Josh Bancroft’s TinyScreenfuls.com

HowardForums: Your Mobile Phone Community & Resource - BengalBoy Blazes Along with Motorola’s New MpX220 SmartPhone! 200mhz Dual Core Demon! via Gizmodo

As has become the norm for a review by BengalBoy, there are more photos than you can shake a stick at, including all angles open and closed, and just about every UI screen I can think of. There’s even some hot phone-on-phone action, with set pieces, etc. A lot of effort went into these photos.

He covers all aspects of operation - voice dialing, Bluetooth, camera, web browsing, messaging, etc. I didn’t see too much new info (except that voice dialing over Bluetooth doesn’t seem to work), but it’s nice to know that a lot of the features we’ve been hearing about (using the external color screen as a viewfinder for self-portraits, etc.) have actually been implemented.

Go check out the review, and drool over all the photos. Gadget porn at its finest.

How Slow is the HP iPAQ h6315?

Apparently, pretty darn slow. HP decided to go with a battery-sipping TI 168 MHz CPU (when most current Pocket PCs are using CPUs in the 400, 500, or 600 MHz range) in order to maximize battery life. Well, the result is one of the slowest Pocket PCs to date, according to some benchmarks by the guys over at Mobile Gadget News. The $600 iPAQ 6315 is slower in the benchmark than the original T-Mobile MDA Pocket PC Phone Edition, and even the original iPAQ 3600, both of which sport a 206MHz StrongARM CPU.

The real question is, will people really care, or will they be happy with the trade off for longer battery life? Personally, I don’t think I could deal with it, especially after being spoiled by the 400MHz XScale CPU in my current iPAQ. I guess time will tell if this was a shrewd move or a fatal one for the 6315.

Looking for some good “Pocket IE Friendly” web sites?

Noticed this over on the Windows Mobile Team Blog - lots and lots of mobile device-friendly links.

I’ve got a substantial collection of favorites for mobile friendly sites, so I’ll have to go through this list, and add anything I don’t already have.

MoDaCo Smartphone - View topic - New AT&T GPRS Data Plans, UNLIMITED for $24.95

There’s a thread over at MoDaCo (that I found by way of MobileGadgetNews) wherein someone noticed that AT&T has dropped the price of their unlimited GPRS wireless data plan to $24.95/month, down from $50/month (or $80/month, depending on who you talk to).

I think this is a smart competitive move on AT&T’s part, since until now, someone who wanted a cheap unlimited GPRS plan really had only one choice - T-Mobile. There are some caveats and restrictions, though:

$24.99 UNLIMITED mMODE PLAN-ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Unlimited service only applies to e-mail, Internet and intranet access on your device; other uses (e.g., tethering, select audio/video content, games or other downloads) are an extra expense. If you use your phone to connect to another device or computer via cable, Bluetooth or infrared, you will be charged $0.001 per KB or approximately $1/MB for data sent to or from your phone and transferred over the AT&T Wireless network. You also will be charged $0.001 per KB if you remove the SIM card from your phone and use it to get wireless data service from another device or computer. The $24.99 Unlimited mMode plan is the only mMode plan available for activation on a UMTS device. This plan may not be used with service devices or with host computer applications. Such prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, continuous JPEG file transfers, automatic data feeds, telemetry applications, automated functions or any other machine-to-machine applications. This Plan may not be used to provide full-time connections, including without limitation, private lines or frame relay. AT&T Wireless reserves the right to deny or terminate service, without notice, to any person that uses AT&T Wireless’ network and/or service in any manner that adversely impacts the AT&T Wireless network or service levels. AT&T Wireless reserves the right to deny or to terminate service without notice for any misuse, including without limitation, periods of excessive usage that AT&T Wireless, it its sole discretion, determines is the result of prohibited use(s). Standard voice charges apply when using data/mMode applications that generate a voice call.

(emphasis mine)

Now, it could just be legalese, but it sounds like their “unlimited” plan really isn’t that unlimited. Charging $1/MB for using your phone with another device, like a PDA or a laptop, discourages using your phone as a wireless modem, and the other restrictions against “web camera posts” and “machine-to-machine connections” could be interpreted as prohibition of photoblogging, instant messaging, streaming audio or video, or remote access (such as SSH, VNC, or Remote Desktop). I guess it all comes down to how Draconian they decide to be when enforcing these terms.

I’m interested to know how they can tell if data access comes directly from your phone, or from another device (such as a PDA over a Bluetooth connection). Everything I know about GPRS tells me that packets are packets, and there wouldn’t be anything on their end to distinguish packets from a PDA or the phone itself.

Anyway, I know several people with MPX200 Smartphones that are on AT&T, and contractually obligated to stay there, but aren’t able to get the most out of their devices becase of AT&T’s high GPRS rates. This should come as good news to them, especially those that have corporate discounts, and/or are already paying more for the unlimited plan.

Gmail Notifier

There have been various third-party apps to do this so far (I’m partial to the Gmail Notifier Firefox Extension), but now Google has made their own systray application that will monitor your Gmail account (if you’re lucky enough to have one), and let you associate “mailto:” links with composing a new message in Gmail.

If you’ve got a Gmail account, give this a shot.