Mobipocket is also on my Tornado. Not using it too often though, Tornado's screen is just too small to be comfortable for reading longer than a few minutes. Used to have an offline version of wikipedia on it (some 300mb) that came in very handy esp. during university courses.

Great thing about Mobipocket is that they offer a gazillion free books through their own portal, some new (garbage) stuff but mostly classics (Edgar Allen Poe's works e.g.). Books are rather small, e.g. Hagakure is 117KB, Pit and the Pendulum is 21KB, The World Set Free is 219KB.
Additionally there's rss style content, lot's of it pre-view for magazines but also a ton of free news from various sources. And the PC part of the software even supports conversion of pdf and such to their ebook format (.prc).
And of course, the application is free too.

So yeah, Mobipocket is quite good imo. Now I just need a device with a bigger screen.

Price will be intersting to see. After all, Orange (Switzerland) even tried to cash quite some on the S310. Used to cost more than many much better equipped feature phones.






Are they? Only had audio jack problems with 2 devices: The first was a dirt cheap walkman in the late 80ies, the other a first gen diskman in the early 90ies. Since then, nada. Also, it seems to be just the WinMo device manufacturers that keep them out. Nokia keeps adding them to new devices all the time (and not just some half-assed 2.5'ers but full size ones).

Maybe it's got something to do with the Omap cpu's? Maybe they can put out audio over usb directly but need an additional chip for audio jack out? More probably though is that the manufacturers just save a few ¢ on each device, sell it for the price as if it had all the features, then cash again by selling usb-audio adapters.
The biggest concern I'd have about using such an adapter on a daily basis is that if an audio jack would fail it aint a big deal (no more audio) but if the usb breaks the phone get's crippled beyond usability (no more charge, synch, audio). And yes, I've had more than one broken usb connector in the past. Even the one from my C600 is starting to act up.




Your words in their ears. It's realy not that hard to build a great device. They could've done so time and again in the past few years and would by now have more than just the biz phone market in their hands. But instead it's one half-baked device after the other.
I had planned to replace my C600 a year ago already, yet not a single device came out that I'd thought worthy investing my money in (and at the prices smartphones of any kind cost it realy is an investment). Now my phone starts fading away (battery, usb connector) so I'll be forced to upgrade soon. As it looks, I might need to switch back to Nokia again. N82 seems to be the ripest hardware on the market atm., even if the price tag is unfriendly.
On the other hand I could go for a less expensive, feature-rich dumbphone .... which is so not going to happen.

Let's see, judging by the official spec's ( http://www.benq.com/products/mobile/?produ...=specifications ) I'd say:

To prevent any kind of downgrade, the E76 would need to have:
Same screen size (What's with that wasted space on a fat plastic bezel on the E72?)
3.5 or at least 2.5mm audio jack (Using my phone as mp3 player all the time so this is a must.)
Same battery capacity (1150mah on Tornado vs. 900mah on E72, though that might be irrelevant if it uses less energy.)
Non-glossy surface (I just hate glossy gadgets.)

Missing features that'd mean an actual upgrade:
Transflective TFT (Almost all Nokias have them, why can't WinMo's? So annoying being unable to read the screen in sunlight.)
microSDHC support (Off. spec's say "up to 2gb" so guessing from that it lacks sdhc just like the Tornado?)
GPS (Judging by the announced phones, it's gonna be harder to find a smartphone without GPS than one with GPS this year!)
Decent quality cam (Let's say a 3mpx autofocus cam with decent lens e.g.? Thought the Tornado's crappy cam wouldn't matter but I've often cursed myself for that.)


The two devices are nearly identical. Size and weight differ a wee bit (E76 is just -16g, thinner, slightly broader, same length), camera got minimaly upgraded (though I doubt that one's any good), CPU updated (? no idea if that new cpu's better or just less expensive) and price apparently got lowered (no wonder at those specs but you can also get a Tornado for realy little money by now). WM6 ofc is officially an upgrade but then, anyone who realy wants that has had it on their Tornado for about 6 months anyways. Best thing probably is that they replaced the joystick with a pad. Good lord, I won't ever again buy another joystick equipped phone.

It's certainly a good phone - as WinMo entry device and to compete with feature phones, especially if it's realy low priced. But judging by the downgraded features vs. the minor update, I'd say anyone owning a Tornado is wasting money buying the E76.

