Windows Phone Thoughts: Pocketing Samsung's SPH-i700: The Ultimate Connected Pocket PC?

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Friday, December 5, 2003

Pocketing Samsung's SPH-i700: The Ultimate Connected Pocket PC?

Posted by Janak Parekh in "HARDWARE" @ 10:00 AM


Software (continued)
Bundled software
There are a few additions to the Phone Edition OS. First, Verizon/Samsung has added two Today screen plugins in the ROM: an Enhanced Roaming Indicator (ERI), and a 1x speed meter. (Note that this theme is not the default theme; it's one of the free Windows Mobile 2003 themes available for download, and works pretty well on Pocket PC 2002.)


Figure 23: Today screen, showing the Verizon today plugins.

The ERI would presumably be useful for the situations where you were roaming off Verizon's network (or on a "free roaming" partner as part of the America's Choice plan). The 1x speed meter, on the other hand, is not useful at all: since it's on the Today screen, you're unlikely to see it while you're actually using the 1xRTT service. It only calculates the speed as of the current moment, so by the time you close PIE, for example, the speed meters have already returned to zero.

There's also a camera applet built into ROM, to be used with the built-in camera. As far as I know, Samsung has not released an API for the camera, so this applet is all you can use.


Figure 24: Camera taking a picture of my screen (which, of course, is visiting PPCT. :))

The camera application does an OK job. It's easy to use, and has a built-in browser that lets you see the existing pictures. It also lets you save on an SD card by default should you prefer. It doesn't take movies, and isn't very customizable. Most important, the camera's quality is mediocre at best. Here are a few sample pictures to give you the idea of indoor and outdoor quality.



Figure 25, 26: Indoor and outdoor shots using the camera. The indoor one is of my office, featuring my officemate Suhit, and the outside one is a shot of Lincoln Center. Click on the pictures for the full versions.

Finally, there's a "USB" setting in the Control Panel, which lets you reassign the i700's sync port as a modem instead of an ActiveSync device. I haven't personally tested this, but reports seem to indicate that it works quite well once you download unsupported modem .INF files for Windows.

Verizon and Samsung have also bundled a few applications on CD, which you can install into the RAM of the device. A version of Sprite Software's Pocket Backup is included; you can read the review of that product elsewhere on the site, and I didn't investigate the bundled version.

A product called Voice Signal is also bundled, which offers speech recognition -- especially voice dialing -- without any training. If you're interested in installing it, though, use the version on the Voice Signal website, as it fixes a number of bugs that were in the bundled version.


Figure 27: Voice Signal's main screen.

The nice thing about Voice Signal is that it's reasonably compact (a 900K download) and quick to launch. However, I found use of the software awkward. To dial an arbitrary name from your phonebook, you first have to say "Name Dial", then the name of the person, then a "Yes" to confirm, and then "Mobile" or "Home" if necessary.


Figure 28: Voice Signal asking me which number of mine it should dial.

On the other hand, it might be useful for those of you in a car and willing to follow-through on multiple prompts. It's also possible that Microsoft's new Voice Command application would do a better job, but it doesn't run on Pocket PC 2002. :cry:

Finally, you can optionally get a product called Wireless Sync for the i700 at no additional cost. It's a product made by Spontaneous Technology, and essentially acts as a dedicated, encrypted VPN tunnel for ActiveSync.


Figure 29: The Wireless Sync applet.

You install a "server application" on your desktop PC -- the one you normally ActiveSync with over a USB connection -- and a corresponding "client application" on the Pocket PC. You can apparently get the CD with this software when you order the i700, but your Verizon rep was like mine, they have no clue about it. :| Fortunately, there is an online download page cohosted by Verizon and Spontaneous that makes the process easy -- you enter your phone # and get a tailored download and username/password combo that lets you set up the secure tunnel. I was able to get syncing in just a few minutes. Obviously, it's slower than USB; a typical sync took me about two minutes, but the versatility is unparalleled.

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