The Mozilla Project has been working on ‘Fennec’ for the past few months. Fennec is Mozilla’s first venture into mobile programs and the program has been announced to be compatible only for the HTC Touch Pro. (Although it appears the this initial version is able to run on many Windows Mobile VGA Phone) Just recently the first version of the Fennec has been released and is available to download. But can Fennec live up to Mozilla’s golden browsing child FireFox?
It appears not. While we have great faith in the brilliant people at Mozilla it appears that this pre-alpha release of Fennec doesn’t have much to offer. Or rather nothing to offer. Initial testings on Touch Pros and other devices have rendered practically no results. It appears that the rendering engine is not functioning and very little, if any, connectivity was available.
This is disappointing to say the least, but at this point we’re still going give Mozilla the benefit of the doubt. This by no means a complete release. And in the past they’ve made some great product, perhaps you’re using some of it right now. So our hope is that in the coming weeks the updates are going to flow in and hopefully a more official release will be available to mobile users out there.
Have you had any experiences with the program? Any successes or failures? Let us know what’s happening.
Those of us familiar with the MobileMe service are well acquainted with the frustrations and joys of working with that syncing service. At the moment it looks like Microsoft is trying to take advantage of some of the frustrated users who are looking for simple mobile/computer syncing services by releasing their service My Phone.
The My Phone service which is scheduled to launch later this year will come in two versions. One, being a free version with ads and then the other being premium service which one will have to subscribe to. The service is going to be designed to function with Windows Mobile devices such as the HTC line and will offer a number of syncing features. This includes the standard features such as contacts, calendar dates and so on. All features that are offered by Apple’s MobileMe, the choice service for all Apple iPhone 3G users. Where it differs is that it plans to offer over the air syncing for multimedia files as well. Allowing you to store images, MP3s and video clips to a My Phone server and then have the files sync either to your computer or to your phone. One of the disadvantages of this is that currently My Phone is only allowing for this syncing to be done over your regular data connection. There are currently no plans to allow it on Wi-Fi connections.
In addition to the syncing features, one of the main advantages of the My Phone service is the ability to sync up multiple phones to your one service. This means if you are in the middle of changing phones, transferring all of your personal information will only be a matter of signing in with your correct ID and automatically syncing your phone with your information on the My Phone server.
All of these features are lacking in MobileMe or are not accessible with such ease.
While it does excel in allowing one to do over the air syncing with multimedia files, My Phone is still a little bit behind the MobileMe service in e-mail. At the moment there are no plans for e-mail integration which would allow e-mail to be accessed by both your home computer and mobile device.
The service appears to be strong, but as we know we can’t judge these things until they’ve actually come into public use. But the prospect of using a free service for syncing as opposed to the subscription service of MobileMe is an attractive one.
What do you think? Is this going to affect your future mobile purchases?
Google Sync support for the Apple iPhone, Windows Mobile smartphones, and SyncML compatible devices. The service synchronizes contacts and calendar appointments from an iPhone or Windows Mobile smartphone with Google Gmail contacts and the Google Calendar system.
Google Sync was already available for Blackberry users and you could already sync your Gmail contacts on the iPhone through iTunes. This, however, was relatively inconvenient and Google surely heard a lot of complaints from business users who needed more ‘Outlook-like’ capabilities on their phones.
The new sync capabilities are also available for any other phone that supports the SyncML standard
HTC Touch Pro users are going to have something to be happy about in the first week of February. The folks at Mozilla have announced that they are planning to launch the mobile version of their FireFox browser, hopefully by next week.
The browser is named Fennec (a small fox found in Northern Africa, get it?) and will be made exclusively available for the HTC Touch Pro. Now that may be a bit of a disappointment to other Windows Mobile users who are a bit fed up with the Pocket IE browser, but we imagine that a more widely slated release that will have it running more universally isn’t far behind. If not, the regular team of software twiddlers out there will most likely have it running on other HTC devices in a less official manner in no time.
Mozilla made waves in the browser market by taking a large chunk of userdom from Internet Explorer and it is often praised for its speed and less spyish activities. If they are able to work out all the bugs with this initial release, we may have a much more pleasant time surfing the web from our handhelds.
