First Look: HTC Touch Cruise
I had originally ordered this device back at the beginning of November. What I found most intriguing when I was looking for a new device was that this device was small, light, and had a GPS on-board. I put in my pre-order and expected it to be in my doorstep the week before Christmas. No such luck. As product release dates slipped, so did my hope of getting my hands on this powerful little device. About two weeks ago, the shipment date had again slipped to the end of February. I decided it was time to cancel that order, and put in an order for what I considered to be the next best device: the S730. From my last post, you now know that I received that device. The problem was, I received a shipping notice for “my shipment” last Friday. When I clicked on the link, it took me…
First Look: HTC S730
I received my HTC S730 from Mobileplanet.com a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been using it now to replace my T-Mobile Wing. Here’s a quick rundown on what it does and my experience with it so far. I’m pretty particular about what I expect from my mobile devices. The closest I’ve been to a perfect device was with my T-Mobile Dash. Let’s take a look at how the S730 stacks up. Size The size of the S730 is perfect to slip into your pocket, although a little thicker (about .75 inches) than what I am used to. Having had the Wing and the T-Mobile Dash, this phone fit the candy bar profile, but obviously wasn’t quite as thin as the Dash. The weight seems lighter than the Wing and comparable to the Dash. Overall, size is nicer and fits well in the hand. Battery Life Battery life so far seems…
Soft Reset Utility for Windows Mobile 6
I reboot my T-Mobile Wing pretty regularly to make sure that I have the most memory available to me. One of the shortcomings of the Wing is that the pagepool size is so large that it leaves very little memory for running programs. Instead of having to do the standard “hold the power button for it to go into shutdown”, I wrote a simple app that performs the soft reset. If you are looking for something to do that, you can download it below. I have only tested it on the Wing, so I am not sure how it will function with other devices. Hypothetically it should work on any device that is running Windows Mobile 5 or Windows Mobile 6, but I can’t guarantee, so don’t try it if you don’t want to risk data loss. If you do decide to try it, feel free to leave me comments…
T-Mobile Wing and Pagepool Memory Modification
I recently acquired a T-Mobile Wing since my wife needed a smartphone and wound up with my old T-Mobile Dash. I love the Wing with the Pocket PC layout and Windows Mobile 6 with Office Mobile Professional. The only thing I noticed and also have read online was that T-Mobile released it with a configuration of 12MB reserved for the pagepool memory. This left in most cases less than 10-15MB available for the pagepool and would cause users to run out of memory rather quickly. I did some research online and found that Paul from MoDaCo wrote up an article on how to modify the pagepool configuration inside the ROM. This involved extracting the ROM from the device, doing some hex editing, and then reflashing the device with the modified ROM. This process is not for the faint of heart. If you’re interested in reading more on the process, you…
Configuring the T-Mobile Dash to work with Bluetooth GPS & Windows Mobile 6
I have been traveling quite a bit in the last couple of months. I don’t normally travel with any type of GPS which means that if I am traveling to a city that I am not familiar with, it can make it difficult to find places to eat or other venues without a little driving around. Windows Mobile 6 ships with the Live Search application which allows you to track your location with GPS. You can also see traffic information and search for locations. As far as usability, I think the app is poorly constructed and difficult to use. After see the commercial for the iPhone that showed the current location on a map, and a search for “seafood” which yields a number of results around your location with the closest highlighted. The mapping looked familiar, and I actually believe it is using Google. I did some searching around and…
About JB
I’ve been a technologist for over 20 years, getting my start in IT with a large Fortune 100 international retailer in the 1990s. I love to talk about new technology, mobile devices, software development, photography, and the weather. The opinions expressed on this website are my own.