Windows Phone 7 on HTC 7 Trophy

I'm going to open this article with 2 quotes;

"Windows Phone 7 is an entirely fresh mobile experience, on which HTC is excited to be going big.  We see tremendous customer opportunities with Microsoft's most popular services like Xbox LIVE and Zune integrated.  The value Microsoft is bringing to mobile customers around the world sets a new benchmark for the industry.  HTC will be introducing five new HTC Windows Phone 7 Smartphones at launch to support our customers with a broad variety of choice."

Peter Chou, CEO, HTC Corp.

"We're delighted to be partnering with Microsoft to bring the HTC 7 Trophy to our customers as a Vodafone exclusive.  Not only does the phone have all the 'quietly brilliant' innovations that HTC is famous for, but it comes with the new Windows Phone 7 services and user experience.  Along with the LG E900 Optimus 7, the Windows Phone 7 additions to our Smartphone range will further enhance the choice we give our customers."

Patrick Chomet, Group Director of Terminals, Vodafone Group plc

I've had the HTC 7 Trophy for about 10 days, and as it didn't spark me within the first couple of hours, I've needed to force myself to drop the iPhone 4 and BlackBerry 9800 for 48 hours so I can comprehensively test it.

Will all the marketing spend that Windows Phone 7 has received I had high hopes for the OS and the handset.  I was even primed by a colleague at Microsoft that it was a great alternative to Apple's iPhone.

I'm going to get the tech specs out of the way first.  The model I tested was the T8686 with a 1GHz CPU.  It has 8Gb of internal storage, 512Mb of ROM, and 576Mb of RAM, has a 3.8" touch screen, 5 megapixel camera that also records 720p HD video, and weighs in at 140 grams.  On the network front it supports GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSPA and WCDMA, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, and 802.11 b/g/n wifi.  It has a standard micro-USB for charging and computer connection, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

In the hand it feels robust yet has a silky feel to the plastic case on the back.  The screen is clear, and the buttons have positive click response.  Photos and videos look great, music sounds great.  The camera takes good pictures, and the video record quality is good.  The handset itself is a really nice piece of hardware, although the 8Gb internal storage seems a little light compared to the 32Gb on the iPhone 4.

The Windows Phone 7 OS is a different beast altogether.  The Home screen is customisable in that you can move the tiles around meaning what's important to you is the first thing you see.  The arrow pointing right leads to the rest of the applications and the phone settings.

The most important thing to me on a smartphone is email integration.  I have multiple email accounts including Exchange, Google Apps and a couple of other generic IMAP accounts.  One of the things that Apple Mail does brilliantly on the iPhone is the consolidated inbox.  Unfortunately Windows Phone 7 doesn't replicate this; each email account is displayed as a separate tile on the Home screen, meaning the additional functionality that I'd like to put there is displaced.  Yes you can scroll down and see the other tiles, but it negates the idea of the Home screen.

In terms of getting my own content onto the handset, Windows computers were the easy option.  When I first connected the HTC Trophy to an iMac, it started charging, but nothing else.  I had to download the Windows Phone Connector for Mac, which is an interface between iTunes, iPhoto and the handset.  Once installed, it did a good job of getting content on there, however it failed with the DRM movies and TV shows that I'd bought from the iTunes Store.  The other point I wanted to mention was sync time - it took nearly 90minutes to move 8Gb of content from the iMac to the handset.  And I can categorically confirm it isn't the iMac that is the problem here, I regularly move content between the iPhone 4 and the BlackBerry 9800 via the same USB ports.

While we're on the topic of content, I thought I'd check out the Zune store for album pricing.  I wanted to buy the Magnetic Man album - Zune price: £10.99, iTunes price: £8.99 - I bought it on iTunes.

I took the handset to the gym this morning instead of the iPhone.  All the music sounded good, apart from the 3 second delay between tracks.  I've searched the phone for the setting to disable this, but didn't find it.  Many of the albums I listen to are continuous, and it's extremely irritating to have a gap in there.  Again, Apple resolved this with the early iPods, so Windows Phone need to add this to their update list.

As a hardware reviewer, probably the most desirable feature of any handset is screen capture.  Apple delivered this in the first generation iPhone; BlackBerry didn't deliver it on the 9800 (but 3rd party developers did), and Microsoft have failed to deliver it here.  What this essentially means is that I'm forced to use standard marketing materials form Microsoft and HTC, try and use an emulator and capture those images, or take photos using another device.  It's a little thing, but it makes such a big difference.

