Cell phone accessories blog

Visual thumbnails for tabs are all new in Opera Mobie 10 beta.

(Credit: Opera Software)

Opera impressed us a few months ago with its beta release of a restyled Mini browser for Java phones. Early in November, they did it again with a standalone mobile browser for Symbian Series 60 handsets that adheres to Opera Mini 5 beta's glossy master design. And on Wednesday, Opera repeats what it hopes to be mobile magic with Opera Mobile 10 beta for Windows phones.

The free Opera Mobile 10 beta starts off with a customizable Speed Dial screen, composed of nine preview thumbnails that whisk you off to a favorite site. Browser tabs receive a new treatment that echoes those thumbnail previews, and other features like the Password Manager get a few behind-the-scenes adjustments.

As with the recent betas for Java and Symbian phones, Opera Mobile 10 beta lacks some features for Windows phones that Opera expects to restore by the time it approves the app for general consumption. Opera Link, its bookmark- and favorite-syncing service, is among the laggers.

Our First Look video of Opera Mobile 10 beta (below) sees the browser tested on a Symbian phone, but it will look and work almost identically on Windows phones. Press "play" to get a good idea of what's in store, including those known bugs.

Note: Since our video, Opera has released an update for Symbian phones that can now handle font for several Asian languages.

Windows Mobile owners can download the mobile browser beta free by navigating to m.opera.com/mobile/ from the phone or www.opera.com/mobile from the desktop. Opera Mobile 10 beta will replace the Opera Mobile 9.7 beta that has previously been available for Windows Mobile phones.

Windows users: how do you like Opera's reworking of the browser? Let us know in the comments.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Windows Marketplace for Mobile debuted in October as Microsoft's answer to smartphone app stores. As with Google's Android Market, Windows Mobile 6.5 users could initially only find and purchase apps from the device. Now Microsoft has published an online catalog to mirror its mobile storefront.

As with iPhone's app store in iTunes and BlackBerry's online App World, Windows Marketplace for Mobile site lets you find apps by browsing, searching, or discovering programs from lists of what's most popular or new. App screenshots, ratings, and version details are accessible from product pages. Like BlackBerry's App World, you can pick apps from the online catalog to install via Marketplace for Mobile on your smartphone.

In addition to discovering new applications to download, the online mobile Marketplace has a management window for you to track your download history and tweak your account settings.

Developers will see a separate portal that contains community resources, blog posts, and lists of upcoming events. Although Microsoft has been the tardiest of the major mobile platform developers to implement an app store solution, it's to Microsoft's credit that the company is quickly rounding out its storefront with an online catalog. Now Microsoft just needs to open up the Marketplace to phone owners using older versions of Windows Mobile operating systems.

Article updated at 5:00 pm to correct mIQ media sharing details.

Best Buy Mobile's mIQ dashboard is easier on the eye.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Microsoft introduced its My Phone service last week, an online dashboard for managing and sharing the contents of your mobile phone. We liked some aspects, and critiqued some others. Ultimately, we wished that Microsoft had teamed up with its Seattle neighbor, connected services startup Dashwire, whose legacy dashboard did much of the same thing as My Phone does now, but did it better. Dashwire has since turned its standalone product into a platform. Best Buy Mobile snapped up a license and is now offering its own sync-and-share service, called mIQ (short for mobile IQ).

I know what you're thinking: The T-Mobile Sidekick backup service just failed, and the blame is Microsoft's. Why trust its My Phone service at all? But backup isn't the point of these services. They're about management. Moreover, comfortably managing the contents of your smartphone from a screen and keypad that's larger than anything you can get on your smartphone. And if you delete a number or photo from the Web or phone, it's gone. Neither of these services intends to save it, but they do intend to make it available online.

So now that that's clear, it's time for a throwdown.

My Phone and mIQ both download small clients to the mobile phone. From there, they bidirectionally sync the phone's contents to an online dashboard. My Phone is limited to Windows phones, but mIQ is free for anyone with a BlackBerry, Symbian, or Windows phone.

Features

We'll say right off the bat that Microsoft's My Phone is richer in feature types overall compared with Best Buy Mobile's mIQ. ... Read more

Everyone knows that texting and driving will kill you. Well, maybe not, but initiatives to outlaw texting while operating motor vehicles stem from accidents due to mobile phone use. iZUP (eyes-up) is a new product we saw demoed at the CTIA Wireless conference (see all stories) that addresses this head-on.

The app springs to life after it detects that your phone is traveling at speeds over 5 miles per hour, after which point it all but locks down the screen. You won't be able to dial a number, launch an app, or even think about reading or composing an SMS. That's not to say there's no access at all. You can dial emergency, of course, and can select a few preapproved phone numbers and apps (just Google Maps for now) that you can launch in just a click or a tap. You'll manage these whitelisted numbers completely online.

While this is a ready solution for families with teenage drivers, and for corporations to enforce company policy on company phones, it must also be customizable to allow for different scenarios. In response, the iZUP team told us it's looking into such features as a passenger override, so that a non-driver can regain control of the phone.

We expect iZUP to launch in the beginning of November as a subscription plan--about $5 per month for a single user and about $50 for a yearlong subscription, and $6 per month for the whole family, with about a $60 per year plan.

(Credit: F)

On Friday, Mozilla released Fennec Alpha 3 for Windows Mobile, the latest in Mozilla's effort to put its Firefox browser on a mobile phone. As with Fennec 1.0 beta 3 for the Maemo platform found on some Nokia Internet Tablets, Fennec for Windows Mobile makes changes to the mobile browser's theme, and its scrolling and panning performance.

