Trying out 15 applications for Blackstone

I've tried out some applications for Blackstone. Here are the reviews:

Resco Bubbles. Simple ball game where you're supposed to move a ball over the screen in a certin target order and clear the level. It uses auto rotation. Unfortuntely no vibration whatsoever. Fun, simple and very good looking.

Star Pop is a simple game that reminds of a childish version of Astroids where flying objects come floating and you pop them into lesser objects of the same kind. It is VGA rather than full screen and you use your fingers without any problems. Yes, it's simple but it's quite nice. It simply works.

Insaniquarium Deluxe is quite good looking, although not overhwelming in its graphics. It reminds of a screen saver where you look at an aquarium from the side. It doesn't use full screen but, after some tweaking (everytime you start it up), full VGA which is almost good enough. The only thing moving in the fish tank are the fish, some coins and a few bubbles, no waves in the background or anything. You can feed them with small biscuits, one at a time. Then the fish grow. So that's the task. It is basically a game, not a screen saver or a party trick. You don't have to use a stylus. The finger works well enough.

Snow Rally Canada 1.1. It's a 3D racing game and the graphics are acceptable although not more than that. The graphics sometimes seem sometimes to be a blown up lower resolution game, sometimes not. You steer the car on the screen and you have to put your fingers in one of four direction spots in the middle of all the action unfortunately. No auto roration option. It uses full screen, but I somtimes wish that you could put the screen in portrait mode.

Total Commander is not at all a game. It seems basically to be a file explorer, but it is supposed to be able to change parameters of the phone in a quite advanced way. I have not yet found those functions, I think. I can imaging that they are hidde there somewhere.

Acky's Breakout works fine full screen on Blackstone. It looks good although not astonishing. It's quite small in its details, which is not only a good idea, but it works and maybe necessary for a mobile breakout game. It's only too bad that you can't direct the breakout "cursor" with auto rotation; I've checked the options. If you use the finger, you tend to clutter the screen, so it's better to use the stylus unfortunately.

Archibalds Adventures also have very small details. The game idea is lika an advanced Super Mario where you walk the guy through a 2D castle or something. The graphics are nice and in theory the game uses full screen, only that the game idea is that not all of the surface is used at the same time. It almost does this if you put the game in portrait mode. You can use the finger, but you tend to shadow the guy so a stylus unfortunately seems to be a good idea. No options can change this.

Sid Meier's Civilization IV - War. It works, but seems a bit overkill with nice 2 D graphics and quite a simple game function where you are supposed to shout projectiles at tha computer and his approaching mini warriors. It would have been much better in portrit mode, but that doesn't seem to be an option. At least all of the screen is technically used.

What didn't work

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 can be installed but not opened. It's a problem with certificate or some component missing, the error message tells us.

Call of Duty 2 doesn't seem to run on Blackstone. It installs, but when you try to run it, it says: "This program requires approximately 16mb of free program memory." (Something I obviously have.) Then it quits. It may have something to do with me installing the app on the memory card.

GTS World Racing. I simply couldn't install it. It is not mad for this mobile, tha error message says.

Trippr is supposed to be able to upload geotagged pictures to Flickr. I basically only got a white screen and a few meaningless menus, where the app is constantly looking for a GPS signal

NetFront Browser 3.5. It installs, but you can't start it up. It quits immidiately.

Thunder Hawk II is the second browser. It opens some weird portrait VGA screen where you're supposed to register an account (specifying what ancient WM mobiles you're using). I refused, but I don't think thats why I had all kinds of trouble later on. I couldn't make it open any Internet page, only local html (?) pages and when I clicked on links, nothing happened. The graphics are bad, seems to be blown up QVGA or something.

TeaShark is a java web browser, our third in the test. It's too bad you can't enter an url, nor click the bookmarks (or the menus). You simply can't use it.

