Windows Phone Thoughts: The Mio Digiwalker 339 - Multimedia To Go

Photo Time
So far, I could be reviewing just about any Pocket PC. But what you're all really wanting to know is "Is the camera any good?". Well, as long as you can live with some of the limitations it is pretty good.

At 640 by 480 resolution, it's not going to set the world on fire. However, it is capable of taking reasonable snaps.

Mounted at the back of the m339 in the top left corner, the camera is equipped with a small flash. It is capable of taking jpeg pictures at 640 by 480 and mpeg video at either 15 fps at 220 by 176 ( QCIF ) resolution or 10 fps at 320 by 240 ( SIF, QVGA ) resolution.


Figure 16: The camera. You can just see the stylus at the very top of the picture, giving you an idea of its position.

It's one thing to integrate a piece of hardware into a device, but it's quite another to make it easy to use. MiTAC have included a very nice piece of software, MioCam, for taking advantage of the camera.

When activated from the Start menu, MioCam, lauches. Surprisingly, the application runs in landscape mode. The photo preview takes up almost all of the screen with the application control buttons down the right side and some information such as the level of digital zoom and which folder your photos will be stored in. You can use the jotstick for zooming in and out with the digital zoon and pressing the joystick will take a photo.

Image quality varies greatly depending on the lighting conditions. The pictures shown were taken using the default setup of the camera in natural light. Under good lighting conditions the camera performed adequately. However, the lack of a decent flash meant that it was not much good indoors unless the room was very well lit.


Figures 17 and 18: Thumbnails of a couple of outdoor shot. Click on the individual pictures to open them in full size.

To help you manage the photos you take, the m339 also has a Picture Viewer application. To be honest, while it's OK, I doubt that i'd use it much. I'd prefer to use Spb Imageer as Picture Viewer isn't very quick and was really little more than a file manager for pictures.


Figure 19: The MiTAC Picture Viewer application is very basic.

The Music Man
As well providing you with the visual part of the multimedia puzzle, the m339 satisifes on the musical side side of things. In addition to Windows Media Player, the m339 ships with a separate MP3 player.

The MioPlayer, loaded in ROM, has a very funky default look that can be skinned. While it might seem a little redundant to include MioPlayer when WMP is already there, its integration with the bundled set of headphones is a great inclusion.


Figure 20: I like the look of MioPlayer. Sure, it's just a skin but it just looks cool.

The stereo headphones come complete with a remote control so that you can adjust the volume, pause/play and navigate forward and back between songs. It's a shame that the same headphones could not be programmed to work with other media players.


Figure 21: MiTAC's inclusion of some headphones with remote control capability really add to the m339's abilities as a pocket multimedia powerhouse.