Yeah, seems like an updated Tornado to me, though much too little of an update to justify the upgrade from a Tornado. Would've been nice 2 years ago.

Looks good, even if more like an iPhone 1.5 UI than a real innovation (and yes, I know that MS did touch before, the iPoo aint the biggest innovation of the decade and Apple generally sucks balls, but still, MS should be more innovative for not to say, should've delivered a finger friendly UI (and screen tech) BEFORE Apple did).

However, 2009 is WAY too late. I was seriously expecting MS to counter by mid 2008 latest. Guess they got pretty much steamrolled by Apple, how else to explain that it takes them 2 years to get the own UI department to finish an actual contender.

Gonna be interesting to see what happens when (and if) Nokia brings out their finger friendly UI later this year.

"added the long-awaited option to lock/dismount card only when USB cable is actually attached"


Wow, dude, you rock. I can't remember how often I'd forgotten turning it off, then had to reboot my phone cos WM couldn't find the target for the .lnk to TCPMP (using my C600 as MP3 player on a daily basis). Having WM5Storage "deactivate" itself upon disconnecting the cable is exactly what I needed.
Thank you very much!

Because that's Q9m not Q9h. The m is just a slightly updated (well, tweaked rather) Q9. The "music" moniker is cos together with a lower price (than the h) it's aimed at the entry/youngster market. Basically, polished yet outdated hardware.

How's the Blackjack's navigation pad for gaming? Can it do diagonals (aka 8-way / 9-way input)?

With there finally being a SNES emu that supports landscape screens, those devices got just a bit more interesting again.

Don't realy understand why they'd release (let alone anyone buy) this one now when it's successor is already around the corner (unless they're gonna hold it back in order to sell this one first.)
The i640 will/should come with a (slightly) bigger screen, gps and wifi ... http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=871

Would be sweet if they'd add a 5-way pad rather than this scroll toy ... and add a normal miniusb and while they're at it, a 3.5mm jack.

Never got PFC to work with AS. None of the descriptions, instructions and posted solutions (anywhere on the net) led to a functional result.

But tbh. since PFC is dead for quite some time now, I'd get another fw anyway.
Personally, I've switched over to the also free Comodo firewall (which btw. kicked most other firewalls butts in several tests). That one works fine with AS.

You can get it at www.comodo.com ... if you want it.

The .sis are just installer files, the actual executables end with .app and then there's a whole lot of other files too, including dll's.

What you're asking is the same as asking "why can't we just play Windows games on Mac?"
Two systems speaking two different languages and built to communicate with different hardware (yes, not the case with Mac's no more, I know).
So I guess it wouldn't be nearly as "simple" as emulating a console, for what would be needed is either emulating Symbian OS 60 2nd edition or de- and recompiling the games for WinMo.

Not saying it aint possible. But there's probably too few (of us) who'd like to get back to playing their good old N-Gage games (without having to deal with the N-Gage) than that the emu coders would take it on.

No.

N-Gage = Symbian
Dash = WinMo

Parents are weird and I see yours aint no exception.

I guess you're a student? What helped me back in the days to get my 1st pc (back in the days when a 386 with 25mhz was da bomb) was convincing my parents about how I could do all kind of school related stuff on it. Took some time but worked out eventually (and of course I used the pc for games 99.9% of it's lifetime).
So, how about showing them some learning related software like:
- scientific calculators
- MobiPocket and the possibility to read all kinds of news (of course preferably politics, science, economics and such ) and books
- wikipedia (e.g. the downloadable versions for MobiPocket)
- dictionaries
- word, pdf aso. readers

You might also show em how e.g. through a good homescreen you can better keep track of your school tasks and dates, thus the device promising to help you become a more serious, better student.

If you push those buttons hard enough and make em understand that a) you earned the money yourself and have grown up enough to buy something useful (instead of toys and games), they might start realize that you're becoming a responsible person and accept your new toy er, I mean, productivity and learning device.


Btw. if nothing helps you could try it with a SonyEricsson W950i. It's also a "smartphone", just running Symbian instead of WinMo (yes yes I know, heresy, heresy, burn him at the stake aso. ) but I guess most parents don't know that as it's being advertised as a walkman phone with built in memory.

Just got my C600 back from repair and, of course, they had flashed it.
Wen't to that french orange dev site, ordered my unlocker at 0.05am. Got an email with the dl link by 0.20am. Installed it, said "security sucessfully disabled". Installed all what I couldn't do while it was locked, everything works.
So, I didn't even need that procedure up there...

