In case you are using the HTC Touch Pro or DHTC Touch Diamond get your hands on the demo version of GScroll. Simply copy the .cab file to your device and start it from there. It runs for five minutes only, but this should be enough to convince you to get this tool.

It makes use of two of the built-in sensors of your HTC Touch Diamond/Pro to navigate in applications. The nice but less useful one to the Tap & Tilt functionality. Double-tab the center wheel and tilt the device to navigate within your applications. The more interesting one is the Swipe control.

By swiping your finger over the buttons you can navigate left/right and up/down. This becomes very handy e.g. using the photo and video collections. Using the touch screen there often causes the touch screen to recognize the swiping as a tap, opening the photo. Also navigating within Windows folders becomes quite comfortable.

A further feature is to assign the buttons to additional programs. However, this means not by pressing the button. It means by tipping the buttons. Once, I received the device I was quite frustrated to have only limited buttons on the device, compared to my previous devices.

How does it work: The device has not only the resistive touchscreen, the button panel is also a capacitive sensor which causes in fact that the navigation wheel works.

With a price of $4.99, there is no reason to support those guys in buying a copy.

Link: http://www.mobilesrc.com/GScroll.aspx

Ordering an O2 Diamond Pro (aka HTC Touch Pro) one week ago, I was told that the delivery might take three to five weeks, as the device is not available yet. I was quite surprised as a parcel arrived this morning. What's inside? The brand new O2 Diamond Pro. The packaging is done a bit Apple-style, making unveiling the phone to some kind of experience.

Opening the package will reveal the phone. In terms of style and experience, the O2 branding is quite nice, but at the end the content is more interesting.

For the impatient user there is a quick-manual for the phone and forth TouchFlo 3D user interface. Also you get ActiveSync 4.5 and a 60-day trial version of Microsoft Outlook on CD-ROM. For those with a lot of spare time you'll find a 350 pages manual. Nice through for the inexperienced user.

The included accessories are more or less surprising USB and TV cradle, USB handset, replacement pen. The most surprising one is the USB cradle. Standard USB to mini USB, which goes directly to the charging plug.  

SIM, microSD and battery can be simply inserted by removing the back cover. There is no button to release the cover, so it works similar to the HTC TyTN II (aka HTC Kaiser).

After turning on the phone the first time, the O2 setup will take about 2 minutes  install the branding and setting up the phone. This might differ for each provider. Connecting to the Exchange server took only a few steps. And that's one of the coolest features when using a Exchange server at the back: getting all your contacts, appointments, tasks and mails to your new phone at once.

What is nice: Beside the replacement pen, you'll get a clear screen cover that can be placed on top of the touch screen, increasing its durability. I haven't realized any drawbacks using the touch screen with it.

What is disappointing: The case that comes in this package does not fit to the phone. It a leather-kind, slip-style case which is only half the size of the phone!?  To me it feels like this is the case for the Xda diamond (without keyboard).

What is also disappointing: With a regular price of 500 £, I would expect at least some kind of microSD card within the set. In contrast, the Nokia E71 came already equipped with a 2GB microSD card.

The keyboard feels quite solid and the slide functionality behaves a bit as the one of the HTC TyTN II and not as cheap as of the HTC TyTN. If you are used typing on the TyTN or TyTN II, you'll get used to the keyboard quite fast. The pen slides into the phone automatically as soon as you have inserted it more then 50%. That's no magic, but quite nice.

So far, the device and its accessories are quite satisfying. Let's see how it works during the next few days.

[Update]

As I experienced the first time with my O2 Xda, Windows Mobile Device Center displays a preview of your Xda.

Today, I run into a quite annoying error message while developing a application for Windows Mobile 6.1.

"An error message is available for this exception but cannot be displayed because these messages are optional and are not currently installed on this device. Please install ‘NETCFv35.Messages.EN.wm.cab’ for Windows Mobile 5.0 and above or  ‘NETCFv35.Messages.EN.cab’ for other platforms. Restart the application to see the message."

The required files are located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft.NET\SDK\CompactFramework\v3.5 \WindowsCE\Diagnostics, assuming you have installed the Windows Mobile SDK. I copied the file NETCFv35.Messages.EN.wm.cab to my device and run the installation. So far it worked fine, until the same exception popped up again.

Using the .NET CF Logger, from Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5, I was able to track it down to the following error:

"Failed to load [System.SR, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969DB8053D3322AC]"

To do so, you choose the device you want to log and select which logging options you want. The log files can be found then in your application folder on the mobile device.

