[windows]

....................Continued The Today Screen For a great number of users the Today screen on a Pocket PC is the information hub where commonly required data is available at immediate turn on of the machine. The LOOX T830 today screen comes with the WM5.0 standard applets of: Date Owner Info Messaging Tasks Calendar However as it is an AKU2.0 device it gains the addition of Pocket MSN. FSC have added two additional applets, 'Wireless' which details the current state of connectivity of the device, and USAT. At this time I've been unable to get the USAT applet to show on the today screen or to ascertain what function it serves. The Today theme supplied by FSC is that of a radar dish, which serves to further strengthen the impression that the T830 is designed for communication. The theme can of course be replaced with any other theme you choose and other third party applets can be installed. My 'settings' for the today screen can be seem here as well as the two different notification icons for 3G and 2G connectivity. One item of good news for LOOX N560 owners, when the FSC Keylock is engaged it does not take over or interfere with any of the WM5.0 softkeys, it just sits nicely in the bottom tray and does not impair functionality at all. The Applications The LOOX T830 comes with a goodly application set, which comprises the standard Pocket PC applications, Pocket Office, the ClearVue PDF viewer, with the addition of the following FSC designed or specified applications: FSC Menu The FSC Menu folder contains shortcuts to common system applets: Connections Display Lighting Power Running Programs Screen E2C Connect FSC backup FSC Mobile Zip FSC panning FSC SpeedMenu FSC Voice Recorder GPS Locator JBBlend NewMail Wizard Phone Lock SIM Contacts SIM Toolkit SMS Manager Voice Commander We will take a look at some of these applications below. Note: Resco 'Photo Viewer' is shown installed above, that was loaded for the purpose of capturing review screen shots, and is not part of the application set on the LOOX machines. The FSC Backup program is thoughtfully supplied by FSC to allow you to backup the internal memory of the LOOX T830. The storage medium is selectable, as a default this is the internal SD card, but if USB Hosting is used it appears that may be chosen as a alternative backup medium. A password may be selected to protect your backed up data. Backing up 19Mb of internal data on my fully loaded LOOX took 3 minutes 40 seconds and afterwards the LOOX reset which is a good indication that any running services were successfully closed to ensure a successful backup took place. As a comparison Sprite backup took 1 minute 3 seconds to complete the backup but failed to backup: \Windows\Profiles\guest\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.datc As well as the standard WM5.0 connectivity via WiFi or GPRS the LOOX T830 is supplied with Connectmobility-E2C which serves to allow you to connect to the Internet, a company Intranet, a Private Wireless Network, or Wireless Hotspot in a cafe or Airport. E2C is fully featured but it is supplied as a 30 day trial version only, after that time a full license must be purchased. MobileZip serves as a tool to unpack ZIP archives, and under tests managed to extract all four of the ZIP files I used to test it with. FSC Panning I was totally unable to get to function on my machine however this maybe due to an application conflict with iLaunchers 'close' button. FSC Speedmenu is a user customisable menu system which can be navigated either by using the touch screen, or better by using the Jog dial. You can edit almost all aspects of it, adding or deleting shortcuts, creating new submenus, etc. It gives great added functionality and can be used totally one handed one configured via the Jog Dial. For an entire day I set myself the task of managing all application launching and functions using SpeedMenu. It look a little longer than using iLauncher however it worked well and smoothly and I will certainly be reserving more time to customise it to my exact requirements. The FSC VoiceRecorder works very well indeed, sounds are recorded as WAV files and additional recordings may be added to the end of an initial recording. The Jog dial can be used to speed play back and forwards through the sample which is very useful for reviewing what has been recorded. You even have the facility to over-dub the recording so that notes you've made can be corrected if required. Tapping and holding on a recording allows one to move, copy, rename, delete, send it vial Email, add it to a ZIP archive or set it as a Ringtone. Within the options you can specify the sound quality, whether time information is added, the default record name and the storage location for the recordings; internal or external memory. Powerful stuff and a superb replacement to the basic Voice Notes capability of the Pocket PC. The NewMail Wizard allows one to select which account is used for auto-creating a new Email when the Email Key is pressed and held. The option is included as well to auto-select the account to use and if this is selected after the Email key has triggered the system the designated Inbox is opened, and a new Email opened ready for you to select the recipient. This may be a simple enough tool but if one sends a lot of Email it makes that process so much easier. JBlend allows you to run Java applets on your Pocket LOOX, if the download option is selected Pocket IE is loaded and it navigates to: http://cuso.iasolution.net/o/ where a number of Java Benchmark applets may be found and downloaded. Once downloads are complete you are returned to JBlend, warned if the MIDLet does not come from a