Switzerland.

Price drops over the next 6 months aint what I need. My C600's joystick is so fubar after only 15 months of use that it's freaking me out at least once a day. Kinda hard to resist the constant urge of throwing that phone bastard against the next wall. And the Vox is seriously the first phone I'm interested in this year (well, there's the Herald too, but that large screen and my tendency of dropping my phones ...).

159€ with some unnamed contract (probably one of the most expensive ones for 24 months, the way I know Orange by now) ... and only by the end of April.
Well, I'm hoping it's gonna be the same with the Vox as it was with the last bunch of HTC phones. They were all available at the local phone discounters earlier, unlocked, unbranded and for less than Orange would sell em later on.

They ... work? Must ... resist ... Vox .... ... NOT!

Thanks for checking Paul, now I can't wait till I can get my hands all over it.

Thanks for the Vox video!

Btw. am I right assuming that it's directional pad does (once again) not support diagonals (aka 8-way)?

Very nice! Thanks for the vid!

HTC's gonna release (30th March) such one too, with 3.5mm jack and stereo BT and a mic in the clip. Kinda expensive though but at least it'd let you use quality headphones to enjoy your music:

http://www.expansys.com/htc/p_htc_item.aspx?i=140285

Wow, this is sad. I mean, we've got these shiny, speedy devices and yet we need to feel happy getting a game thrown at us that looks like an early alpha version of Urban Asphalt GT?
I mean, look (http://www.n-gage.com/asphalt) at what we used to play on the N-Gage some 2 (or is it 3 already?) years ago. It's full 3D, fluent with good fps and some sfx.

Seriously the (compared to Symbian) lame ass games for WinMo make me wonder if I shouldn't switch back when I get my next device. After all, from the productivity pov, WM and Symbian are quite the same, yet the WinMo soft dev crowd seems to realy hate us having fun with our phones.

Got it fixed! I had checked the backlight settings last night, they were untouched. But now I remembered that old backlight tweaking program I had installed when I had bought the phone. So I loaded that one and re-tweaked my backlight settings and now, the backlight turns off again. Phew!


As for the program's actual functions, I agree that it's rubbish. First of all, it connected to GPRS without asking my permision. Something I don't like at all since data transmissions cost an arm and a leg here. Next up, the prog decided that I was on the other side of europe ... and there was seemingly no way of telling it where I actualy am. So when I looked up some place in my city, it would calculate a route across the continent - for which it then wanted to dl the map data over gprs again. Grrrr.
Next to that, scrolling on a map is a pain in the ass, as is the seemingly touchscreen optimized UI.

So, all back to using MS Pocketstreets. That one works at least - and the maps are just as free (but sadly, not as numerous).

I need URGENT help here!
I've installed this app on my Orange SPV C600 and ever since the backlight of the phone's screen won't turn off no more! This is draining the battery so fast, it's making the phone useless.

I installed the app and downloaded the Switzerland map using the maploader.
As soon as I noticed the screen not turning off no more, I've uninstalled the software (incl. that other service that got installed, some licencing or authentication thing, don't remember it's name). However, even after rebooting the phone the backlight still remained on!

So I checked the folders and found "some" (rather: a whole lot) of smart2go files that did not get removed by the uninstallation (like the whole smart2go folder for instance and some extension-less "qf" file). Deleted all that, rebooted ... no effect, backlight still doesn't go off.

If anyone has an idea on how to fix this, please help me!

Hey there,

I've read the (plenty) topics about setting ActiveSync up to work over BT but I just can't get it done.
The reason (I guess) is, that on my phone, there's no outbound com port defined (from what I read, when pairing with my laptop that com port it lists afterwards is inbound only). Now the real problem I have: The option to define an outbound com port is ALWAYS greyed out!

I've followed the guides posted here, was able to securely pair my phone and laptop, I can add an inbound port any time. But on my C600, the software doesn't ever enable the option to define an outbound port. And I've got no clue why.

Any ideas? Thank you in advance!

Nice review. If you find the time I'd appreciate if you could load some SNES emu and try some games on it, realy curious how well (emu) gaming works on this device.

Btw. I don't find it ugly at all (esp. not when compared to the fugly Orange branded versions of HTC devices). In fact, if the buttons were black instead of silver, it'd be a near perfect (front) design imo (camera section's kinda unlucky though). Yes, I dig minimalist design.