Summary: I may keep the six first mentioned applications. But not with any enthusiasm. The applications are generally a disappointment. If I'd have to pick a winner, maybe I'd choose Acky's Breakout.

Two new HTC hotfixes

Wednesday, HTC released two new hotfixes. One "for resolving a display flicker of the title bar in TouchFLO 3D" and one "for improving the on-screen slider feature for answering calls". I don't think I've had any of those problems, but others have said that that they've had "exactly" that.

You find the fixes here.

Four chat programs

Since I wrote what I wrote below, I've found that there is only one chat program to be reckoned with and that is Nimbuzz. What makes it much more interesting than all of its competition is that Nimbuzz has all the chat protocols: the six big (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo and Google Talk) and Skype and FaceBook.

I keep the text below just as a reference of what you may look for in a chat program. But I only recommend Nimbuzz, even though you, irritatingly enough, can't change the nick names of your contacts, just like in Fring.


I've found four modern chat programs for my mobile phone. They are Fring, Palringo, IM+ and Beejive. All of them of course run in the background.

Fring 3.24.3.157. This used to be the most talked about chat program. It supports five of the big six chat protocols: AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo and Google Talk. It doesn't support Jabber and has been criticized for that. It is, however the only app that supports Skype among the other protocols. This is not an easy thing to do, and therefore, it may have the most potantial in the end. Also, you can make Skype calls and even SkypeOut calls with the help of a numeric keyboard. This is also unique for this chat program. (Of course, there is also the ordinary Skype app for WM where you can do the same thing.)

Fring has a decent GUI, but is not as nice as Palring, Beejay and IM+. The graphics is a bit low resolution. Fring takes a long time to load. In order to chat with someone, you seem to have to go to the menu!

A real disadvantage with Fring is that you can't rename the nick name/alias of your friends, and so they often remain "johan :-)" and "*ANNA*" etc. The app doesn't support FaceBook, but then again, no chat program for WM does that. If you close Fring from a menu in the app itself, it doesn't stay in the background, but if you press the cross in the upper right corner, it stays. Autostart is an option, proably not from phone restart though. Once I close a chat, the text where I left off seems gone forever. No history

IM+ 5.44.1 is old, but very updated. It probably will be frequently updated like it has been updated in the past. It looks good, as good as the others. It even uses bubbles. It loads medium fast.

It supports the bix six (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber and Google Talk) and MySpace. No Skype and no FaceBook. It has full support for chat history, although your most recent chat disappears if you leave it, you can find it on the history page. You can change the nick names of your contacts. There is a restart but probably not from phone restart.

Chatting is straight forward: you press the contact's name and you start to chat. There are quite a few prefs you can tweak. As with Fring, if you close IM+ from a menu in the app itself, it doesn't stay in the background, but if you press the cross in the upper right corner, it stays. Normal, I personally think.

Palringo 1.2.3 is now popular. It is nicely modern looking. It supports the big six (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber and Google Talk) and also Gadu Gadu (who cares?). No support for Skype nor for FaceBook. It starts up faster than the others.

You have to double click your contacts in order to chat with them which is a bit unusual. When you have written them a sentence, there is nowhere to click on the screen except that you'r supposed to press enter - also unusual, and requires some getting used to. As with Fring, once I close a chat (seems normal to do), the text where I left off seems gone forever. No history.

You can make the app run a daemon (not the actual program) from restart of WM. I couldn't find any way to change the aliases of your contacts, but OTOH, they seem to have inherited the names I've given them (from some online server?), so I had no problems whatsoever.

Beejive 0.9.2.4. The best thing about Beejive is that it is so modern looking with Apple iChat bubbles and sounds in conversations. It supports the big six (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber and Google Talk) and MySpace and IBM Lotus Sametime. No Skype, no FaceBook.