Considering this phone is free depending on the Vodafone price plan you adopt it's not a bad phone.  As with all things, it's diminishing returns the more you pay, and a free HTC Trophy at £35 per month vs. a £279 iPhone 4 handset at £35 per month might seem a no-brainer.  Let's just be clear that in my opinion, the OS that Microsoft has released is probably much like one that Steve Jobs canned in 2004.  When businesses are playing catch-up, they often cut corners, and Windows Phone 7 clearly feels mo where near as polished as iOS4.  We've also yet to learn how Microsoft will update the software, and how frequently.

In summary, Windows Phone 7 is a great start, but the Windows 7 computer OS has been through multiple iterations to become the solid platform it is today.  My feeling is that the Windos Phone OS will have to go through the same hoops before it's a real contender as a handset OS.

I'd love to see iOS4 on the HTC Trophy though...

XBox Kinect - the experience so far

So you've all heard about it, and not surprising when Microsoft had an advertising budget of $500 million to keep us all informed.  Kinect is the latest XBox 360 add-on to give you gesture control of your Xbox interface, and interactive gaming without the need of a controller.  As I already had a 360 Slim that I purchased earlier in the year, all I needed was the Kinect sensor add-on.  In the box you get the Kinect unit, a power supply that makes the sensor compatible with first generation 360 units, and a copy of Kinect Adventures.

I admit it, it took me a while to get this setup, primarily due to the launch of Call of Duty Back Ops, but also needing to re-tech my house to the living room, since my home office didn't have a big enough space to jump around in.  Hence a further £650 on a new TV which will be reviewed later.

Setting up was easy; place the sensor in front of the TV and connect to the AUX port on the back of the 360S.  This port is a modified USB port which has extra power specifically for the Kinect unit.  Next was the room scan, and here's where I had some difficulties.  My living room is a basic rectangle with two sofas on adjacent walls.  The TV and Kinect unit are on a stand in the corner.  The room dimensions are approximately 5m x 3m, and during the calibration was trying to get us to stand where the sofa was.  Funny, but didn't do the room calibration much good.  User calibration was much better.  We already had XBox profiles, and using the Kinect ID application linked those profiles to the physical characteristics of each player.

Next we moved onto gameplay.  Kinect Adventures is all we have at the moment, and has you jumping around with a variety of games.  You can go rafting through rapids, popping bubbles in zero gravity, and even on a track where you have to duck and jump obstacles.  The technology is good enough to auto-recognise players as they move in and out of the playspace, so a one player game quickly becomes a two player game.  Occasionally it did get this wrong, specifically between my wife and my eldest son, and I think this is something to do with them being close in height, and that William tends to stand in front of Kathy leading to potential sensor confusion.  It's easily overcome in the menus by selecting your avatar.

The only other issue worth commenting about is my 4-year old.  Getting him to stand in the right place for calibration was a nightmare, and what took everyone else just a couple of minutes, took about 25 minutes with Callum.

All-in-all, Kinect is a great piece of kit.  For my wife to say 'it's very clever the way it detects you and instantly updates the in-game player' carries more gravitas than any technology review.  The last major IT revelations for her were BT Vision pause live TV and record from a programme guide, and iPlayer on the iMac.  She also said without prompting that it was way more fun that the Nintendo Wii.  If Kinect can achieve that with just a few hours of gameplay, imagine what's possible with feedback data and a couple of Microsoft pateches.

William had a great idea about the playspace calibration.  He suggested that we should be able to mask off areas in the space that can't be used.  For us Brits with small houses, it kind of makes sense.

Google Apps - small business application nirvana

Google is universally known for being the go-to search engine when looking for information.  A lesser-known arm of their business is Google Apps, and this article will discuss its components in detail.

Google Apps is a group of applications designed to deliver business class services through the internet.  The applications include Email, Calendar, Contacts, Groups, Docs, Sites, Tasks, Video and Voice.  There's no server hardware required; Google host all of these services on their hardware.  All you need is an internet connection, and a computer or mobile with a browser.

I've been actively using Google Apps for ZXZ Consulting for over 3 years, and have further installed for 2 other clients.  What makes it a brilliant proposition is the overall cost.  In the UK you pay £33 per user per year for the Premier edition.  The Standard edition is free.  I'm going to talk specifically about the Premier edition.

The cost here is important.  Before Apple released the Mac Mini with Snow Leopard Server, most businesses had the choice of Microsoft and their Exchange email server, or for the larger businesses, Lotus Notes.  Both the Microsoft and Lotus messaging solutions required that businesses have their own hardware to run the applications on, and therefore usually an IT function to support it.  The total cost of ownership for a business messaging environment could run into many thousands of pounds, placing this kind of technology out of reach for small businesses.  And along came GMail.

