Category: Mobile

[sc:mobile-category ]Microsoft learned a hard lesson with its first update to Windows Phone, the lack of communications, confusion about what the status was with the mobile operators and other factors caused quite a bit of stress for the early adopters of the platform.

With the Mango update they seem to have learned their lesson, creating a page which people could reference to see where their update was and when they might expect it to be delivered to their device.

However it appears Microsoft has once again forgotten this lesson with the deployment of the latest update (7740).

The update doesn’t add much to the phone, a fix to voice mail fix and one for users with Exchange 2003, but that’s not really the point.  Update 7740 is targeted at certain regions and providers but the lack of information coming from Microsoft is epic.

How much work would it have been to add another column to the “Where’s my update” page and avoid the confusion in the first place?

I received the update the other night and it came as a surprise and I keep up to date on most WP7 news .

Will they learn their lesson yet again?  We’ll have to wait and see.

[sc:mobile-category ]As motioned in my previous post, when I received the 7740 update to my HD7 it came as a surprise.  However when came as a disappointment was that the tethering update to the HD7 was not included in the update.

Tethering is a function I don’t use very often, but the few times I did use it with my old Windows Mobile 6.5 handset it was very convenient.  I’ve lived without the functionality since last March when I picked up my HD7 and only once did I find it to be an issue.

However with the Mango update that supports the functionality, the follow on information that the HD7 radio hardware does support the functionality and that Bell does allow tethering it now becomes a matter of principle .

I would have seemed a perfect time to update the radio firmware with the 7740 update but it appears as though Bell as decided to keep them separate.

And so I resorted to the last hope to get information about if Bell was going to support the update or not… I called the Bell support line .

Amazingly enough I managed to get ahold of someone who knew what I was talking about and went off to find out any information he could.

After a few minutes on hold he said that while they didn’t have a date for the release, Bell is going to be deploying the update to the HD7!

Woohoo, now just to patiently wait for it to be pushed to my phone.  Hummm, I’m not very good at waiting… sigh.

[sc:mobile-category ]When the TouchPad 3.0.4 firmware update was release a while ago it added support for non-WebOS phone’s to connect through Bluetooth.  This functionality basically allowed the TouchPad to work as a Bluetooth speaker and mic to any phone.

This functionality didn’t really excite me much, but it seemed like it would be convenient if my phone was charging in one room and I was using the TouchPad in another.  If a call came in I would be able to hear the ring and answer the call right on the TouchPad.  However I have to admit that I really don’t use my mobile phone as a phone very much (the most calls I get is from one very annoying telemarketer that just won’t go away ).

However one weekend a little while ago I was sleeping in late on a Saturday morning when I heard my phone receive a text message.  Normally I would simply ignore this and go back to sleep, but it so happened that I had my TouchPad sitting on my nightstand.  It was connected to by HD7 and as Windows Phone sees the TouchPad as a speaker/mic, WP promptly read out the text message to me.

Now I am VERY sceptical of the usefulness of voice control.  The vast majority of the time you are in a location that the last thing you want to do is speak a response to a message.  However, laying in bed, having WP read the message and then ask what I wanted to do, I couldn’t help but feel like this was one of the few instances where voice control could really work.

I dictated back a response, sent it, received another text response, responded to it and close the conversation, all without even opening my eyes.

While I still don’t see voice control as the end all and be all of user interfaces, I will begrudgingly say that in this instance, it was cool .

[sc:mobile-category ]Recently a new application for Windows Phone was released to the marketplace which is kind of cool… new groups*.

It’s not revolutionary, but what it does is allow you to pin a tile to the Start Menu with any text you want on them.  The tile is static and clear so it looks like a title.  You can move it around on the Start Menu to allow you to “group” your live tiles under it.  Like so:

The tile is only a half width tile so if you want to add longer text it will wrap around, effectively reducing the amount of space you have between the tiles, but it still looks fine.

You can add as many as you like so you can group your start menu however you like.

When I changed my theme from black to white and tiles didn’t update and going in to the app from one of the title tiles came up with an error, so there’s still some work to do, but as a first release it’s pretty good.

Another issue I came across is the ads at the bottom of the app, which doesn’t seem to work.  This one I can live with though .  I think pretty much every app that is going the ad supported route should also have a pay option available, hopefully this one will as well in their next release.

This is something Microsoft should look in to for the next release of Windows Phone, allowing a half or full width tile with arbitrary text could snaze up the Start Menu and allow for a lot of customization without sacrificing the functionality of the live tiles.

[sc:mobile-category ]In the early days of Windows Phone 7, a “hacker” group found a way to unlock WP7 and Microsoft was fast to swoop in and get them to not distribute the software.  But there was a twist, MS agreed to help the hacker team to build a supported unlock tool and now, finally its available to the general public.

I haven’t had a big desire to unlock my phone, but I have to admit I like the idea so when it became available I signed up and paid the $9 to see what it was like.

Getting started was easy, logging in to ChevronWP7 labs website is linked to a live ID, so I just used my standard account.  Then a few quick steps to use PayPal and I had when they call a token.

This token can be used to unlock a single phone as many times as required (in case you have to restore your phone or presumably after the next update from MS).

However by the time I had my token (a few hours after they opened up the process) they had already had issues and were down for maintenance.

I checked back the next day and it was once more available, the next step was to download the unlocker, a small piece of software you run from Windows with your phone connected through USB.  The software is easy to use and straight forward.  It takes you through a few steps (unlock the screen on the phone, enter the token, etc) and then places you in the queue to get unlocked.

On my first attempt (which I started around noon) I was 430th in line, which looked like I’d be waiting several hours before the unlock would happen.  Unfortunately I had to abort as I had other things to do that afternoon and I can not remember the last time I left the house without my phone .

I came back and restarted the process around 9pm, unfortunately the unlocker does not remember your previous settings so I had to step through all of the screens again.  Then I was 270th in line, I left the phone connected overnight and let it go.

The next morning I had found the phone was still not unlocked due to the backend being down and ChevronWP7 Labs.  It took almost a complete day to get back up but once it was I restarted the process, including having to re-download a new version of the unlocker.

This time there were only 20 some people in front of me and the queue moved along pretty fast.  When my turn came up, it failed due to the fact I had never renamed by phone.  Apparently the unlocker needs a unique name to unlock against.  I had to close the unlocker, start Zune, rename the phone, close Zune and restart the unlocker.

After stepping through the unlocker again I finally had my phone unlocked!

One other issue that came up (and I can not remember at which attempt) was the unlocker required me to install Windows Phone support tools from the MS site.  Not a big deal, but it could have been listed as a pre-req on the website.

Of course the question now became “What do I do with an unlocked phone?”.

The XDA forums have several homebrew apps available, including the BatteryStatus apps.  This cool little tool gives you a live tile that gives you your battery status in a percentage.

After downloading the XAP file you have to use the MS Windows Phone 7.1 SDK tools to install the app, which means you have to download and install another 750 meg of software.  But hey, no one said it would be simple .

ChevronWP7 Labs has also disabled new token purchases while they get through the backlog of unlocks yet to be redeemed, so it may be a while before you can unlock your phone, but I think it is well work the $9 if for no other reason then to send MS a message that they should unlock WP7 by default.