Windows Marketplace for Mobile, now in super-cheesy video form

Look, we’re certain Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace for Mobile will be a rousing success, with loads of developers set to announce apps this week at CTIA and interesting features like full-refund returns and apps certified to run on specific devices. And we’d be totally excited to point out that this teaser video shows off the interface in action, including a charmingly illiterate app review and carrier-specific stores. But honestly, here’s a better question: if Microsoft is really serious about how cool is it is to be not-cool-enough, is a totally mediocre teaser with a relentlessly corporate electrorock soundtrack and hyperactive informercial narration really the best way to sell this thing? Discuss. Video after the break.

[Via 1800PocketPC; thanks Saijo]

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Windows Marketplace for Mobile, now in super-cheesy video form originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft announces Windows Marketplace partners, tweaked policies, designer WinMo 6.5 themes

Details are starting to come into focus on some of the finer points of Windows Mobile 6.5’s launch later this year after February’s announcement at MWC, and if you had to boil the news down to just two words, they’d be “pretty” and “support.” As “pretty” goes, it’s been announced that Microsoft has partnered up with Design Museum London and the Council of Fashion Designers of America to offer designer themes for 6.5-based devices — colors, wallpaper, and the like — with the first designs coming from fashion dude Isaac Mizrahi. If that’s not good enough for ya, the company will be releasing a Theme Generator later this year that’ll let you customize colors of UI elements on your device, pair it up with wallpaper culled from your own photo collection, and send the batch straight to your phone.

Over to the “support” front, over 25 companies will be announcing their full support for the Windows Marketplace at CTIA this week, including EA Mobile, Facebook (pictured), Gameloft, MySpace, Namco, Pandora, and Sling Media. To help improve the Marketplace’s public image, Microsoft is tweaking some policies, too: developers will now be able to issue unlimited updates to their apps free of charge, and users will have up to 24 hours to “return” apps they don’t like (very cool). Notably, Facebook’s new app will be available in April, offering direct video uploads straight to your wall if you’re into that sort of thing (you know who you are).

Finally, Microsoft’s issued a clarification regarding upgrades from 6.1 to 6.5: devices that are already out in the marketplace with a minimum of 128MB of RAM and a 400MHz processor or better are theoretically capable of being upgraded — it’s all up to licensees to decide whether they want to go to the trouble of offering the upgrades to their customers. Let’s hope, shall we?

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Microsoft announces Windows Marketplace partners, tweaked policies, designer WinMo 6.5 themes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T pulls trigger on Nokia E71x and Samsung Propel Pro

Kicking off what’s sure to be a fun-filled week of announcements surrounding CTIA out in Vegas, AT&T’s smartphone lineup just got a little beefier thanks to the official introduction of a couple devices we’ve been expecting for a hot minute now. First up, the Nokia E71x is just about ready for shelves, bringing WiFi, AT&T Navigator (which hopefully won’t preclude the use of Nokia Maps and other GPS-enabled apps), and all of the lauded physical design characteristics you’re used to from the original, unbranded E71. The best thing here might be the price — just $99.99 on contract after rebate, thankfully beating rumors of $200 and $150 by a country mile; it’ll hit shelves “in the coming weeks.” Next up is the Samsung Propel Pro, a device that shares very little in common with its Propel namesake other than a form factor, mainly because this sucker’s a full-out smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1. It’s got WiFi, a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard (naturally) and will be available on April 14 for $149.99 after all your discounts have been applied and your two-year agreement is filed away.

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AT&T pulls trigger on Nokia E71x and Samsung Propel Pro originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows Mobile 7 screenshots (or mockups, or something) leaked?

The past few days have seen the alleged leaks of a couple batches of Windows Mobile 7 screenshots, suggesting Microsoft’s already hard at work on the successor to 6.5 — something we’ve heard in the past, and given the state of 6.x, a rumor that isn’t difficult to believe. To say the leaks look sketchy, though, would be an understatement; most prominently, none of them match, with different styling elements applied to every capture. Best case, we figure these are mockups — not functional shots from an actual device or an emulator, but early, off-the-cuff stabs at a design language from a usability expert’s late-night Illustrator session somewhere deep within Redmond. We like some of what we’re seeing — there are definitely at least a few elements here that look thoroughly modern — but if there’s any basis in reality to these, we’re worried about the ill-conceived idea of putting battery strength and volume (or signal strength, depending on the shot) at the bottom of the display. Needless to say, there are very good reasons that kind of information gets consolidated to the top, not the least of which is that your thumbs aren’t transparent. At least ours aren’t, and if yours are, you should probably get that looked at.

