Tuxtops

Nothing official yet, but some blurry pics and possible specs have popped up for the Philips 960, a new smartphone which is supposedly going to run on Linux (with the Qtopia interface?) and have a slider-out numeric keypad, a 320x240 262,000 color LCD screen, a 2MP digital camera, an SD/MMC memory card slot, Bluetooth 1.2, and software for playback of MP3, AAC, and AAC+ audio files and MPEG4 and 3GPP video files.

This extensive whitepaper, authored by Microsoft, introduces the many new features of Windows Mobile 5.0 from a developer's perspective, and provides an overview of the tools used by developers to create applications based on the new mobile device software platform. Read it here. Also, read this, explaining memory on PPCs.

Palm OS Developer David Beers was at the PalmSource DevCon last week and caught some time with a working Palm OS Cobalt smartphone. David wrote up his impressions of the device and took some comparison pictures of the Oswin Cobalt prototype.

At the PalmSource developer conference this week, many people were hoping for additional details on this upcoming operating system. Although the company did make a demonstration on Wednesday of a few of the functions of Palm OS for Linux, clearly a lot more work needs to be done.

The deliberately simple nature of the Palm operating system was so inspiring to Rick Broida that in 1997 he started a magazine, Tap, dedicated to devices using the handheld OS.

Today Nokia announced the introduction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet device along with the Open Source based Maemo Development Platform.

The typical use case for the Nokia 770 is to be the internet usability extension to your mobile phone or other wireless internet access equipment.

It is extremely portable by its small formfactor, usable for almost all internet applications thorugh its exceptional resolution of 800x480 pixel and its multimedia capabilities by making use of a TI-OMAP CPU and a accompanying digital signal processor (DSP) core.

The consequent use of open source software and technology basing on the Linux kernel 2.6, X11-server technology and the GTK+ toolkit the resulting new Hildon graphical user interface creates a fully new user interface experience for portable Linux devices.

The internet browser used is based on Apple's WebCore Kit (ported to GTK).

Earlier this year Archos released the Embedded Linux/Qtopia based href="http://www.archos.com/products/overview/pma_400.html">PMA400portable
media device. This amazing unit is designed primarily for video on the go,
but is also a very full featured PDA with many extras, so it only made
sense for theKompany to start porting their popular software for the Sharp
Zaurus to this new device. Of the several dozen applications to choose
from, the first 3 to be ported are:

tkcMail - The
most complete email solution for Embedded Linux available today with
support for SMTP, POP3 (with SSL) and IMAP4 (with SSL). $19.95

tkcBlocks - A
fun Tetris type game. $4.95

tkcExplorer -
An advanced file management tool that also knows how to deal with the
variety of file formats used on the Archos. Find, Copy, move, delete,
rename, open files and launch applications with this super powerful
tool. $14.95

"It takes six seconds to spin up the drive and feed its data into the palmtop's memory so you can use it. As a result, your work is frequently interrupted by maddening, six-second visits to the dead zone. Everything is frozen on the screen, no button works and your workflow comes to a crashing halt." Read the full review of the Lifedrive. Also, PalmSource's David Nagel expects Linux to have a big impact on mobiles.

After the problems of a SanDisk wireless compact flash card when used in conjuction to a Dell Axim X5, we tried the LinkSys WCF12 which currently sells for a mere $33 at eCost. Here are our thoughts on its installation and performance.

The box included a quick hands-on installation illustrated paper, a driver's CD and the actual card in a plastic case. There was no PCMCIA adapter included as this card does not have Windows drivers (however Zaurus/desktop-Linux does have drivers for it, via the HostAP drivers).

The installation illustrated paper is only valid for PPC2002, if your PDA has PPC2003/SE, then the way configuration works is vastly different, as the Windows subsystem is in charge of the configuration GUI instead of the driver's supplied GUI application. Microsoft added WiFi support to the OS with PPC2003 so manufacturers don't have also write a GUI along the driver.

The CD came with drivers version 1.2, while on the web LinkSys still offers for download version 1.1 (which is quite weird to start with). It installed fine, but to be sure, I navigated to the CD's /utilities/windowsce_4/ subfolder and ran that setup.exe from there. The PDA must be connected to the ActiveSync at the moment of the driver installation, as it does not give any feedback if/when/where the driver was installed. Then, unseat and re-seat your compact flash WiFi card and it now the driver should be loaded (it does not require soft-reset).

In our Axim X5 with PPC2003, navigating to /Settings/Connections/Wireless panel applet it will show a screen where the WFC12 card is mentioned. Tap to select it, and from its above drop-down-box (combo box) select "The Internet". After pressing "ok" to that screen a list of networks appears where you can select your own network. Supply its WEP key (if applicable) and off you go to the Internet (screenshot)! Please note that most strong-encrypted WPA and WPA-psk networks are not supported with PPC2003. The feature was added on PPC2003SE a year later.

The card is performing really well, and "wakes up" correctly after you turn on your PDA and goes to sleep either manually or when you turn off your PDA. It eats lots of battery, but that's to be expected from a previous generation WiFi card:

- With the WiFi ON, the cpu speed on 'automatic' and screen on maximum brightness X5's battery life goes down to 1.2 hours (normal X5 battery life is about 5 hours)

- With the WiFi ON streaming music off the web, the cpu speed on 'automatic' and the screen off, it can do a bit more than 2 hours.

Overall, this is a thumbs-up little device. No matter if you have a Zaurus or a PocketPC 2002/2003/SE, this is a good purchase.

palmOne, Inc. today introduced the LifeDrive mobile manager. Designed for people with a significant volume of digital information, the LifeDrive mobile manager offers 4GB of hard-drive storage, a large 320x480 high-resolution color screen, and wireless access through built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technologies. Reviews here, here, here and here.