It has nice big command text for thick fingers (as IM+, and I think, Palringo), but changing from one chat to another unfortunately almost requires the stylus. I had a problem that the virtual keyboard wouldn't interact optimally with the app, so sometimes I had to rewrite things I wrote. The prefs are pretty detailed and I like it. The app can auto-login on start. I like that it can alert me of a new version (eg. Palringo can't). Beejay temporarily remembers the chat history even if you temporarily left that chat.

In conclusion, the situation is a bit unsatisfactory, since the program, Fring, with the most essential feature, Skype chat, also is the app which is the worst in GUI and in other features. I think, I'd go with IM+ today, but the very day that you get decent nick names on fring, I'd have to change to that old fashioned chat program unfortunately.

It is a bit hard to see the advantages of Palringo and Beejive over IM+. Sure, Palringo learns the nick names over a server, so you don't have to change them yourself and Beejive has a built-in version check, but that's about it.

Surprising update over the air today

Today, I suddenly got a question on my Blackstone: "New Connection Setup database found. Do you want to install it?" (In Swedish: "Ny databas för anslutningsinställningar har upptäckts. Vill du installera den?")

I never say no to updates, so of course, I eagerly answered 'yes'. I had bad coverage where I was so first the mobile failed with about 10 % downloaded, but I got a new chance five minutes later. Afterwards, the mobile restarted. Others, using different operators, both in Sweden and in other countries have reported the same thing. It is discussed in various fora.

Based on the phrasing of the question, I'd say that the new download updates the codes and other information that different operators use in different countries. That seems to be the interpretation several others debaters make.

One screenshot from 4winmobile.com shows that the WM control panel HTP Connection Setup (in Swedish: HTC Anslutningsinställningar) is the same version number and build, but that one specification code to that same build has changed from DB15 to DB25.

New SlingPlayer for Windows Mobile

I use a Sling Box. It allows me to digitize and stream my cable tv from home over the Internet to a software client somewhere else in the world. My mobile phone client is called Sling Player. I used to use ot on my Nokia N95, which worked well, and now I've gotten the Windows Mobile version of the same program.

The Windows Mobile version was for long clearly worse. On December 24th, a new version was released, the 1.6.0.111. It can be downloaded in the normal place on the company's site, eg. here. Here is my review:

I've tried 1.6.0.111 extensively with HTC Touch HD (800 x 480 pixel screen). After some tweaking I've got it to work ok. Eg. in the preferences enabling "GDI" seems to have a helped a little (but not much, I could even imagine the improvement).

There is some big pixelation that only go away completely when there is very little movement in the transmission. If there is much movement, it's not good at all. The frequency of frames per second is a notable problem. The picture is far from smooth. In resumé, the result is ok, but clearly worse than on Nokia N95, as I remember it.

I don't have optimal operator coverage here where I live (although decent), so I have to try 1.6.0.111 where coverage is even better and see if that changes things.

The third problem is that in many cases, in reality, I can't fill the screen. When the transmission is 16:9, then, in the transmission, there are black bars above and below the picture. And then, since I can't expand the picture to get rid of these, Sling Player unfortunately only uses about 50 % of the whole available screen.

The new version makes Sling Player for HTC Blackstone more useable, but we still haven't got an optimal version, quite far from it. I'm thankful for this step though.

Introduction

I love my HTC Touch HD. I got it from the web store Elgiganten exactly one month ago, on December 4th 2008, in Sweden, six days after the first private persons in this country had reported getting HTC Touch HD. Its prototype name is HTC Blackstone and it is a fairly well-known protoype name that has stuck somewhat. It is even used by web stores quite extensively and by the XDA Developers forum.

The OS that the phone uses is Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. Earlier, you used to call this a Pocket PC (PPC) because this is what you would call a Windows Mobile phone with a touch screen.

I'm always on the hunt for useful and fun applications for the Blackstone. And now I want to share some of my work and improvements of my lovely phone.

I've since also gotten a iPod touch and I plan on buying an iPhone. I still treasure my old Nokia N95. There are advantages and disadvantages with either model - they are very different - but I intend to use them all from time to time.