Would you reconsider a Windows Mobile device if it meant you could surf the web with a FireFox based browser? Let us know!
Street View for Google Maps is no longer limited to the HTC G1, Apple iPhone 3G and the Blackberry! That idea factory of Google has just released the Google Maps street view function for smartphone operating systems Windows Mobile and also for Symbian S60 3rd edition.
A new commercial [see below] shows all of the functions that are now available for a whole bunch of new smartphones with the release of Google Maps 2.3. The main function of course is the Street View which gives pictures of points on maps so you can situate yourself according to landmarks.
Other handy features include searches for business and destinations which gives phone numbers that will let you call the location instantly. Also get instant walking directions from your own location so getting lost is now next to impossible.
This new release will give a huge boost to other smartphones on the market who were lagging behind the G1, iPhone 3G and Blackberry. What makes it even better is you don’t even have to buy a new phone to get these great new features working.
Will this new release sway you from the iPhone or G1 and consider a different smartphone? Let us know!
Over the last few years the internet has been making its way into most mobile phones. Our mobile online experience has been evolving rapidly and what we can do now what we couldn’t do 4 years ago is beyond what many people thought possible. Phones such as the HTC Max 4G are hoping to increase the speed available to mobile users as well.
Despite all of these advances there has been one feature which has been lacking and keeping us from the full internet experience and that is a Flash Player. Hopefully this will soon be rectified as it was announced by Adobe at the Adobe MAX developer conference that a working demo of Flash Player 10 will be up on a Windows Mobile device very soon. Unfortunately this won’t be commercially available until late next year. Windows Mobile’s adopting of the first mobile Flash Player is a natural extension of their Flash Lite player which has been available for some time now.
Adobe has indicated that they are also interested in working with Apple for the iPhone 3G, but not much progress has been made. Apple maintains that Flash takes up a bit too much room in the memory department and that it runs too much strain on the iPhone’s ARM11 processors.
While Apple seems to be dillydallying the new kid on the block, the Android OS, is starting to make headway. With people from all over the world developing software for this OS, it is no surprise that a demo of the Flash Player running on the HTC G1 was already running at the developer conference. If this Flash Player makes it to an Android device this may be the push it needs to make it into the dominating mobile OS as it will be able to give more rich browsing experience.
Who do you think is going to make it first? Will this have any affect on the type of phone you buy? Let us know.
In a marriage made in heaven the FriendMobilizer app joins Facebook with WinMo phones to allow access to your notifications directly to your mobile.
The free download pushes friends updates be they wall, photo album, status updates or friend requests, and delivers them straight to your smartphone or PocketPC home screen. If you have a HTC Diamond, LG KS20 or even a Samsung I780 you could be reacting to the latest romance in seconds.
Great for those obsessed with all the latest gossip, break-ups and of course cyber-stalkers. Yes I’ looking at you. Get the free download here.
You dont have to be a business user to know the smartphone market is getting HOT! And when it comes to anticipation there are two phones that matter and today they go head to head, mono et mono. Who will emerge victorious? Who is the people’s champion? Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 takes on HTC Touch Pro in a battle for your affections. Let us know your favourite.
XPERIA X1 Dimensions
52.6 x 110.5 x 17 millimetres (2.1 x 4.4 x 0.7 inches) Weight 158 gramms
Touch Pro Dimensions
51 x 102 x 18.05 millimetres (2 x 4 x 0.7 inches) Weight 165 gramms
Fashion phone fans get the plastic ready cause there’s a new 5 megapixel contender, the Samsung SGH I900.
Featuring an array of must-haves like 16GB internal memory, 3G HSDPA, GPS, WinMo 6.1, MicroSD expansion, WiFi and Bluetooth, the touchscreen I900 not only delivers on the feature front but when you look at the photos your only regret is the 5 megapixel camera phone doesn’t have the pleasure of photographing itself.
Like catching the abominable snowman on celluloid, early peeks at the XPERIA X1 have been known to create rumours and spark heated debate.
Now that the HTC Touch Diamond has hit the market the next two phones to watch for are the 3GiPhone expected June 9th announcement and of course the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 but are these latest pictures enough to keep everyone going until the expected September release?
The latest pics show the Steel Silver color a new panel key and some additional branding but where oh where is the buy now button?
