TheWindowsPhone

A handy new app has popped up on XDA forums for those of you who are experimenting with Google Voice: introducing Google Voice Mail for Windows Mobile. Google Visual Voicemail allows you to view and play your messages, mark them as read or unread and delete them. GVV is what the developer – Sl4sher – calls a semi-offline app, and at the moment you need to sync manually for now (in the pipe!).

This version of GVV (0.4) includes Google Voice dialing, so you can actually make or return calls via Google Voice. It also looks up numbers in your real contact list as you’re dialing, making the app much more usable.

If you’re Google Voice user, go download the Google Visual Voicemail for Windows Mobile at the XDA website.

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Another 2010 Q1 market share report has been released, this time focusing exclusively on smartphones. While the report we wrote about yesterday was interesting for showing that smartphones barely crack the top 5 in terms of usage, this new report from the NDP group shows a slight shuffle in the top smartphone sellers.

Android seems to be taking over – although their growth is slowing a bit – thanks to heavy marketing on Droid and some hot HTC Android devices. Android officially passed the iPhone and is on its way to catching RIM’s still-sliding BlackBerry. Meanwhile, Windows Mobile continued it’s slow death and is now approaching Symbian territory.

Palm’s line just looks funny.

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Microsoft’s Bing for Windows Mobile has been bumped up to version 5.1 and has some terrific new features! Key among the new goodies is real, full, voice prompted navigation, which might bump it above Google Maps in terms of functionality. They’ve also (re)added the ability to bring in address from your contact book (as if that wasn’t already there…?).

You can download the new version of Bing for Windows Mobile at m.bing.com/download. Report back if you like the new full navigation feature, I’ll be trying it out myself!

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Two new themes for Spb Mobile Shell 3.5.3 have popped up: Sketch (above) and GTX Sense (below). Intended to resemble an artist’s sketchpad the Sketch Theme (from XDA users DOC3000 & Warhammer83) includes several cool widgets, including an analog clock, black temperature, weather, sound profiles, notifications, lock, SPB Menu shortcut (elephant or tree drawing), and link backgrounds (note or sketch).

You can download the Sketch theme for Spb Mobile Shell from the XDA forums here.

GTX Sense is a port of the GTX theme from the HTC Sense UI, now made for Spb Mobile Shell. This theme, also from DOC3000, is not released yet, but you can keep track if the development  of the GTX Sense Theme for Spb Mobile Shell here. Looks very cool

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The Pew International Research group has put out the results of a survey on teen cell phone usage. The survey found that while 72% of teens are texting, only 23% of teens used their phones to access social networks. In fact, 64% of teens don’t even have data plans!

I like that 33% of teens send more than 100 texts/day – that’s ridiculous! The full results are after the jump, some neat stats:

Read the rest of this entry →

This nifty little shell switcher has just been released in beta over at XDA forums. According to the developer, the ShellSwitcher utility lets you switch between well known shells like SPB Mobile Shell, Titanium, Touch Flo 3D, HTC Sense and the classic today screen. ShellSwitcher will automatically detect the shell UIs you have installed and allow you to choose between them from a menu.

The app is in beta, so be warned! You can download the free ShellSwitcher for Windows Mobile from the XDA website.

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Some early reviews are in on Microsoft’s new feature phones, the Kin One and Kin Two, and they’re not good! PhoneScoop and Engadget have put up scathing reviews of the Kin Phones, saying the “execution falls far, far short of what others have been able to accomplish” and that “Kin is one side of the family that needs to be disowned… quickly.

Both reviews talk about mediocre hardware – which was pretty expected – and less-than-satisfactory UI experiences. The PhoneScoop review was less harsh than the Engadget review:

“While using the One and Two we found ourselves consistently confused or surprised by how many bad little interface problems there are. Not only does the phone make it hard to do simple tasks — and not only are the social networking features poorly implemented — but the handsets are often sluggish, hiccupy, and downright crash-prone. We were told by the devices on more than one occasion that we needed to restart (while performing basic tasks), and often it would just throw us a blank screen while we waited for the device to come back from whatever tragic internal situation was occurring. It would be wonderful to say more good about the phone’s UI — but we just can’t.”

One positive thing that seems to come out of these Kin reviews is the Kin Studio, which syncs your phone activities (texts, calls, emails, pictures, videos, RSS, contacts, etc) with your online account. I previously speculated that this could be the future of MyPhone, but we’ll have to wait and see I guess.

One thing that comes across in both reviews and another piece over at WindowsPhoneThoughts is that Microsoft and Verizon have missed the mark on pricing. The Kin One and Kin Two are designed to be the new low-end feature phones and should have been free and $50, respectively. Not only are the devices $49 and $99 (after rebates), but Verizon is insisting on a minimum voice plan of $39.99 per month and both phones require a smartphone data plan at $29.99 per month – that’s $70 per month for a dumb phone!

Sorry, Microsoft, this isn’t looking good!

A recent report published by comScore shows the top five mobile manufacturers for mobile subscribers and not only is there no sign of Windows Mobile devices or Windows Phones, but Apple, HTC and other Android device makers are nowhere to be found. Moreover, feature phones have 4 of the top 5 spots, with BlackBerry being the only smartphone maker to crack that list.

Samsung, Motorola, LG, RIM and Nokia round out the top 5 OEMs for the first quarter of 2010.

The report found that SMS still reigns supreme in mobile content, with 63.7 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers using text messaging on their mobile device, up a hair from last quarter. Mobile web browsing was used by 30.1% of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.6 percent), while subscribers who used downloaded applications made up 28.6% of the mobile audience (also up 2.6 percentage points).

Access of social networking sites or blogs continued to increase, posting gains of 2.8 percentage points to 18.7 percent of mobile subscribers, showing the most improvement over any other type of mobile content.

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ZDNet has posted a video of Matthew Miller’s teenage kids unboxing Microsoft’s new Kin One and Kin Two social media phones. Microsoft has gotten a lot of flack for announcing these “dumb smartphones”. These two teens report back on the ZDNet blog that their initial impressions of both Kin phones are pretty positive, and it sounds like they’re liking them more a they get used to them.

I know that my teenage daughter was pretty keen to find out if the Kin One would be available on Rogers when I showed her some of the initial videos and details.

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I just came across a little post on coolsmartphone.com about FPSEce: a PlayStation emulator for Windows mobile devices. FPSEce lets you run PlayStation games in the form of ISO files right off your memory card.

You can grab a free copy of FPSEce over at their website, where you’ll find some instructions too. They also have some info on PocketISO, an app you can use to compress your own game images. Here’s a video FPSEce PlaySstation emulator for Windows Mobile in action:

Grab a copy of FPSEce Playstation emulator for Windows Mobile here.

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