Tone's Notes

Issues with the phone:

1.      The backlight doesn’t shut off when Windows Media is playing music.

2.      There’s no way to undo changes before they get synced back to the Exchange server. It would be nice if there was a quick way to say: I want to review each sync action the next time you sync.

3.      Using voice recognition is obscure. The best documentation I’ve found is the voice response help messages.

4.      Loading web pages can hang the system and make music playing stop and skip. The browser doesn’t know its own limits.

5.      Haven’t found a way of telling Windows Media to always put files in a storage card folder.

6.      Synchronizing music and pictures seems to be lacking enough control to cover compression format, source location and destination location. I’ve tried both Windows Media 10 and MusicMatch 10. Resorted to manually dragging stuff over via the file system.

7.      Clicking battery icon doesn’t bring up power screen.

8.      Clicking time in title bar doesn’t bring up clock/alarm screen. It brings up date and next appointment and a small battery icon.

9.      When entering text on keypad, auto-completion suggestion appear but I haven’t found a quick way to accept a suggestion without shifting my hands up to click on the touch screen, which takes at least as long as it would to complete the word on the keypad.

10.  The documentation does a bad job of identifying the option key early in the orientation process.

11.  Makes funny noise when placing a call.

12.  Battery runs down very quickly sometimes. Keeping an eye on what’s running when the phone is “idle” and on the ActiveSync scheduling frequency.

13.  Audio doesn’t switch reliably to a BlueTooth HS850 or H700 headset when the headset is turned on during a call.

14.  The function of the lower button on the left side is un-clear. It can be assigned a number of pre-defined functions but seems poorly integrated.

15.  There’s no easy way to make a voice recording of more than a few minutes. A note can include an audio recording, but only of short duration.

16.  It takes a really long time for the camera application to become active and for a new picture to be saved so that another picture can be taken. This is most likely a hard limitation of the speed of data compression and storage.

17.  The mute switch lacks any positive sensory feedback to let you know which state your in. Hard to operate in a dark environment.

18.  There’s no “select all” in the e-mail message editor. Replying to an e-mail includes the original message with no easy way to delete or avoid it. Shift-clicking and shift-scrolling don’t extend the current selection.

19.  ActiveSync. Lot’s of issues on the user forums. Caused me to hard reset twice. Gets wedged with no indication what the problem is and no way to recover.

20.  There’s no voice record button.

21.  There’s no way to voice dial a number from a headset.

Just finished my first mobile .NET application.

Things that were easy:

·        Creating a skin for the Treo 700w. I happened to download SOTI Pocket-Controller Professional which had a skin for remote access. I grabbed its bmp file and found the folder that defined the existing skins (C:\Program Files\Windows CE Tools\wce500\Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC SDK\Deviceemulation\). A quick edit of an existing skin XML file and some Photoshopping of the borrowed skin image followed by using the ToolsàDevice ToolsàForm Factors and Devices UIs in Visual Studio 2005 to copy an existing emulator configuration (Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Square Emulator) and assign it a new Form Factor.

·        Put an application CAB file on a web server. Using IE on the phone to browse the CAB file triggers a download dialog. Check the open after download box and the installer starts automatically.

·        Getting .NET 2.0 framework installed on the phone.

o       Deploying an application directly to the device triggers installation of the .NET 2.0 runtime.

Things that were hard:

·        Getting internet connectivity within the emulators. Remember to have the emulator cradled (use the ToolsàDevice Emulator Manager) and within the emulator enable a network adapter (FileàConfigureàNetworkàEnable NE2000 PCMCIA network adapter…

·        Understanding the difference between all the available emulators. A Smartphone has a limited UI but includes a phone. Pocket PC has an enhanced UI (it assumes the ability to enter keys on a keyboard, graphical or otherwise). And a Pocket PC Phone has both the enhanced UI and a phone.

·        Getting an ASP.NET 2.0 project deployed from a development server to a deployment server with mixed 1.1 and 2.0 based web apps.

o       Copying doesn’t seem to do anything about configuring the virtual directory or file security settings.

o       Publishing is hidden on one of the menus. It doesn’t do the whole thing either.

o       It would be great to have something generate the xml file from which either the virtual directory or web site was configured.

·        Avoiding ObjectDisposed exceptions when shutting down the windows mobile application. There’s a web request pending at the time of shutdown. The request uses a thread pool work item to implement the request. It looks like the request is completing only to find its world disposed. Resolved by calling Abort on the request, not on the thread. And arranging for the thread to exit cleanly.

·        A related issue is what event’s fire when a windows mobile application is minimized (x in corner is clicked) and when the red button is pressed to turn off the screen. An application continues to run if the OK or minimize button are used to hide the application window while leaving it active. Execution is suspended by the red power button. Execution resumes when the red button is pressed again.

·        Icon colors.

o       Use photoshop to convert the image to indexed colors with the Windows System palette.

o       For some reason, icons installed in the emulator seem to be sticky. They don’t update when the application that owns them is updated.

·        The screen on the Treo 700w is 240 x 240 pixels but after the top and bottom bars are lost to the environment, there’s only a 240 x 188 left. Is there any way to get that space back? When the window form is running in maximized mode, it seems to have the top bar in its client rectangle but there’s still a bar visible.

·        Figuring out how to do resources for localization correctly. The breakthrough was finding the localizable property on a Windows.Forms.Form. Turning this on causes magic to happen in the generated code. Selecting a non-default Language property automatically adds a new resource file. Haven’t chased down the whole satellite assembly building and deployment concept yet. Since a smart device app must stay small, you never want to drag around resources that aren’t used.

