Rob Tiffany's Windows Mobile Accelerator : SDK

Rise of the Psuedo Smartphones

robtiffany — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 03:50:00 GMT

What do the following feature phones have in common?

LG Dare
LG Voyager
LG Versa
LG enV Touch
LG Rumour 2
LG Lotus
LG Neon
LG Xenon
LG VU
Samsung Alias 2
Samsung Gravity
Samsung Behold
Samsung Highlight
Samsung Memoir
Samsung Propel
Samsung Rant
Samsung Exclaim
Samsung Instinct
Samsung Magnet
Samsung Eternity
Samsung Impression
Sanyo SCP-2700
AT&T Quickfire
Pantech Matrix
Motorola Karma

They include features like:

High-Megapixel Cameras w/Zoom
GPS
Touch Screen
QWERTY Keyboards
Play Music
Play Videos
Web Browser
Email
Games
Apps
Instant Messaging
3G
Stereo Bluetooth
Video Capture
SD Card Storage
Calendar
Contacts
Quad-Band GSM
Voice Dialing
Alarm
Calculator
Photo Album
SMS
MMS
Wi-Fi
Internet Tethering
Slide-out Keyboard
Turn-by-Turn Navigation
Push to Talk
Radio
Hi-res Graphics
Streaming XM/Sirius
Mobile TV
Java
Facebook
MySpace

We consider phones with advanced mobile operating systems like Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian, and WebOS to be Smartphones. When I look at the list of features above, I think most people in world would have a hard time distinguishing between what we call Smartphones and the rising tide of super-charged feature phones. At a 30,000 ft level, a published API and development tools that allow you to create rich applications to access databases and remote servers may be the only distinction. Of course that would be a slight againt Java ME that's found on over a billion feature phones. I would venture to guess that 99% of the buying public can't tell the difference and may not even care as long as the price is right.

The big takeaway is that the large chasm that used to exist between feature phones and Smartphones has diminished dramatically. In the coming years, Smartphone OS and hardware manufacturers have no choice but to innovate in a big way in order to put some distance between themselves and the clones attacking them from below or risk becoming commoditized and irrelevant.

- Rob

Mobile Architecture Pocket Guide v1.1

robtiffany — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:01:00 GMT

Just wanted to let everyone know that version 1.1 of the Mobile Architecture Pocket Guide is now available on CodePlex at http://www.codeplex.com/AppArch/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=19798. This is the first patterns & practices update to this guide since 2002 so it's a welcome sight to to have it out there for all our Windows Mobile developers.

I've spent the last couple of months working with J.D. Meier, Rabi Satter, Rob Boucher and the rest of the P&P team to tune, tweak and update the new Mobile Architecture Pocket Guide to ensure that it's as accurate and relevant to today's Windows Mobile platform and runtimes as possible. The guide's chapters include:

Ch 01 > Mobile Application Architecture
Ch 02 > Architecture and Design Guidelines
Ch 03 > Presentation Layer Guidelines
Ch 04 > Business Layer Guidelines
Ch 05 > Data Access Layer Guidelines
Ch 06 > Service Layer Guidelines
Ch 07 > Communication Guidelines
Ch 08 > Deployment Patterns

Our goal is to empower our Windows Mobile developer community as much as possible, and while this guide may seem like it's targeted exclusively to developers, I ensured that the IT Pro side of the house is accommodated as well. Mobile infrastructure elements of this guide include System Center Mobile Device Manager (Deployment), SQL Server (Sync Services + Merge), IIS (Web Services + Sync + WCF), Exchange (WCF Store and Forward) and Active Directory (Auth).

Download it, take if for a spin, and give us your feedback so we can keep improving it.

- Rob

The iPhone comes to the Enterprise with a little help from Microsoft

robtiffany — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:07:00 GMT

This morning, Steve Jobs announced that Apple has licensed the Exchange Active Sync protocol from Microsoft in order to bring the following functionality to the iPhone:

Push Email
Push Contacts
Push Calendar
Access to the Global Address List (GAL)
Remote Wipe
Password Policies

The Apple folks publicly bashed the way Blackberry does email through a NOC and praised Microsoft for coming up with a much more advanced architecture that allows the iPhone to work directly with Exchange in a more reliable and affordable way. Before all you fans of Windows Mobile freak out, just remember, licensing our AirSync protocol to Apple means increased sales of Exchange Server, Windows Server, ISA Server and lots of CALs.

Now on a much more threatening note, Apple did launch their new iPhone SDK that allows developers to build on-device applications using Objective C. If you've ever done development on a NeXT Workstation or Mac OSX, you'll know what Object C is. This SDK allows you to build rich applications for the iPhone that utilize the following features:

SQLite for Database access
Core Location for location-based services
Core Audio
Video via h.264
Core animation
OpenGL ES for hardware accelerated 3D graphics and games
Cocoa Touch for multi touch input
Accelerometer to use the iPhone's 3-axis sensor in apps

They've got Xcode development tools, a debugger, an emulator, and a graphical forms builder with drag and drop functionality.

Like the Amazon Kindle, they've created something called "App Store" that will be included on the iPhone so users can find, buy and wirelessly download applications to their device. You'll even be notified when there's an update to downloaded software. All downloadable applications will have electronic certificates from Apple.

If that's not enough, famous Venture Capitalist John Doerr announced that Kleiner Perkins (KPCB) started a $100 Million iFund to back companies looking to develop innovative applications for the iPhone.

By any objective measure, this is a big day for the iPhone. What can we do to ensure that Microsoft is a winner in this equation? Just like with the benefits we receive by allowing the iPhone to sync with Exchange Server, the development of iPhone apps that connect with Microsoft servers will be just what the doctor ordered. I would get started with the following:

SQL Server Compact for iPhone
Sync Services for ADO.NET with a provider for the iPhone SSC database so we can sync with SQL Server
SharePoint Server 2007 access
Communicator Mobile to access Office Communications Server 2007

You get the gist of where I'm going. Just remember, the competition never sleeps and you should always expect to have your feet kept to the fire. We must constantly reinvent ourselves and be ready to eat our own lunch before our competitors do.

- Rob