iPod 3635.

Freudian slip? :D

[possmann]

Thanks for the report - great job!

[Jonathan1]

The only device that did this for me was my original iPod 3635.

Freudian slip? :D

LOL. Yep. Funny thing is I was on Apple's site mulling over getting an iPod....So ya I'm guessing a small slip there ;)

[Kris Kumar]

Hi Guys,

Well there is more to the report....if you head over to the smartphonethoughts.com discussion, pictures from the MSFT presentation have been posted.

http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=37214

Check out the new cool concepts that MSFT hardware team is thinking of bringing to market.

Kris

[Kris Kumar]

Cool. The current XML home screen implementaion on SmartPhone is very nice & flexible so this sounds purrr-fect. Bet it's not implemented in WM2003 SE though is it? ;)

Iain.

Nope....have to wait.

MSFT was bragging about how the new Notifications Broker (for alerts regarding various system states, coupled with CF .NET improvements) and XHTML enable 'richer' home screens.

For WM2003 SE in Smartphones, there is a new tag in the Home Screen XML to specify which resolution the Home Screen is targeting. But as I sid this SE improvement is only for Smartphones.

Kris

[Kris Kumar]

I wonder if the improved CAB installation will allow one to choose to which location it will install when you're running the CAB straight on the device. Would be nice if they've fixed that. ;)


Dont have specific answer. But what was said was they will take the best features from each (SP and PPC) and combine it in the new release. And I am sure that they will improve and have that feature.

And it will take care of problems like the one that I faced, where I accidently (well not accidently, I did it intentionally ;-)) tried to install a Pkt PC app on Smartphone and the installer died and jammed the future installs from running on the phone.

Kris

[Kris Kumar]

The only device that did this for me was my original iPod 3635.

(I know you meant iPaq.) But I was thinking along the same lines during the trip, we dont have any stunning devices. And was contemplating if I should start a petition addressed to Steve Jobs, asking him to do a Pocket PC device ;-) They you and I can have an "iPod 3635".

What do you say :-) What we need is the Apple's design ingenuity and MSFT software. Deadly combo.

Kris

BTW: Moto may be the answer...they have done to the Pkt PC phone edition and Smartphone platform, what Compaq did to Pkt PC years ago. And the CTO from Moto did say that "the best is still to come". Did you know they designed and lauched all the 3 new phones in a matter of a year. And have more in the pipeline.

[dean_shan]

This all sounds very cool, except for the error reporting...that drives me crazy in XP and the thought of having that in a PPC isn't very appealing. :roll:

I hate that. Why does Microsoft need to know when ever a program crashes.

[Kris Kumar]

This all sounds very cool, except for the error reporting...that drives me crazy in XP and the thought of having that in a PPC isn't very appealing. :roll:

I hate that. Why does Microsoft need to know when ever a program crashes.

Its voluntary (just like in XP). User will be prompted before the info is sent.

On the lighter side, I think the wireless carriers would love to have this feature on the phones :-) I mean with all the crashes (common on Windows Mobile;-)) carriers would make money by billing the user for the error report submission.

kris

[dean_shan]

This all sounds very cool, except for the error reporting...that drives me crazy in XP and the thought of having that in a PPC isn't very appealing. :roll:

I hate that. Why does Microsoft need to know when ever a program crashes.

Its voluntary (just like in XP). User will be prompted before the info is sent.

I know it's voluntary, I just hate the prompt.

[Robert Levy]

I hate that. Why does Microsoft need to know when ever a program crashes.

So we know what to fix ;)

[Kris Kumar]

I know it's voluntary, I just hate the prompt.

Well on XP you can go into Control panel->System->Advanced Tab->Error Reporting button. And Disable it.

I had requested during the XP beta testing, if they could add another option to the Error Reporting box. "Do not prompt me, Report Always". But it never got accepted I guess.

Hoping that the Windows Mobile will have more slick implementation.
Kris

[dean_shan]

:werenotworthy: Kris you are the man. Thank you oh so much.

[Kris Kumar]

- New form controls in VS .NET 2005 - .NET CF 2.

Any more detail on this Andy?


Here u go..

DateTimePicker
MonthCalendar
DocumentList
LinkLabel
NotificationBubble
Help
RichInk
WebBrowser
DataContainer
UserControl

Along with more events and methods for the existing ones.

Sorry dont have description on the controls and I didnt attend the session. So will have do with the control names for now.