Omio News Blog

Nokia E75 versus HTC Touch Pro: It’s Friday Showdown Time

Nokia are the dependable old boys of the phone world. HTC: the rogue newbies, intent on making a name for themselves but out of the two who has came up with the best slider QWERTY keyboard device. It’s a toughie.

It’s Friday, the afternoon is winding down and it’s mobile phone showdown time. We’ve lined up the oh-so-similar HTC Touch Pro with the Nokia E75 to see how they both stack up, relatively speaking of course.

Operating System

Both phones have different operating systems. The Nokia E75 features the Nokia native Symbian Series 60 3rd edition. The HTC Pro has a Windows Mobile 6.1 OS.

Camera

Both phones pack in 3.2 megapixels but the HTC sneakes ahead with its VGA CMOS camera.

Networking

Both models sport WiFi and Bluetooth v2.0 connectivity, quad band GSM GPRS, EDGE and 3G technology. The two are WCDMA are compatible.  The E75 has an integrated A-GPS receiver and support for Nokia maps. While, on the other hand, the HTC Touch Pro has a special integrated GPS antenna to support maps.

Memory

Of the two phones, the E73 has a much larger comparable memory – 50MB. The HTC meanwhile has only 288MB but both phones have an expandable micro SD card for added memory.

Display and Design

With a touch screen measuring a paltry 2.4″ and 240 x 320 pixels, the E75 falls behind in the display rankings. The HTC Touch Pro has a 2.8″ screen with a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. The E75 does have two different styles of keyboard so it redeems itself slightly. It also has the regular alphanumerical keyboard so you can use the phone like you would with a regular keyboard.

Battery Life

The HTC Touch Pro has the more powerful battery here – just under 7 hours of life for GSM usage and 6 hours for WCDMA usage. The Nokia E75 smartphone offers 5 hours and 20 minutes of battery life for GSM usage and 4 hours & 20 minutes for WCDMA usage.

Dimensions

The HTC measures 102 mm long, 18.05 mm wide and weighs in at 16.5g. In contrast, the Nokia is 111.8mm long, 50mm wide, 14.4mm thick and weighs only 139g.  Six grams – it makes all the difference.

Price

A SIM-free Nokia E75 is the cheaper of the two handsets in this often determining purchase factor.

Which of the two are you pining for?

Microsoft “Start Your Windows Phones” Advert Is Cool

Microsoft has begun the assault on consumers with their rebranding of Windows Mobile phones to just ‘Windows Phones’.

Subtle change, but a significant one for them as Ballmer himself coined it and hammered it home at Mobile World Congress this year.

So Windows Mobile phones are cool now, as Microsoft and beautiful people in aspirational videos have deemed it so. It actually makes us feel a bit optimistic about where Microsoft want to go in the mobile market!

Witness:

Okay, no actual shots of Windows Mobile in that vid, but they’re trying! Who knows, it could be the first decent ad campaign from Microsoft since that Rolling Stones ‘Start Me Up’ one for Windows ’95!

Actually, it’s pretty similar…

Source: Pocket Lint

Apple App Store Reaches 25,000 Apps, Now Has More Programs Than Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile. Been around nine years, has had 20,000 third party applications developed for the platform.

Apple App Store, 8 months and 25,000 applications as of March 5th 2009.

It has taken less than a year, according to stat-tracking site 148Apps, for the Apple iPhone to have more applications than the original smartphone platform of Windows Mobile. With around 6,000 of these being games (and what feels like a billion iFart apps), it shows consumers like to play just as much as work… This just goes to show just how dramatic a shift in development the existence of the iPhone and App Store has been to the market at large, with even bedroom coders getting a chance at fame and fortune due to the hallowed iTunes Top 10 charts.

However, this phenomenon is showing little sign of trailing off. If anything, iPhone application numbers are increasing more steeply than ever.

With 500 million apps downloaded and an approximate calculation of 23 million units sold, it is safe to say that both the App Store and the iPhone/3G have been quite successful.

At least the other manufacturers are recognising that it isn’t just competitive to have an App Store of their own, but a necessity to even be considered a worthy alternative in the eyes of consumers to the all-encompassing device. With 2009 seeing the rest of the industry coming round to touch phones in a huge way, it remains to be seen what Apple will do this time to keep five paces ahead of the rest of the pack.

Source: CNN Money

Ballmer: Windows Mobile 7 Coming In Space Year 2010

Even though Windows Mobile 6.5 was only revealed last week, production on Windows Mobile 7 has been revealed as well underway, with a timeline of release in 2010.

Speaking of Microsoft’s future plans at their Strategic Update Meeting, CEO Steve Ballmer was optimistic of the advancements WinMo 7 will bring:

“We’re extending our offer to include not only the core platform, but applications and services. We’ve made a nice release announcement last week of Windows Mobile 6.5. We’ve got Windows Mobile 7 coming next year. We’re getting more and more synergy with Windows, so the browser improvements, et cetera, should be quite rapid.”

Rapid? Windows Mobile 7 in 2010, whilst we are in February? Compared to what we’re seeing from companies like LG and Samsung in response to the iPhone’s revolutionary user experience, we’d call that quite slow.