With this new input, I found Martijn Hoogendoorn's blog entry. He came across the same issue some time ago and provided a solution to this miracle. If you have a look inside the .cab file, check the _setup.xml file.

Extract and rename the file SYCCFA~1.001 to System.SR.dll and include it into your project. Rebuild, deploy and debug it - it should work fine.

This update [1] finally supports the new file formats of Office 2007 on your mobile device:

To allow Windows Mobile users to work with Office documents created in the Open XML formats, Microsoft has developed an upgrade for Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, and PowerPoint Mobile applications. This upgrade to the Office Mobile applications allows viewing and editing of Word documents and Excel workbooks and viewing of PowerPoint slideshows created by using Microsoft Office 2007.

Other improvements include:
• Enhanced viewing experience for charts in Excel Mobile.
• Ability to view SmartArt in PowerPoint Mobile.
• Ability to view and extract files from compressed (.zip) folders.

The update need approximately 7 Mb on your device so I would recommend using a memory card for the installation.

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...

Yesterday, I discovered the images related to your Windows Mobile device shown in Windows Mobile Device Center. Today, I found another surprising feature: Whilst selecting my mobile device in Explorer the image of the corresponding  device appeared on the Explorer. Nice feature.

Sometimes, the small features make you really smile about something. I don't know if this has been there for the whole time, if it is related to the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade or if it came with the latest Windows Mobile Device Center update. However, the Windows Mobile Device Center shows my device (O2 Xda Trion) on its window. I haven't realized this before.

Oh dear, last month all my colleagues did an upgrade on their MDA aka Hermes 9600 for a newer ROM version. Unfortunately, I was not able to find any upgrade for the Xda Trion at the O2 XDA website. Also the German O2 website does not provide any information about ROM upgrades. Here I finally fond some information about O2 taking their Windows Mobile upgrade quite serious and the most importing information: All the upgrades are hosted by HTC directly. They even adapted the O2 style on the Windows Mobile 6 Update for Xda page. 

All you have to do is to enter the serial number of your Windows Mobile device (right behind the battery) and download the corresponding 52 MB bits. Before installing make sure your ActiveSync connection is set up properly and running. And that's currently the only drawback of the whole story: I tried to perform the ROM upgrade first with my Windows Vista machine. The upgrade process seems to run up to the point where the application tries to upload the ROM files. At this point the application does not work properly with either Windows Vista or the Mobile Device Center. Therefore, I did take my Windows XP backup machine. There you simply plug-in your device and make sure that the ActiveSync connection is established.

It looks like the SPL version (whatever this is) was not updated by my first attempt. Connecting via ActiveSync showed a different version (2.03 instead of 1.04). After confirming the setup procedure on your desktop machine, the screen changes then to a progress bar. After approximately 10 minutes the ROM upgrade is complete, the device restarts and shows up the new Windows Mobile 6 screen.

Source: http://member.htc.com/ruudownload/O2Wm6SnCheck.aspx

Using my xda with Windows Mobile 5 I had to discover that Microsoft ActiveSync cannot be installed on Windows Vista. Instead Vista is suggesting the Sync Center. Actually I do not want to sync the media files on the device rather than my contacts and my calendar on that device.

Windows Mobile Device Center [1] (Beta 3) is the replacement of ActiveSync and allows you to sync your Windows Mobile 5 device with Windows Vista. It looks like further version of the Device Center will be available though Windows Update. The current beta 3 is available as standalone dl' only and is about 10 MB. After installing the connected device was found immediately.

The device is set up by choosing the elements to sync: Calendar, Notes, Tasks, Mails and even OneNote is supported. After choosing the elements to sync, the device center appears to be ready.

What I personally like about the Device Center: It does not appear anymore as tiny window with quite small buttons. Instead it is easy to use. Another positive thing was the detection of the mobile device and the partnering process with the device. Very doable if you are used to ActiveSync.

Finally, also the Sync Center does support the Windows Mobile 5 device. Unfortunately, the syncing did not work while the device was still connected. The items did neither change on the device nor in my Outlook. Also the sync process was done after 2-3 seconds. I removed the device and plugged it in again. Now the sync process takes much longer but nothing happened.

To troubleshoot the sync issue you have to start ActiveSync on the mobile device, changing the ActiveSync settings their. The synchronization settings may be still set to the former partnership. After changing the items to the new partnership synchronization did start quite well.

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/devicecenter.mspx