trusted source, given the option to install it and run the MIDLet. I chose to download and install Benchmark2 which Benchmarks the Java system on the device and got back the following data: JBenchmark2: 979 Image Manipulations: 648 Text: 2045 Sprites: 1439 3D Transform: 1016 User Interface 463 Which may not mean a lot but proves the system works perfectly! PhoneLoock allows you to lock your device to your own specific SIM card which ensures that if you lose your machine and someone else tries to use it with another SIM card inserted they will be locked out from phone functionality. Further security is available via the optional FSC SecureLock which serves to protect your Pocket PC and your data from unauthorised access by third parties, you can protect it with a password. Using this even if your Pocket PC is reset to the factory settings, you will be prompted to enter the password. The "SIM Toolkit" application allows you to display information services made available by your telephone network provider with your SIM card. Unfortunately no such services are available from O2 so no testing was possible. The 'SMS Manager' allows you to manage any SMS messages that may have been stored on your SIM card (if you are moving from a regular phone). It allows you to display all of the messages saved on your SIM card, transfer them to your Pocket PC or delete them from the SIM card. VoiceCommander 1.6 has been included within the ROM of the T series LOOX and can be used to control the machine via voice commands. Features include Call 'Contact' at Home, Work or Mobile. Find 'Contact' Play Music / Pause / Resume / Next / Previous / Play file 'X' Start 'Application' Todays / Tomorrows / This Weeks appointments Read SMS Start New Task, etc. What can I say? (reads out to you what comamnds are viable) Goodbye (exits Voice Commander) Functionality has been greatly increased since version 1.5 and one can now toggle whether a contact will be processed by the voice recogniser as well as recording your own voice tags against a contact or application. Voice training is now supported (which takes about three minutes) and for me VC is now a very useful tool! So far it has not failed to execute any command issued and recognition is at about 90%. FSC have designed and incorporated a custom Wireless Manager into the T Series machines. This is accessed via the connection icon in the top tray. It is worth noting at this point that the T830 supports connection to GPRS at the same time as to WiFi, there is no loss of connection that means data can flow freely via both data paths simultaneously. The Wireless manager makes it simple to toggle each service on or off via the three smaller buttons, or control everything via the larger top right button. It supports the Jog dial and moving the dial up and down rotates the arrow via each button which can be then activated via pressing the Jog dial. One handed service management which works! FSC have chosen to load the Broadcom Bluetooth stack into the machine instead of using the basic Microsoft stack, this gives superb added functionality and all aspects of working with Bluetooth are therefore available. All services from basic Handsfree through Dial Up Networking are supported. The Phone Pad used on the T830 is a smaller form factor version of the standard WM5 dialer, there is no added functionality excepting that which supports video calling over 3G. Unfortunately as I have no decent reliable 3G connection at home or at work so far I've been unable to test that functionality. The FSC Profile Manager within the T series LOOX machines is almost hidden within the machine and can be accessed via pressing and holding the 'End Call' key. Once it has been activated one can select various modes via the Jog dial (or cursor keys), these are: Operating Modes: Standby - Turns the machine off as if one had pressed the off button Complete off - Turns the machine completely off, as if it had been soft reset but without the powering back up Flight Mode - Turns off all connectivity modes, phone, WiFi, Bluetooth Direct Push - Turns on or off Direct Push Email The Standby mode can be edited to set whether data connectivity it turned off or not when it is activated. Flight Mode can be edited as to whether automatic muting is engaged or not. Phone Profiles: Outdoor Normal Mode BT Carkit Each of these can be edited to set; Ring Tone, System and Ringer Volume, Ring Type, Visual Feedback and Vibration mode. In 'Bt carkit' mode the Bluetooth functionality of the LOOX is automatically turned on. CPU Profiles Max Performance Max Battery Automatic Mode Each of these profiles can vary the operation of the CPU whether it is in Turbo, Standard, Power Saving or Automatic modes. Display brightness can also be varied along with on / off toggles for the keyboard backlight, standard notification LEDs and the Green Push Email notification LED. These profiles taken together give you an incredible amount of customisation of the way your T830 works, both with respect to connectivity, battery life and speed of operation! Even the humble Inbox on the T830 has been enhanced with the added options of: Save to SIM (SMS only, useful for that critical message) To the Next Day To the Previous Day To the Oldest Thread This does greatly speed up navigation for those of us who have to suffer very full mailboxes. Settings The settings applets on the T series machine are very much vanilla WM5.0 with quite a few nice FSC additions which are detailed below: Full control is offered over the microphone within the machine, allowing it to be varied depending on the task in hand. For voice notes 'Short Range' recording should be used, 'Normal' for every