Gmail was born in 2004 and offered 1Gb of mail storage to invited users.  A year later, Google increased the storage amount to 7.5Gb sending internal IT departments into disarray.  At that time server storage was expensive and IT functions were generally restricting email account sizes to between 100Mb and 1Gb.  Having users tell you that they received a better email experience from GMail became a recurring event.  In 2006 Google announced GMail For Your Domain, and soon after Google Apps For Your Domain.  This meant that you could use your own domain name and have access to the Google suite of applications.  The next major step was to introduce Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, meaning users familiar with Outlook and essentially reluctant to move to the web-based interface could sync their Google Apps email to the Outlook application.  Google Apps Mail is the resulting application from this.

The other applications supplement email; Calendar give you and your team a fully customisable calendar with options to make it visible on the internet.  Docs is a space where you can share documents and edit them in real time.  Sites empowers you to create internal websites for teams, or even a full on internet site.  Alongside these you have Chat, Voice and Video, which makes collaboration that much easier.  It means you don't have to use separate applications for chat and video-conferencing; Google Apps has it built in.

While Google does provide exceedingly good value for money, it does make the internet connection even more important.  If a small business migrates to the Google Apps environment, a key thing to ensure is that you have a service level agreement with your ISP so that you'll know response times and fix times should your service be interrupted.  With all the money you've saved, it would be a good idea to have a secondary backup line which activates should the primary fail.

If you're interested in looking at Google Apps for your small business, feel free to get in touch through the Contact page.

Probably the best technology combination?

As I commented yesterday, over time I've become an Apple fan primarily driven by the Apple iPhone.  My own iMac and MacBook Pro are running OSX 10.6 and I have tried Parallels with Windows Vista on the MacBook.  I was disappointed with the results to be honest, the underlying OSX operating system become sluggish and at times unresponsive, so I soon removed it.

More recently, I've installed Windows 7 Home Premium on a 21.5" iMac for a family member.  What's great about this is that the hardware is rock solid, the iMac retains the Apple OSX operating system, and you can run a full Windows 7 OS through Bootcamp.

I was impressed by the results. The hardware is a Core 2 Duo processor running at 3GHz with 4Gb of RAM and 500Gb hard drive so you would expect reasonable performance with this specification.  However Microsoft Windows is notoriously bloated (or so I thought) and I expected the machine to be less responsive than with OSX.

I have to say that it's a match made in heaven.  Windows 7 runs extremely well on this particular iMac, and even Office 2010 is quick.  Bootcamp for Windows installs the correct hardware drivers, so the in-built camera, microphone and speakers are detected and used.  Skype works like a dream, and the whole thing sitting in a sleek and slender iMac.

I don't think it's a massive leap to see businesses going down this route; the hardware is robust, and the OS is one that businesses worldwide have been using for years.  Users need minimal cross-training, and less desk-space.

If my Microsoft-based customers want to look to the future, I'll be showing them this solution as an option.

One Exchange Client and Two BlackBerry Handsets

For a long time I've played by the RIM rules in believing that an Exchange email account can only be linked to one BlackBerry handset through a BES server. The wording is exactly right, but the 'one handset' limitation can be overcome with a little planning.

Here's the environment that I've tested this on;

• Windows Server 2003 R2 with all service packs


• Exchange Server 2003 SP2 with all service packs


• BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1.6.10

Other items you'll need;

• 1 spare Exchange CAL per user


• 1 spare BES CAL per user


• Spare BlackBerry handset - I've used 8310, 8320 and 9000


• Spare BES actived SIM

How it works

1. Create a new user in Active Directory (I used firstname2@domain.com for the email address)


2. Create a new user on your BES Server and select firstname2@domain.com for that user


3. Activate the spare BlackBerry with the SIM for firstname2@domain.com


4. Finally enable email forwarding from the first account to the 2nd account

New email will start flowing to the 2nd BlackBerry as Exchange forwards it from the primary account to the secondary account.  Personal Address Book synchronisation can be achieved through a manual export and import, and the same with calendars.

Pitfalls

• 2 mobile phone numbers, although one can be put on permanent divert to the other


• 2 SMS locations - SMS messages cannot be routed from one SIM to another at the network level


• Calendars - you'll need to invite two users (firstname and firstame2) to the same meetings so the the entry appears on both handsets


• 2 BlackBerry Messenger clients - this has caused confusion, with some people deleting the primary contact once the second handset added them


• Handset rebuild - if you need to rebuild the primary or secondary handset, you MUST DISABLE email forwarding, otherwise the activation process on the handset doesn't complete

Conclusions

This is by  no means an easy solution.  However if your users demand a 2nd handset for emergency email, it is possible.  Set the expectations right, and this just might save your bacon.