The other potential saviour of our constantly depleted finances is a device called the PocketSurfer 2, from a Canadian-based company called DataWind Net Access Corporation. Unveiled last February at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, this device – 27mm thick, with a 640x240 pixel screen - compresses Web pages to up to 1/30th their normal size, and delivers them in an average of five to seven seconds per page. It doesn’t handle voice traffic, but it does cope with chat and instant messaging.
According to Peter Nadler at Calculator King, DataWind plans to launch the product in Australia in July, using the Vodafone network. He says the PocketSurfer would cost $399, including 20 hours of downloads per month for the first year. It seems an ideal solution that would allow us to check our email using a Web client, and use the Dopod for phone, GPS and other applications. [DataWind has just responded to our emails to inform us that the launch has been delayed until September.]
In the meantime we will pray for Telstra to decide to sell the Dopod D810 on its NextG network, and for the arrival of the PocketSurfer. An earlier prayer – for the free firmware update for the D810 and the Dopod 838 Pro, which includes Windows Mobile 6.0 and enabling of the GPS capability – will be answered next week, according to Dopod’s marketing manager, Michael Persolia.
We thought we’d improved the Windows Mobile environment on the Dopod with a program called Battery Pack Pro, from OmegaOne Software. It’s a suite of utilities that starts by giving you control over the two critical resources - battery life and memory usage – and throws in a good deal more. In fact, probably too much more.
What you end up with are several rows of tiny icons on your Today screen that are shortcuts to launching up to 160 programs, doing a soft reset, and tracking the time locally and in four international cities – it automatically gives you the current exchange rate and weather forecast in each – among many other useful things.
It allows you to close programs (rather than having them chew up memory running in the background), delete temporary files that can waste your storage, monitor your network activity, see your next appointments, and adjust alarms and reminders. You can assign a second function to each hard button.
If you’ve ever struggled with inserting a key into a lock in the dark, you’ll love the Power Light icon.
At $US29.99, Battery Pack Pro seems like a great bargain ... except that in our case, the Dopod started freezing intermittently after we’d loaded it. Then we discovered that the backlight was turned down, and we could no longer brighten it.
We’ve reluctantly removed it. You might find it works without any difficulties on another phone, but our advice is to avoid paying for it until you’ve thoroughly tested the demonstration version on your device.
Another program we’re still testing is phoneAlarm. It makes your communications elements more accessible, and allows you to log the cost of calls. It promises to be a useful safeguard against unpleasant surprises in your mobile phone bill.
We’d be interested in hearing recommendations from other Windows Mobile users about utilities they regard as essential additions to the operating system and applications, or perhaps more importantly, about programs they think should be avoided.