·        Getting the application shortcut in the right folder.

o       When you create a Smart Device CAB project to setup a smart device application, the default file system view doesn’t contain the Programs Folder. You can add it manually. This is where the application shortcut has to go.

·        Getting a \r\n sequence into a string resource J. I was moving the string from C# code to the resource editor. “\r\n” was interpreted as a literal, so I tried \u000D\u000A and finally 
. Looking at the resource file in the xml editor showed the last attempt being escaped so I un-escaped them and voila! All I had to do was hit the enter key when replacing the original “\r\n”. Doh.

Things I don’t know how to do yet:

·        Signing the application and CAB file in such a way that the phone doesn’t display the unknown publisher dialog. Many commercial packages behave the same way.

·        Building a smart device installer that triggers an ActiveSyn install. Right now the Smart Device CAB setup project requires that you copy the CAB to the device and run it there. It seems you build an ordinary Windows Setup project but there’s some magic involved in communicating an .ini file to ActiveSync that I just haven’t come across yet.

Credit for this list belongs to this posting.

The only way I know to figure this out on your own is using the “help” voice command.

Voice Command Cheat Sheet for Treo 700w

===== CALLING A CONTACT =====
Commands:
Call <contact>
Call <contact> at home
Call <contact> at work
Call <contact> on mobile
Call <contact> on cell
Call <contact> on cellular
Call <contact> at home two
Call <contact> at work two
Call <contact> at car
Call <contact> on radio
Call <contact> on pager
Call <contact> at assistant
To confirm that you want to make the call after Voice Command responds:
You can say "Yes" or "Correct" to call.
You can say "No" or "Incorrect" to try again.
If Voice Command asks you which location, you can:
Repeat one of the locations that Voice Command offers to call.
Say "No" to try again.

Related commands:
You can say "Call back" to call back the last call that you received.
You can say "Redial" to call back the last call that you made.

Examples:
Call Karen Archer on cell
Call Frank Miller
Call City Light and Power
Call Karen Archer Home

Notes:
Voice Command indexes by the Contact's first and last name if it exists. If you have a nickname entered, you can use that
too. Voice Command will only let you call by company name if there is no first or last name.
You must prefix contact calling with the "call" keyword. If you use "dial", it won't work!


===== DIALING A NUMBER ======
Commands:
Dial <7-digit number>
Dial <10-digit number>
Dial <1+10-digits>
Dial <N-1-1>
Examples:
Dial 555-0200
Dial 800-555-1212
Dial 1-800-555-1212
Dial 411
You must prefix digit dialing with the "dial" keyword. If you use "call", it won't work!


===== CHECKING CALENDAR =====
Commands:
What are my appointments today?
What are my appointments tomorrow?
What's my next appointment?

===== START MENU =====
Commands:
Start <program>

Example:
Start Solitare
Start Messaging
Start Internet Explorer
Start Pictures and Video
Notes:
Voice Command will index any file that is in or inside of \windows\program files
You have to say the file name exactly as it is written. It may be helpful to rename shortcuts.
Also, you can put links to web pages here and go straight to a saved web page this way.

===== MEDIA =====
Commands:
Play music
Play media
Play artist
Play album
Play genre

Play <artist name>
Play <album name>
Play <genre name>
Play <everything>
Play
Pause
Stop
Next
Previous (track)
Shuffle on
Shuffle off
What song is this?
What track is this?

Examples:
Play The Beatles
Play The White Album
Play Rock
Play Everything

Notes:
You cannot play individual tracks using voice
Voice Command will index the media based on the metadata. You can use a metadata editor to groom the fields.

Connecting to Verizon’s wireless internet link: user=<phonenumber>@vzw3g.com, pwd=vzw

Activating phone: call *228

WirelessSync is not needed to sync directly to Exchange Server, just use ActiveSync.

ActiveSync settings can be configured on the PC with the device connected via USB (or possibly Bluetooth). The interface is better on the PC.

Motorola HS850 headset pairing code is 0000. Some forum claims that the headset has crappy sound on the Treo 700w.

Scot Rose, scotr@microsoft.com, 980-776-8726 helped get Exchange Server 2003 with SP2 configured for ActiveSync. Issue was oma (Outlook mobile access) doesn’t work over an SSL connection. KB817379 explains how to clone the /Exchange virtual directory to create a copy that can be accessed only by the local machine (via an IP restriction) and which does not require SSL.

Verizon wireless data support group: 866-788-9387. Case # 1003333828 and # 1003334736. Assisted in experimenting with vtext.com configuration. Created an alias for default phone text message address. Interesting experimental result: When an e-mail was sent from a Verizon Blackberry to my tone@kizmet.org e-mail account, it arrived only on the phone and not on the Exchange server.

Initially ended up with duplicate calendar entries after using PC sync and then switching to Exchange sync. Tried manually deleting them but that’s a non-starter. Did a hard reset of the phone (hold power on button while simultaneously pressing soft reset button under the battery compartment lid). After a hard reset, the phone had to be re-activated and all user settings had to be restored, including internet connection (My ISP settings).

Microsoft claims that until Verizon rolls out new phone firmware that includes MSFP (Messaging and Sercurity Feature Pack), true Exchange push won’t work.

Built a simple Smart Phone 5.0 .NET 2.0 device application and deployed it to the phone. There’s 25.5 MB total of program space, 18.5 used, 7 MB free. The toy app was only 6KB so maybe that’s enough to do something with. Still seems very modest.

I have a 1GB SanDisk SD card in the phone. Programs installed on the SD card appear to crash immediately after restarting the phone when the app was running when the phone was turned off (quick red button tap).