The Sydney Pocket PC and Smartphone Users Group holds meetings on the second Tuesday of each month. The August 2004 meeting occurred on Tuesday 10th August, and was held for the first time at Microsoft Australia's premises, courtesy of Calum Russell, the Mobility Group Business Manager. Around 15 people attended this month, which is a respectable turnout, however hopefully more will attend next time!

Presentations

Typically committee members and interested parties organise a number of presentations for the monthly meeting. This month, Calum Russell kicked off the evening with a slideshow of forthcoming and future developments for Windows Mobile based devices, with particular emphasis on Australia.

1. Calum Russell

Highlights of Calum's presentation included the upcoming Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition "Adaptation Kit Updates". There are two expected by the end of 2004, with AKU1 focusing on Bluetooth handsfree and headset functionality, and AKU2 including the next version of Windows Media Player and OMA DRM.

Calum also showed a preview of the Windows Mobile OS roadmap, with the next version “Magneto” (based on Windows CE 5) expected as early as February 2005; although typical manufacturer lag would mean that this probably would not be seen on devices in the market for around 6 months. He also stressed the likelihood that many manufacturers will be likely to choose to only implement this on new devices, rather than old.

Calum then proceeded to discuss upcoming devices for the Australian market. It looks like the Motorola MPx220 might just scrape a release to Australia this year, although given that they are still working on a few minor issues, no-one will be too surprised if this slips to 2005. Likewise, the Motorola MPx has no date as yet and is still undergoing revisions to the keyboard and overall usability.

The Smartphone form-factor HTC Typhoon – known overseas as the QTek 8010 and Orange SPV c500 – is definitely coming to Australia, with O2 and Carrier Devices both likely to release their own brand of this model.

Most exciting of all was the imminent release of the HTC Harrier, which is a CDMA Pocket PC Phone that has previously been released as the China Unicom CU928, and recently seen in a GSM version as the HTC Blue Angel (AKA MDA III).

A CDMA version of this phone is exciting since it offers high speed data capabilities, as well as features that have made the XDA II popular, and a few extra goodies (such as the keyboard and battery) thrown in for good measure. As the first CDMA Pocket PC Phone to be released to Australia, it makes for an exciting device to offer the rapidly growing CDMA data market, especially given its 1xRTT and EVDO capabilities.

Details on an Australian release of the GSM-based "Blue Angel" version of this device are as yet unavailable, but expect to see a Telstra release of the CDMA-based Harrier in the next few months.

2. James McCutcheon

James McCutcheon followed on from Calum's presentation with a great overview of development with the .NET Compact Framework. He discussed existing commercial development products such as Visual Studio Enterprise, Brightpoint Software, and others, and also pointed attendees toward free development tools and resources that could help budding developers get started.

3. Ron Rosenbaum / Mark van Rooyen

Finishing the presentations, Sydney Pocket PC and Smartphone User Group president Ron Rosenbaum, along with Mark van Rooyen, gave attendees an introduction to video encoding and playback on the Pocket PC. Tools included the free Windows Media Encoder 9, XVid, and others. Sample videos were displayed and discussion of the various methods and alternatives (including Portable Media Center) were discussed.

Other Business

Attendees had the opportunity to play with the Motorola MPx220, Sierra Voq, eTen P300B, and the hp iPAQ h6300. Hopefully the next meeting will feature several more devices for preview.

The venue for the next meeting will again be at Microsoft Australia, and Calum has offered the use of their premises to the group for the remainder of the year.

For more information on the Sydney Pocket PC Users group, visit their website - and hope to see you there next month!