Thanks to a news item by Wap Review, we can let you know that the official English version of UCWEB 7.0 is now available. UCWEB is a popular mobile browser that is available for Symbian, Windows Mobile and Java-enabled devices.

Dennis Bournique of Wap Review has provided some info on what to expect from the S60 and Java versions of UCWEB 7. We took UCWEB for a spin on Windows Mobile Standard, and came out frustrated.

We tried out Download via PC first, and using the phone selection wizard, we found the version for Samsung B7320 and downloaded, then transferred it to phone. When we initiated installation, we got an unsuccessful installation error.

So, we tried the phone download route. Again, download worked fine. Installation went well too. However, each time we launched the browser, we got an error message that there was a problem with UCWEB.exe.

We never got it to run even once. It looks like UCWEB 7.0 still needs some tweaking. We recall that we had some initial problems with using version 6.3 earlier on, but it works fine now – and we dare say we are loving it here at Mobility Nigeria.

Download:
Download UCWEB 7.0 via PC.

Here are few screenshots of the B7320 in action:

Main pane of the Samsung WizPro (what TouchWiz is called here) home layout

The contacts pane of the WizPro home layout

The music pane of the WizPro home interface

The photo pane on the WizPro home interface

The shortcut pane of the WizPro home interface

MobilityNigeria.com in Pocket Internet Explorer

Watching a movie full-screen

Backing up and synchronising contacts, calendar, images, videos and documents with the Microsoft MyPhone

Internet banking: Pocket Internet Explorer handles secure sites well

The excellent version 10 beta of Opera Mobile browser has now found its way to Windows Mobile devices. Initially released with a version for Symbian devices only, WinMo users can now browse to www.opera.com/mobile/ to download their copy.

Android fan site, Phandroid, reports that Android and other newer operating sustems are stealing Symbian and WinMo market share

Below are percentage share movement in the smartphone market from Q3 2008 to Q3 2009:

Android – 0% to 3.9%
BlackBerry OS – 16% to 20.8%
iPhone – 12.9% to 17.1%
Symbian – 49.7% to 44.6%
WebOS – 0% to 1.1%
Windows Mobile – 11% to 7.9%

Read the full item: Android Stealing Symbian & WinMo Market Share

Symbian. Windows Mobile. Palm. Blackberry. OSX. Android. Maemo.

These are all mobile operating systems (OS). Some have been around longer than others. The new kids on the block are OSX and Android, and they are having their day. While Palm is an old platform, the complete revamp that has been executed on the OS has transformed its hitherto dated interface into something hip and up-to-date, just as obtains on the newer kids.

Symbian, the world’s most widely used mobile OS, has also undergone a revamp with the S60 5th Edition, but with not quite an elegant result as Palm. I have been “Symbian Inside” for the most of my mobile life, having used S80 (Nokia 9500), UIQ (P990, P1i) and S60 (E61, E61i, E90, E75) devices for years.

I have not hidden my position that Symbian as it currently is needs a serious facelift of its user interface to get up-to-date with current fads in the industry. I have even held that position strongly. But there seem to be those who think that Symbian is actually going to die off. I seriously doubt that. At least not anytime soon.

If what Nokia has pulled off on the N900 tablet-phone is anything to go by, those who have prophesied Symbian’s death because of what seemed Nokia’s inability to implement a fancy user interface can start recanting. Nokia has shown that they are capable.

We must note that the current fancy user interfaces are touchscreen based. Unfortunately, unless there is a massive change in the general direction of mobile users, the statistics till date shows that the majority of users prefer regular type phones with a physical keypad. In this field, Nokia still holds the fort.

I submit that Symbian is likely to remain the dominant mobile OS for a long time. Current trends suggest that Android will take the 2nd place quickly.

One of the advantages that Symbian has is what will help Android achieve this feat. Both Symbian and Android are licenced by numerous manufacturers, some of which are adding layers of services, functionality and usabilty to the underlying operatiing systems.

Already, we have multiple Android devices from HTC, Motorola, and Samsung respectively on the ground. More are on the way from Acer, Sony Ericsson, LG and others.

The other operating systems are generally mono-products – the iPhone which runs OSX is manufactured by only Apple; Blackberries are manufactured by only RIM, and Palm devices by only Palm.

The only other widely licensed mobile OS is Windows Mobile. The recently launched Windows Mobile 6.5 is a good upgrade, but leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, version 7 will bring this venerable OS up-to-speed and then we can see how things go from there.

One thing that is unarguable, however, is that exciting times are ahead in the mobile OS field. Whatever operating system you root for, the months and years ahead promise much.

