… just briefly, Socket Communications has just announced a change of their name to Socket Mobile. At the moment, there is only a short company presentation available at the www.socketmobile.com. The press release is available here.

Recently I came across this accessory. It is an external GPS antenna with mini-MMCX connector and primarily design for HTC Artemis and its clones. The cable length is 3 meters. There are no other technical data on that page (i.e. no antenna gain or what-so-ever). Price 19,99 GBP.

I am going to spend the following three days on the ITnT fair in Vienna. I arrived this morning and the first thing I went to see was the T-mobile booth where, apart from the mobile phones and services T-mobile offer, you can put your hands on the very new T-mobile Ameo (i.e. HTC Athena).

I spent some 20 minutes playing around with this device and made a few photos (see bellow). My first impression was that it is really BIG. However, I liked the keyboard which you can put apart from the device itself. Also another great thing about this UMPC is that Athena supports all wireless technologies – i.e. WiFi, GPS, UMTS and Bluetooth. It sports VGA display and VGA output. This sounds really great. HTC used the same USB type connector for Athena as for all the recent PDA’s (i.e. HTC ExtUSB). There are WindowsMobile 2005 with AKU3 pre-installed on the device. Its price should be around 600 EUR. You can find a complete technical specification for the HTC Athena here.

So here come the pictures with their descriptions that are always under each picture.

Overall image – i.e. the magnetic keyboard is connected to the device.

Here the magnetic keyboard was disconnected from the device. The stylus on the right is really small.

Right-side view. You can see the On/Off button as well as the recorder and camera button.

Left-side view: headphones jack, miniUSB connector, VGA output, volume slider.

… and finally, the backside of the Athena.

After connecting my HTC Artemis to TomTom Home utility today, I got a message annoucing the availability of Connect2Internet database update. As the information message says (see above), the Connect2Internet database is supposed to include connection details for different mobile phones and mobile phone operators. The size of the update is 400 KB and the files named Connect2Internet.db and Connect2Internet.so were installed to Storage Card.

Already some time ago, PocketPC Magazine published a list of winners of the 2006 Best Software Awards. There are several categories and there is one winner for each of them. However, all nominees as well as all finalists are mentioned as well. The reason why I writing about it here is that I believe the list could be a very good place to start with for those who are searching for a useful utility in any of the categories. … or at least, I am using it in this way …

Nobody is perfect, nor is the Artemis device … Here come some of the major issues of the HTC Artemis that I have come across while browsing various PDA discussion forums:

• unreliable QuickGPS – some users mention that there is no difference in TTFF (Time-To-First-Fix) with and without the help of this utility. Another problems that are mentioned are linked to the ephemeris data update
• switching on the GPS module – sometimes it is necessary to restart the PDA to be able to switch the GPS on
• the battery cover flips out very easily
• the Rollr wheel is too loose
• the GPRS Disconnect button is missing (this can be solved by pressing the red-phone button for 2 seconds)
• problematic functioning of MMS
• user data are not safe on a storage card (more information here)

Do you have any other problems with your device?

To my surprise, it is indeed possible! … … An xda-developers forum contributor with the nick name Adenin came with a nice tweak that can change the FM band range in HTC Artemis. The registry modifications are the following:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\HTC\FMRadio\FMPlayer\Band
0 = 87.5 – 108.0 MHz
1 = 76.0 – 108.0 MHz
2 = 76.0 – 91.0 MHz

You can also set frequency direct in HKLM\SOFTWARE\HTC\FMRadio\FMPlayer\ChannelValue = MHz * 10 (=> 1100 = 110.0 MHz )

Source: xda-developers

While browsing the WindowsMobile blog archive, I found two articles describing what component or part of your PDA and smartphone (i.e. touchscreen, backlight, CPU, LED etc.) drains your battery most. Both articles are available here and here. The latter one also describes the difference in power management of smartphones and PDA’s. Very interesting readings …

Recentely I tested two GPS utilities for WindowsMobile PDA‘s. The first of them is called VisualGPSce and works very well on HTC Artemis. VisualGPSce is GPS software that displays GPS data in both text and graphical form. Moreover, the data can be exported into a file. You can find more information here.

The second utility I was testing on HTC Artemis is called GPSAuto. Installation runs OK but while trying to access the GPS, the utility freezes and PDA has to be restarted. It is a pity as I would welcome some advanced speed-watching software. Anyway, the product pages are here.