The Windows Mobile 6.5 demo at MWC was…uninspiring, but the commitment shown by both HTC and LG show that Microsoft has the support to carry them until their truly innovative operating system is complete.

HTC has even gone as far as planning to release their HTC Touch Diamond 2 and Touch Pro 2 handsets with Windows Mobile 6.1, but allowing to be upgradable to 6.5 when it is ready.

Until then, we will have to make do with the honeycombs.

How To Install Apps On Your HTC Touch HD / Windows Mobile Phone!

For a lot of new smartphone owners, installing applications is immediately a far more daunting endeavour (and another feather in the cap for that darned iPhone!), but in reality it is quite a painless experience and certainly a great way to get the most out of your mobile device.

Mobile phone website Pocketnow has kindly recorded a quick and easy how-to, explaining how and where to get applications, and also how to install them to your Windows Mobile device!

The apps in question are usually packaged in what are called CAB files, and these files can be transferred from your PC to your phone or downloaded directly though the device in question.

So pay attention to the following video (having turned the sound down in anticipation of the intro music), there will be a test afterwards!

And that’s it! Whilst not the App Store (yet…), it is easy to install a myriad of programs that make your mobile phone life so much easier!

This Mashable Top 20 Windows Mobile list is a good place to start if you want to get installing…good luck!

Firefox Mobile Phone Web Browser Coming Next Week?

In an unusually leaky move from Mozilla, it seems that their mobile iteration of web browser Firefox could be here as soon as next week if internal documents on the net are to believed.

According to freely available Mozilla meeting notes, ‘Fennec’ as it’s known will be available from the first week of February, “targetting the HTC Touch Pro.”

It seems like this WinMo handset (already one of Omio’s personal favourites after the HTC Touch Pro review!) will be receiving an early present in the form of first real competition to the behemoth of Opera Mobile.

What of Flash-happy mobile browser Skyfire? A critic’s darling with a very popular Beta in the US and a low-key UK roll-out at the end of the last year, it looks like the mobile browser market is going to get pretty crowded!

Source: Electric Pig

Omio Post Featured On Carnival of The Mobilists!

Yay! Omio has managed to feature once again on the travelling show covering all that is good and great in the world of mobile phones, Carnival of the Mobilists!

Hosted this week by VoIP Survivor, our guest post from Electric Pig‘s James Holland about better mobility features in today’s social networks was rightly given pride of place!

Many thanks to James, Tsahi and the Mobilists!

Oh, and the picture? Has to be done, it’s a carnival!

HTC Touch HD TouchFLO Panels For HTC Touch Pro / Diamond!

As the name doubtlessly gives away, the HTC Touch HD is very proud of the gorgeous high resolution screen that it is equipped with, and the unique TouchFLO interface was beefed up accordingly.

Taking advantage of the larger display, this version of TouchFLO 3D offered more ‘panes’, including a manager and very pretty stocks and shares checker.

Well, the new interface is no longer the preserve as (you guessed it) XDA Developers has a way of putting them onto the HTC Touch Pro and HTC Touch Diamond.

Installation is a tad complex at times (this is Windows Mobile we’re talking about), but persevere and you too can watch as your children’s inheritance becomes worthless using the TouchFLO stock pane!

Defrost Your Touch HD

It might be the slickest, shiniest Windows Mobile handset ever made, but, if you use an HTC Touch HD you’ll know that it spends more time frozen than a jumbo pack of Turkey Twizzlers.

Thankfully, HTC have recognised the problem and released a hotfix which promises to “enhance the response time for Touch HD”.

We’ve applied it to our handset, and can report a significant improvement.

And of course, if Windows Mobile is your thing, don’t forget that we’re giving away a SIM free HTC Touch Pro in all it’s hi-res, slidey-out-keyboarding, data-lovin’ glory.

Source: MoDaCo

Apple iPhone 3G Outsells All Windows Mobile Phones In Q3 2008

Okay. We’re as surprised at this as you all are.

Apple with their single handset, the iPhone 3G, has managed to outsell all of the Windows Mobile powered mobile telephony machines during the third quarter of 2008. Worldwide. Globally. Everywhere.

Just…take a moment to let that sink in. All those touted iPhone killers. The Samsung Omnia. The HTC Touch Pro. The Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. Put together. Outsold by the iPhone.

Other interesting changes in the smartphone landscape have been witnessed, including Nokia experiencing their first year-on-year sales decline, and BlackBerry shifting 81.7% more mobiles than this time in 2007. Well, the holy trinity of the BlackBerry Storm 9500, Pearl Flip 8220 and Bold all in Q3 must have had a great deal to do with that increase in sales.

What is also intriguing is the shift in operating systems, seeing Symbian’s share of the pie dipping below 50% of the market. Could it be because they were relatively late to the touchscreen party, forcing many to switch to WinMo or go it alone? Either way, the double whammy of the touch Symbian-rocking 5800 XpressMusic and the Nokia N97 will go some way to redressing the OS balance in 2009!

Love Hate to say it, but I was right about the iPhone’s software strategy for the 3G! From that announcement of the new iPhone in tandem with 2.0 and the App Store, it was clear that it wasn’t about megapixels or CPU speed but rather simple usability, freedom of choice and customer satisfaction.

Now the sales speak for themselves.