I have played with an official build of WM 6.5 for about a day now, and while it does not feature the sleekiest user interface on the block, I have found it enjoyable. My thoughts had been that after using TouchFlo 3D, there was no way I would like or enjoy using the 6.5 interface.

Surprise! I like it.

Unfortunately, this v6.5 ROM isw plagued by the same problem of poor quality video recording that I have encountered on every other v6.5 ROM I have played with on the X1. Unless I find a v6.5 ROM with excellent quality video recording, I will have to switch back to a v6.1 ROM – and TouchFlo 3D. Or perhaps I might just go get another phone for my video recording needs

Anyway, enjoy the following screenshots:

WM 6.5 home screen with some extra plugins installed. Sweet

WM 6.5 start menu

Viewing a contact

Editing a contact

Browsing through the collection of applications on the MarketPlace

In all, I found the menus and icons finger friendly. The home screen works well and can be extended with a growing number of plugins.

In addition, Microsoft’s integration of its different services such that once the user’s Live ID details are entered in any one of the applications e.g. My Phone, those details are automatically inserted into the login fields for all of the other services e.g. Windows Live, MarketPlace. Saves users a lot of repeated typing of user login details.

While not an earth-shattering upgrade, Windows Mobile 6.5 is a significant improvement on the now dated 6.1. If your v6.1 phone is upgradeable, go for it!! If not, go flash a 6.5 ROM on it

According to Microsoft, Windows phones are the new phones that include the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. It is an interesting re-branding strategy by the guys at Redmond.

A handful of phones have been announced as pencilled down for an update to the WinMo 6.5 OS. Notable among them are the Omnia 2, Touch Diamond 2 and Touch Pro 2. No formal statement on the Xperia X1 yet.

But why should Sony Ericsson’s silence or reluctance to provide an update keep me from switching to the Windows Phone club? What I have done is hunt out an official Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM, which I have now downloaded. I will test it out over the next few days, and if it does not pop up serious issues, I’ll probably keep it.

Yes; just so I can say that I have a Windows Phone. At least I can for now. How about you? Do you have a Windows Mobile device or a Windows Phone?

Get more details from the official Windows Mobile 6.5 FAQ page.

Of the new features released with Windows Mobile 6.5, the My Phone service is one that serves a really useful purpose for me. My Phone lets you synchronize your contacts, appointments, text messages, photos, videos, songs, favorites, and documents between your phone and their servers.

Here are a few other things that My Phone brings to the table:

Find your missing phone
The My Phone service can show you the last known location of your phone on a map (based on where it last synced or shared photos using My Phone). User activation required.

Lock your lost phone
If your phone is lost or stolen, My Phone can help protect your information by remotely locking your phone or erasing its contents. This feature is not available in all markets and a fee may apply.

Share photos to leading social networking sites
Now you can quickly and easily post photos to Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and Windows Live from your My Phone web account or phone.

Save space on your phone
When you delete content from your phone, you can still access this content from your web account (until deleted from your archive folder).

Source: the My Phone website

Better still is the fact that My Phone is not restricted to just version 6.5 devices but 6.0 and 6.1 as well. That means that my X1 (running 6.1), for example, can run My Phone. Well, I decided to give it a spin. I downloaded and installed the My Phone application via the official website.

The use of My Phone requires a Windows Live ID, and your My Phone account can be used with more than one phone, so you can sync your data across as many WinMo devices as you have.

The Lock your Lost Phone / Find My Phone security feature is a premium service (meaning that you have to pay to use it). I checked it out, but Nigeria is not currently on the list of countries that the service is provided for. Surprised?

Sharing photos to social networking sites is free and works fin. I added my Facebook account. There are also options for Windows Live, My Space and Flickr.

After logging in to My Phone on the X1, I took out time to configure it. I chose what type of files I want to synchronise and scheduled the application to run a daily sync schedule. Thereafter, I ran my first sync, and in a matter of minutes, I had my contacts, calendar, SMS, and notes all backed up. Nifty.

I also logged in to the My Phone website to check things out. My files all showed up, my phone was accurately presented, and there was my usage statistics in graphical format.

As far as I can see, Microsoft has a winner with My Phone. It works well, and I havent noticed any hitches so far. And for someone like myself who replaces smartphones quite often, this can turn out to be a Godsend – if I purchase only Windows Mobile devices, that is.

msmobiles.com is a website dedicated to featuring Windows Mobile devices, applications and services. In an item in which a “fatal flaw” of the new Windows Mobile MarketPlace is examined, msmobiles.com says that Microsoft has committed an unpardonable sin.

