About that new phone…
So I got the T-Mobile MDA. It’s a pocket PC smartphone based on the HTC Wizard reference design, the sort that has the keyboard that slides out from the entire unit, so you have lots of room to type with. So far, I love it even though it was kind of pricy. (By changing over the billing before doing the phone upgrade I missed out on the upgrade pricing).
Some have complained about connection quality and sound, but I haven’t had any problems whatsoever. I did have the problem that it didn’t want to sync at first, but I eventually figured out that this was an issue with my firewall — which also happened to me with setting up Media Extender to stream music to the Xbox 360, so I had some clue that was the issue.
I installed Earthcomber for directions, even though I don’t have a GPS; we’ll see if it stays on there. I also managed to get my POP email to deliver to the device reliably, and syncing worked after I screwed around with my ZoneAlarm firewall for a while. Alas, the instructions on the net are only for the Pro version, so if anyone comes looking:
- Follow the instructions on Microsoft’s website for the files you need to give permission to. They will show up in ZoneAlarm as
- “ActiveSync Application” which is WCESMgr.exe
- “ActiveSync Connection Manager” which is wcescomm.exe
- “ActiveSync RAPI Manager” which is rapimgr.exe
- The tricky one, because it just shows up as “Application Manager”, and is CEAPPMGR.exe
- Next, since there is no “Expert” tab on ZoneAlarm free edition, open the Alerts & Logs tab, and unplug and then reconnect your device. You will see the device trying to connect, and get blocked. Select that alert, and then click “Add to Zone” so that it will be allowed in the future.
I also installed a little app called Smartskey that makes the volume slider act as a scroll wheel, and one other button act as a “close app for real” button, since this phone has the annoying Windows Mobile 5.0 problem that when you hit the little X in the corner, it just closes the window, not the app. Basically, these things go a long way towards letting you use the phone one-handed.
More importantly, however, I was able to get MameCE to run, although it seems that a lot of stuff just won’t work on it. Right now, I only have a handful of games working, and it doesn’t include a bunch of my favorites. The annoying thing is actually that the button arrangement is just plain inconvenient for most things; part of this is MAME itself, which asks for a coin button, a p1 start, and so on. I don’t seem to be able to get to some of the buttons while running MameCE, so I start to run out. I ended up overloading some of the buttons.
Fortunately, this is offset by the fact that Pocket Atari works perfectly and seems to run just about at speed (I used the ARM version). M.U.L.E. seems a tad slow on the title screen, but runs fine otherwise. Archon plays just dandy, and I’ve tried several other things too. Alas, the automatic screen rotate when you slide the keyboard open does not work, and you are forced to use the on-screen keyboard; the games run faster when in landscape mode, so this is a shame. But the app does have screen rotation as part of the UI.
Anything else I ought to have on it? 🙂 I need to go buy a mini-SD card with plenty of space so I can keep some music or video on it.
Good resources for the phone: has a few forums for the Wizard, and it’s where Smartskey comes from; and this blog.
Next up will be my new tablet PC laptop. But it’s on order and won’t be here for a while. Sigh.
9 Responses to “About that new phone…”
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Nice, isn’t it. Got mine a couple of weeks ago.
1. Once you get the tablet pc, see about installing the modem drivers on the CD that came with the phone. Gets you internet anywhere you want to go.
2. Get a bluetooth headset, solves the sound problem.
3. Google is love on a smartphone. Most of google’s pages (Google Local, gmail, Google search, Google personalized homepage) Format themselves for the pda. Google local is especially nice. The directions it gives are just the right size, and IE links all of the phone numbers so you can dial directly from the web page. Search for pizza in san diego, and then directly dial the number from the results.
4. I like GS player for all of my shoutcast internet radio station needs.
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_software/audio_players/gsplayer.cfm
Small, easy to use, and it allows me to listen to soma fm anywhere I want to.
5. pocketputty
http://www.pocketputty.net/
A pocket pc version of the famous ssh client.
M.U.L.E.??
Oh my gosh Raph NOW I love you 🙂
That’s simply my favourite game of all time.
—
Falconeer
“… since this phone has the annoying Windows Mobile 5.0 problem that when you hit the little X in the corner, it just closes the window, not the app.”
Sounds Mac-ish.
M.U.L.E. is also my favorite game of all time. When I get asked to build lists of top games, it is always on there, usually at #1. 🙂
At least on the Mac (and on Windows) there’s a dock or start bar where you can see what else is running. There’s no way to see that on Windows Mobile 5.0, short of installing a plugin (which I am sure exist somewhere).
I started with the “ideal” of appliance technology/seperate items.
With that in mind, I ran a Palm T5 for a PDA and had a basic phone. The thing that bugged me was that I had to look up numbers in the Palm to dial on the phone. So I picked up a bluetooth-enabled phone and could then dial from the PDA. Eventually, I learned that I couldn’t use a BT headset at the same time. Big frustration. That’s when I switched my ideal from seperate to intergrated.
I used the TMobile upgraed program and picked up a Blackberry 7105t. Now … I feel like I’m cheating on my Palm and I miss using a stylus. Also, the calendar on the Blackberry is just … yuck. The email push and browsing, however, rocks.
I don’t know what to do. If I liked the Palm calandar and stylus so much and want that in combination of the email push, maybe the right direction is the Treo … of course no option with tmobile. Blah!
Well, if you want the combo of Blackberry-like email, web browsing, and stylus, that’s basically why I picked the MDA. It does all of those, with a much nicer keyboard than the Blackberry.
Latest things I’ve gotten it to do: stream Internet radio stations using GSPlayer, and grab RSS feeds using DopplerMobile. Got a mini-SD card for it today to add a gig of storage…
[…] I figure since others have blogged their PC upgrades and cell phone purchases, I might as well blog my (relatively) recent upgrade to home-office technology. […]
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