Read – First batch
Read – Second batch

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Windows Mobile 7 screenshots (or mockups, or something) leaked? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Giz Explains: What Makes The Five Smartphone Platforms Different

Smartphones have all advanced over the past few years, and mostly do the same things. But if you look at the details, you’ll find that—depending on your needs—one may be way better than another.

Most smartphone platforms support touchscreens and/or keyboards, and let you browse the internet, run apps, view photos and play games/music/movies. And while they may act the same on a fundamental level, not all smartphones are created equal. Here’s where they match up, and where they don’t:


Note: We have updated certain notes in the chart to reflect the lively discussion going on in comments, and we want that to continue. That said, we plan to leave Symbian both out of this discussion and any future discussions of the hottest smartphones of the day because it has little or no presence in the US, where we are based, despite its popularity in other countries. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you.

iPhone
Apple is so fixated on maintaining a high level of user satisfaction and reduced frustration on the iPhone, they will bluntly admit to leaving out key smartphone features—particularly features that are either hard to implement in the UI, or require too much battery juice. The result is a pretty slick interface (with occasional glitches, yes, but fewer than others) that nevertheless leaves you wanting more. iPhone OS 3.0 (covered in full detail here) addressed most of the user gripes—such as lack of push notifications, copy and paste and search, but we’re still left without video recording, Flash browser support and true background-app multitasking.

Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is brilliant for the business crowd because of its ability to support secure emails, work with corporate computer infrastructures and run proprietary business apps created entirely within Microsoft’s device ecosystem. You can pretty much run and do anything you want on a Windows Mobile phone, which is great. But because the phones are made by many different competing companies—with no consistent quality assurance—UI and user experience don’t compare to the other platforms, so the OS is not as good for people who want a fun smartphone for their own personal use.

One major gripe especially revolves around the screen and its systemic lack of both finger-friendly capacitive-touchscreen support and multitouch interaction. WinMo feels really clunky when you use a finger, and you otherwise have to use an annoying (and easily lost) stylus.

The official reasoning for no capacitive touchscreen support is puzzling. Here’s what Prithvi Raj, Windows Mobile product manager of consumer experiences told us:

At this time, we are focusing on resistive touch because we wanted to ensure the highest quality across the entire experience on the phone, including in different applications such as Excel or Word. However, we have enhanced our software to help resistive screens act like capacitive in certain areas like the “gesture support” and “physics engine” that you see across the new UI of Windows Mobile 6.5 powered Windows phones.

Hrm. Well at least they’re acknowledging the need for better gesture support, and the need to mimic the capability of capacitive touch. We’d rather they just skipped all that work and upgraded, though.

Android
Android is the code monkey’s dream. Because the OS is fully open source, you can do anything you’d like to the phone. This means pretty much any feature you’d like on a cellphone is possible on Android—even the officially unsupported multitouch interaction—provided someone can write an app or extension for it. The downside? Even the official Google/HTC/T-Mobile release of the G1 had a UI design that felt incoherent, like you’re using four different OSes instead of one. Also, despite all this free love, there’s only one currently available phone, and it’s ugly as all sin. Note: For more information, you should read this detailed Android vs. iPhone piece by Gina at Lifehacker.

BlackBerry
Like Windows Mobile, RIM’s BlackBerry is also a business-oriented phone, but with a much more coherent consumer initiative under way. Relatively intuitive and well-structured to use, it feeds off of an email server that is second to none in getting messages to you as they’re sent. And since the phone only runs on BlackBerry hardware, you can mostly be assured the OS will run smoothly (mostly). But despite their best efforts to liven things up with the admirable 4.6 OS and the not-so-admirable BlackBerry Storm touchscreen edition, this remains a fairly utilitarian phone that serves one main purpose: superior messaging. Note: Blackberry was deemed to not have Universal Search because it doesn’t search files or Applications.

WebOS and the Palm Pre
Palm’s Pre with its all-new WebOS has the potential to be the closest competitor to the iPhone, merging the zen simplicity and beauty of the iPhone OS with some of the background processing power of an Android or WinMo phone. You can run as many apps as you like concurrently, and manage them using a system that lets you quickly flick through apps like it was a photo system, great for staying on top of many things at once. But it also integrates the internet into so many facets of its UI (search, contacts, UI, etc.), that you might not even realize you’re using the internet sometimes. If the iPhone is for the common man, WinMo for the executive, Android for the programmer and BlackBerry for the information junkie, WebOS could very much be for the savvy kids trying to stay on top of social media and Web 2.0. Let’s see what happens when the thing actually ships.

Anything you’d like to add about the differences between the smartphone OSes? This is obviously an overview meant to highlight the most crucial differentiators, but if you’ve got something you want to share that’s a little more nitty gritty, please pop it into comments pronto.

Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about smartphones, dumbphones or megaphones to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

Verizon’s Touch Diamond in the wild

“Better late than never,” so they say. Perhaps — but with Sprint’s version of this in the rear view mirror for half a year now, just how relevant is a Touch Diamond on Verizon these days? Odds are we’ll find out next month — or, at least, that’s where the latest rumors have it lined up for launch — but in the meantime, we’ve got one floating around in the wilds looking pretty much like any other Touch Diamond you’ve seen in the past. Like its Touch Pro, it seems Verizon went ahead and nerfed the Diamond’s memory down to 128MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM (why is anybody’s guess), which only serves to reinforce our concerns that this thing is being launched months too late. We love you HTC, seriously — but with the Omnia at $99 on contract right now, we’re not exactly seeing the line starting to form at 8PM the night before release, if you know what we’re saying.

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Verizon’s Touch Diamond in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Meet Maple: HTC’s Cavalier successor caught in the wild

It’s been a long time coming, and it looks like HTC’s finally gearing up to drop another portrait QWERTY device — a dominant smartphone form factor that HTC has historically given surprisingly little love. Following the Excalibur (T-Mobile types know this one better as the Dash) and the 3G-capable Cavalier, CNET’s Deutschland outpost has learned a bit about “Maple,” and what the device lacks in beauty, it looks to make up in pure, raw, unadulterated productivity. You can’t rightfully anoint it until you get your hands on it, but from a distance, this thing looks like it has one of the more usable portrait keyboards ever created, a trackball, and a cool new feature HTC is called “Inner Circle,” which seems to aggregate communication with people you care about depending on the time of day and day of week. HTC had really been keen on what it’s calling “people-centric communication” at MWC, so Inner Circle would certainly fall right into that — and if you can get over the frumpy exterior, this sucker looks like a solid WinMo-based choice for the suits out there. No word on a release just yet.

[Thanks, Phil]

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Meet Maple: HTC’s Cavalier successor caught in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC Diamond2 TouchFLO 3D screenshots appear for your enjoyment

Windows Mobile 6.5 got the lion’s share of attention this week at MWC, but HTC’s TouchFLO 3D shell for 6.1 got some interesting interface tweaks for the new Touch Pro2 and Touch Diamond2, and we’d say they’re actually more interesting than 6.5 honeycomb launcher and new unlock screen — especially the newly revised keyboards with haptic feedback. Plenty more screenshots at the read link, and don’t forget to check out our hands-on videos of the Pro2 and Diamond2 if you haven’t already.

[Thanks, msav]

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HTC Diamond2 TouchFLO 3D screenshots appear for your enjoyment originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft My Phone now live, in screenshots

We won’t see Windows Mobile 6.5 or Windows Marketplace until the end of the year, but Microsoft isn’t hoarding all the goodies — the My Phone sync service went live in beta last night, and users who pre-registered got invites. Go on and sign up and let us know what you think, or just hit the link and check it all out in screenshots.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Microsoft My Phone now live, in screenshots originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gigabyte’s S1200 and Smart Zone user interface on video

Same story, different company: yet another Windows Mobile ODM has broken down, taken the plunge, and invested some cash engineering its own unique skin for the platform. This time around it’s Gigabyte’s GSmart division with its “Smart Zone” UI, and to kick it off on the right foot, they’re grafting it onto the all-new S1200. We spent some time fiddling with the S1200 at MWC today, and we’re actually pretty impressed; it’s sleek, a wacky thin 11.4mm, narrow enough to comfortably fit in the smallest hands, and feels pretty well-built — and with full HSPA and a 3.1-inch WVGA display, it’s spec’d with the best of ’em. Gone are Gigabyte’s days of chunky plastic, thank goodness.

We talked to Gigabyte about its announcements, and it turns out they’ve designed both Smart Zone and the S1200 with aspirational feature phone users in mind — these are people who might not otherwise consider a smartphone because they’re worried about sacrificing style and ease of use in the process. To that end, the skin definitely seems to get the job done. The transition animations got choppy in places, but we felt immediately at ease with the swipe gestures for getting to different screens, and the graphics look particularly superb at these resolutions.

The S1200 launches this quarter in a variety of colors (it’s fashion-friendly, after all) with WiFi, a 528MHz Qualcomm core, 3 megapixel autofocus cam, a microSD slot to bump up the storage to something more usable than the 256MB built-in, and — perhaps most importantly — upgradeability to Windows Mobile 6.5. Follow the break to see it in action!

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Gigabyte’s S1200 and Smart Zone user interface on video originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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