Here are Microsoft’s transgressions:

Microsoft’s app store for Windows Mobile is detecting, by the way of SIM card, in which country given phone is located and is showing only apps destined for given country, not all apps

Developers are brutally (they have no choice) forced:
1. to pay 10 US dollars for each additional country where they would like to sell their apps; this per-country-fee must be paid each year on top of 99 US dollars, that also must be paid each year or apps will be removed from the store
2. to provide localized version of an app and localized (i.e. translated) descriptions

As such, users in Germany,for example, have much fewer apps available in the MarketPlace than users in the USA. One wonders how many applications will be available for Nigerian users – or if at all Nigeria will be supported in the app

Anyway, msmobiles.com concludes as follows:

Conclusion: in this situation, due to the fact that Microsoft has screwed up so badly their Windows Mobile app store (called officially “Windows Marketplace for Mobile”) we have no choice but to advice users clearly: DO NOT BUY WINDOWS MOBILE PHONE. Instead we recommend iPhone or phones powered by Google Android.

Read the full details at msmobiles.com

Tomorrow is the day when Windows Mobile 6.5 is expected to hit the ground running officially. It is expected that upgradeable devices will receive free upgrades from the older version 6.1 of the OS.

At this time, I am not sure whether or not the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 will receive an official upgrade. However, I have had the proviledge of running WinMo 6.5 on my X1 via custom ROMs made available by various developers. Besides finger-friendly icons, it does not offer much more than what currently obtains on WinMo 6.1.

Other new features that 6.5 offers include My Phone (data synchronisation) and the Windows Marketplace (an application that lets you purchase compatible apps for your device).

Do you own a Windows Mobile smartphone? Is it eligible for an upgrade? Do you have any expectations for Windows Mobile 6.5?

Ever since I was introduced to flashing custom ROMs on Windows Mobile by Brym ( see his articles, My Experience with Flashing ROMs, and Windows Mobile 6.5 ROMs Everywhere), I have flashed at least 13 different ROms on my X1.

At first, I was fascinated with the prospects of having my version 6.1 device updated to version 6.5, so I played with version 6.5 ROMs from the beginning. However, it did not take me long to find out that as good as some of them are, they were not so stable.

My X1 is primarilly a worktool, and fairly frequent crashes and freezes were out of the question for me. I also noticed that video recordings on almost all 6.5 ROMs I tried out was not as good as on the stock ROM.

The result was that I began to hunt for the most stable custom ROMs, and found that version 6.1 ROMs were what I should be exploring. Having tried a couple of them on the recommendation of the active community at the XDA Developers forum, I have found that the most stable, and the one I have come to keep is the version 6.1 ROM by Smaberg, Touch X 10.1 ULTIMATE X-TREME “FINAL”.

Video recording works well. It has TouchFlo 3D built-in, touch friendly menus, good user interface performance, and fine reception. While it does not have some of the extra bells and whistles of the version 6.5 ROMs, it works very well and keeps me happy.

If you own an X1, you cannot go wrong with Touch X 10.1. Screenshots below.

A Smartphone Satisfaction Survey conducted by the CFI Group reveals that many Windows Mobile and Symbian phone users have no idea of what Operating System runs on their phones, compared to Android, Pre and iPhone users.

Here are a few nuggets from the survey:

While Android users know they have phone on the Android platform, most Windows Mobile or Symbian users have no idea what operating system is running their phone. This lack of branding and awareness can only hurt the generic smartphone. [Page 18]

With Windows Mobile and Symbian classified as “generic” or “anonymous” smartphones because of the lack of brand awareness, CFI further states the following about such devices:

1. There’s clearly no love for the ‘anonymous’ smartphone
2. CSI is 66, and Likelihood to Recommend is 63, by far the lowest across phone types
3. On feature after feature, the scores are the lowest – the generic ‘Other’ smartphone does nothing particularly well
4. While, like with BlackBerry, owners of newer ‘Other’ smartphones have a higher CSI (69 for those who got their phone in the past 6 months), the low customer satisfaction engendered by these phones is not good news for the Symbian or Windows Mobile platform, or the providers who emphasize these phones

[Page 18]

The statement that generic smartphones like Windows Mobile and Symbian do nothing particularly well is a low blow. And it is not necesarilly true. For example, Symbian smartphones still have the best cameras in the smartphone world. Windows Mobile has the best phone-PC synchronisation too.

Other Revelations from the Survey

Surfing the web is a much more positive experience among users of the
newer smartphones (iPhone, Android, and Pre all score in the 80’s; the other phones score 71 or below). [Page 17]

The survey may not be exactly totally accurate, as it involved just about a thousand respondents. Still, it is interesting read.

Download a PDF copy of the survey here.