Today I received a T-Mobile Blackberry 8820. It’s my first attempt at really getting to know a Blackberry device. I have not even gotten through setup of email or syncing or anything. After installing the desktop software it told me I need to reboot and I can’t do that yet so it will have to wait. Here are my first impressions: I was pretty confused when trying to navigate the Blackberry operating system. It is …
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Your Windows Mobile 7 Wish List
We’ve all been hearing rumors about Windows Mobile 7. You’ve probably seen the leaked screenshots, and I go over some of them here. We don’t really know if those represent the Standard/Smartphone version or the Professional/Pocket PC version of the operating system, or if there are even going to be multiple versions of Windows Mobile 7. Most of the screen shots indicate a move towards the Windows Mobile Standard style interface. You can even see …
Continue readingHow to Design Mobile Software Like a Pro: Rule #2
Rule #1 was Design with Consistency. Rule #2 is Enable Keyboard Shortcuts. The great majority of Windows Mobile devices have hardware buttons and keyboards/keypads. Beginning with Windows Mobile 5, the operating system was designed to take advantage of hardware buttons for increased user interaction efficiency and usability. Windows Mobile has two hardware keys that are assigned to the left and right bottom bar menus/functions also known as soft keys. This makes it very easy to …
Continue readingHow to Design Mobile Software Like a Pro: Rule #1
I probably should have called this series “How to design mobile software like you know what you’re doing.” since we’ve seen many professional user interface designs fall completely on their faces. Rule Number 1 in Human Computer Interface design is consistency. If you look at a Windows Mobile Professional device, you see a Start menu in the upper left corner of the title bar. You’ll see a colored bottom bar with two text-labeled buttons on …
Continue reading42 Reasons You Still Don’t Want an iPhone
The recent announcement of a software development kit and the Microsoft Exchange Activesync support for the iPhone has raised the eyebrows of a few users who have remained hesitant from switching to the iPhone. Our own Brandon Miniman even exclaimed that now that the iPhone has Exchange support, various device form factors was the only reason left to stick to Windows Mobile. On the contrary, here are 42… EDIT, 55 reasons you still don’t want …
Continue readingZune + Windows Mobile = Better Together
A poster named Mel at an MSDN Windows Mobile blog has asked for thoughts on making Windows Mobile and Zune work better together. I think it’s pretty much a no-brainer that this type of integration should have been thought through from the beginning. What are some ways the Zune player and a Windows Mobile device can work better together? I’m not referring to an imaginary “Zune phone”, and I’m certainly not hinting or speculating about …
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