day recording and 'Conference' when sensitivity to distant sounds is important. The output sound can also be varied allowing the volume of the headset to be varied as well as Bass, Treble and 3D spatial awareness. Backlight control is available for both the 2.4" screen as well as the keyboard. For the keyboard you can vary how long the lighting remains on after a key press, from two seconds up to a minute. Even this functionality can be turned off completely if you so wish. FSC have modified the standard phone application and removed the Band Selector, so you no longer have the choice to select between GSM and UTMS (3G) connectivity. To replace that they have created the Network Mode applet which allows one to choose between: Auto Network Mode - where the LOOX will auto switch between 2G and 3G systems depending on availability 3G Network Mode - where only a 3G signal will be used 2G Network Mode - where only a 2G signal will be used In theory this does give extra functionality as with the standard selector one can not choose to use 3G exclusively. There is only one drawback, after each soft reset the connection defaults back to 'Auto' mode. This can be intensely irksome if one lives in a 2G area with limited 3G connectivity as the LOOX then continuously hops in and out of 3G mode. Needless to say connection hoping does increase battery consumption so if you are on the edge of a 3G area you must remember after each reset to reconfigure your connection mode! The final specialist applet is that which allows you to switch USB modes, from the default Client mode (connecting to your PC) to Host mode whereby you wish to use the 830 to control an external USB device. Unfortunately as the Host cable is not supplied with the LOOX I was unable to test that functionality. GPS One of the main features within the Pocket LOOX T830 is that of GPS (Global Satellite Positioning) whereby the machine can lock to the GPS system which surrounds the earth and can by means of electronic triangulation determine where it is on the Earth. This system can therefore be used for navigation, either back to a given Point of Interest (POI) or if more advanced software is used to follow a route to a destination. One of the criteria used in the deployment of any GPS system on a device is how long it can take to get an initial satellite lock position (as the device is completely unaware of where it is) and then once it has determined an initial lock how quickly it can gain a second lock, as this should be based on a difference factor from the prior position and therefore involves less searching. The LOOX T830 uses SiRFstarIII technology to ensure that GPS Satellite locks are quick both initially and later on subsequent connections. This is achieved with a single-chip SiRF GPS receiver. SiRFstarIII’s extremely high sensitivity, combined with SiRF’s sophisticated navigation algorithms provides the LOOX with advanced GPS signal acquisition, making real-time navigation practical even through urban canyons and under dense foliage. Various GPS lock tests were made between several system I own to prove the effectivity of the GPS unit within the T830. For some reason initial locking times were always consistently high, whereas the subsequent secondary fixes were very fast indeed. The T830 is not supplied with any advanced navigation software as standard, but does include the GPSLocator application which allows one to check that satellites are being detected, and to set a POI that it will then help you to navigate back to. To test out the navigation capabilities of the machine I decided to purchase a new copy of TomTom Nav 6 from Clove Technologies and put it through its paces. Satellite locking was again fast (typically 4-5 seconds) and planning a route from my Parents house in Macclesfield to Llwyngwril in Wales took 38 seconds during which 84300 roads were analysed. In comparison the more powerful LOOX N560 calculates the same route in 18 seconds. Only two trips have been made navigating with the T830 but all POIs set within TomTom popped up as anticipated and no loss of signal occurred at any time, navigation was carried out perfectly with no issues at all. Camera The 2 Megapixel auto-focus camera found within the T830 is supported software-wise by the Pictures and Videos application supplied by Microsoft, there is no custom camera interface as supplied on HTC devices. Taking that into account there is plenty of scope for variation with the following being offered: Modes Normal: For taking individual shots. Burst: For taking a sequence of 5 shots. Timer: Self timer option (5-second delay) Image Brightness: Adjustment of the brightness settings (-3 to +3) Resolution: Adjustment of the image resolution (320x240,640x480,800x600,1600x1200) Zoom: Adjustment of the zoom settings (x1,x2) White Balance: Auto, Outdoor, Lamp, Indoor, Cloudy, Sunset, Night Flicker: 50Hz, 60Hz Options - Camera Save Files to Flash or SD-MMCard Image prefix - default is 'img' Still image compression level: High quality (default), Normal quality, Low quality Options - Video Toggle on / off including audio when recording video files Time limit for video: No limit, 15 seconds, 30 seconds (default) Other options are included within the application which do not relate directly to the camera such as auto-resizing of images when sending via Email, Slide show orientation, screen saver, etc. 320 x 240 640 x 480 800 x 600 1600 x 1200 Shown here are typical images taken with the camera on a misty November day, with slightly dull overcast conditions. All settings were left at the defaults with only the resolution changed. lo-res medium-res high-res Here image quality was varied from Low through to High to show the different effects on the images. Third Party Applications Various 'Third Party' applications have been purchased, or downloaded, and loaded onto the T830: WebIS Pocket Informant SBSH Pocket Breeze (i) SBSH iLauncher (i) Spb Weather Resco File Manager Resco Picture Viewer TomTom Nav6 Sprite Backup uBook Tweaks2k2 So far all of them are working perfectly and without any issues. An (i) indicates the program was loaded into main memory, otherwise it was installed onto the SD card. In Use and Conclusions Memory Prior to reviewing the FSC Pocket LOOX T830 it was fully commissioned, which means charged fully overnight and and hard reset to give a datum point from which to work. Other memory checks taken are free memory after a soft reset with the above applications loaded, and then again at the end of the working day. The figures shown reflect an average taken over five working days and one weekend. Battery Life Various measurements on battery life were taken again these were commonly performed tasks that were / are carried out each day. These can therefore be used to show either battery life remaining or typical battery life consumed, during the test period. Benchmarks No benchmarks have been shown for the Pocket LOOX T830 as the only benchmarking program available for Pocket PC devices is Spb Benchmark and that is not yet 100% WM5.0 complaint, that is results which are given in some areas do not take into account some aspects of the operating system and are therefore considered unreliable and can not be used to compare WM5.0 devices against older WM2003/SE machines. Conclusions I've now been using the LOOX T830 for a week and have moved past the initial stages of considering it large and brick-like. It has now become one of my favorite machines for day to day use. Prior to this I was in love with VGA screen based devices with fast processors a la the LOOX N560, or if I wanted connectivity the Xda Exec. Even though the T830 sports a small 240x240 2.4" screen it is enough to display the required data to get the job done. Battery life is good overall as long as I remember after a soft reset to set my connection band accordingly to avoid battery drain while the machine hunts for a viable 3G signal. One can get through a fully working day which would involve two or three phone calls, numerous task and calendar based activities within Pocket Informant, thirty minutes eBook reading, and an hours Bluetooth headset use and still have around 65-68% of the battery life left. No great memory losses were experienced bar those which occur in all WM5.0 devices during the course of the working day. The speed of the LOOX varied as to what mode it was operated in, in 'Automatic mode' speed was on par with that of the Xda Exec, in 'Max Performance' mode it was closer to the much faster LOOX N560, in 'Maximum Battery' it slowed to speeds matching the Xda MiniS. To clarify Maximum Battery is the slowest but does conserve battery life, Maximum Performance really speeds up the machine but at the cost of reduced usage life. Navigation via TomTom Nav6 and the LOOX SiRF GPS system is faultless, with the displayed data being crisp, audible warning being clear and more importantly all route travelled correctly. Phone call audio quality is typical for a converged device, that is it is not as good as a pure mobile phone. No audio is lost but on three occasions audio became slightly wooly and ghost like. These issues were transient and the T830 soon recovered with voice quality returning to the expected levels. Push Email has performed perfectly and on most occasions the incoming message has been received on the T830 ahead of it appearing in Office 2007 on the PC. Connectivity is the watch-word of the T-Series LOOX, every communication system you could every need is here, from Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11 b/g certified WiFi to 3G speeds. This is bound together via a custom Wireless Management system, advanced connectivity via E2C, and a very capable QWERTY interface for you to interact with - what more could you want! Vista One very pleasant surprise with the T830 was that FSC have made the ROM Vista aware, that is that they have used the new ROM loading system which incorporates a specific image of the machine into the ROM. When docked with a PC running Vista this image is transferred and shows both within the File Manager on the desktop and within the Windows Mobile Sync Center. This all goes towards improving the Vista / Pocket PC experience visually and also gives a guideline that the T series machines may be able to upgrade their ROM images on the Vista platform. If this does indeed prove to the the case it will be the first machine on the market to be able to do this. Kudos to Fujitsu-Siemens Computers! 4WinMobile rating:- 90% Pros and Cons Pros High spec: phone, video phone, push Email, GPS, 3G, camera Auto-focus camera Loud speakerphone Spare stylus supplied Very high build quality UK and USA mains power adaptors Good quality QWERTY keyboard Intelligent backlighting Jog dial for navigation Good heavy cradle with guided docking High level of build and construction Internal reset button Separate push Email notification Custom Wireless Manager Broadcom Bluetooth stack Capslock and FN indicators NewMail Wizard Powerful profile management 3.5mm headphone jack Wifi (b and g) Large 1530mAh battery Cons Large form factor 240 x 240 screen Black 'window' around the screen area Very poorly designed headset Cheap and poorly designed case USB Host connector extra cost Average stylus design Non-standard 'off' key can interfere with connectivity Band selector does not 'stick' after a reset