In particular, it's using what's called a tile cache rendering system to hold onto the part of the screen that has already been rendered. As you scroll and pan around, it should take less time to refresh the screen, since Fennec won't be downloading the same content afresh. This is the same type of technology used in Google Maps.

In addition, Mozilla says it has increased Fennec's start-up time, though you'll need to reboot the Windows Mobile phone for the difference to take effect. Swiping along the edge of the directional pad on the HTC Touch Pro now controls zooming. In the meantime, Fennec now supports more screen resolutions for any other Windows Mobile phone, so it could potentially look better on your device.

While Mozilla has no hard date set for completing Fennec 1.0 for Windows Mobile (which in all probability, could be called Firefox for Windows Mobile when it's done) it has set a target time for releasing Fennec on the Maemo platform in Q4, which brings us to before the end of December. This fits the timeline of Mozilla's open design competition for the company's Firefox for Mobile campaign, which will cut off voting on October 7, 2009.

Fennec Alpha 3 for Windows Mobile is ready to try for your Windows Mobile phone and can be downloaded from this CAB file. Remember that as an unstable alpha release, you may encounter bugs and other issues. For more details about what's new, you can find Mozilla's release notes here.

Related story: Firefox Mobile' updates for Windows Mobile

A chief rival to Opera Mobile in the cell phone browser space, Skyfire has released a new version for Windows Mobile (touchscreen | non-touchscreen) and Nokia's Symbian-run E or N series phones. Version 1.1 makes some minor, but still welcome, improvements to navigation and performance.

My favorite is that you'll now be able to punch the "2" and "8" key on keypad- or keyboard-equipped phones to navigate up and down. Pressing the asterisk (*) will jump you to the joint address/search bar. Of course, this may not work identically on phones with nonstandard keypad arrangements.

Web surfers will also notice that Skyfire may now show a Web site's mobile version more often than before. Behind the change are new WAP features that detect mobile sites better. In addition, Skyfire's browser will zoom in on the page automatically, saving you a step. The new treatment won't work for sites, like Yahoo's mobile.yahoo.com, that use "mobile" as part of a URL intended to be viewed from the desktop.

Behind the scenes, Skyfire's mobile browser also received updates for Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight, all which give the browser the edge in streaming videos. Other tweaks and fixes are designed to speed up the time it takes for a page to load, and quicken scrolling on Nokia phones. Skyfire's blog has a full list of changes.

Skyfire mobile browser is free to all users. You can also download it over the air by pointing a different mobile browser to http://get.skyfire.com. If you're an existing user who can weather a short wait, Skyfire will push the update to your phone. This should save you having to reconfigure all of RSS and social networking feeds.

Article updated at 12:15 am PT with a clarification on how mobile site detection works.

(Credit: Handmark)

The countdown is well under way for Microsoft's Windows Mobile app store, called Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which is slated to arrive in early fall alongside the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. Yet on Tuesday, mobile media company Handmark outmaneuvered Microsoft, releasing a rival application for Windows Mobile phones: HandMarket Apps for Windows Mobile.

Handmark's HandMarket app store is compatible with phones running Windows Mobile 6.0 and up. At launch there are 600 applications and games each, plus about 50,000 ringtones and wallpaper items. Prices range from $0 to about $60.

HandMarket fits what can now be recognized as the app store paradigm. It has a quick search function, browsable categories, and users' star ratings and reviews. Like the BlackBerry App World, HandMarket Apps for Windows Mobile includes a screen summarizing past downloads at a glance. If you uninstall an app for space considerations, you'll be able to reinstall through this "locker."

Tracking app store downloads goes hand-in-hand with billing. HandMarket can bill you through your cell phone carrier (your monthly bill reflects your download purchases,) or you can tack purchases onto a credit card that you associate with your account.

In addition, the app store will alert you when an app update is available. HandMarket also lets you share app details with others.

Handmark's HandMarket may well turn out to be a good interim app store for those who want to jump on board the store's centralized distribution and billing model without waiting for Microsoft. The fact that it's also available now for earlier Windows Mobile platforms means it will remain an app store option for those who don't immediately jump aboard Windows Mobile 6.5. It's likely, though, that today's HandMarket users could abandon the app tomorrow when and if they do trade up to a Windows Mobile phone featuring Microsoft's built-in app store and billing system.

To reward early adopters, Handmark is opening its app store with an 80-percent-off sale on some Windows Mobile games, which can be found in the "Specials" screen.

Handmark's free HandMarket Apps for Windows Mobile is currently only available in North America for a variety of Windows Mobile phones, but the company says that it does plan to expand support internationally.

At long last, Microsoft is publicly getting its Windows Mobile application storefront under way. On Monday, Microsoft opened the door to submissions from developers in 29 countries. To sweeten the deal and to drum up excitement, Microsoft has also announced the Race to Market Challenge, a contest of superlatives that will end with Redmond doling out four touch-screen Microsoft Surface tables to four winning developers.

All applications, games, and widgets certified in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile before December 31 will be eligible to win one of four categories: most downloaded freeware, most moneymaking app (calculated by the number of downloads times price), the most useful product, and the most playful. Microsoft will determine the last two subjective awards by a panel decision.

The winners' spoils are paltry in terms of quantity and heft when compared to Google's first Android Developer Challenge, which gave 10 teams a $275,000 award, 10 teams a $100,000 check, and each of the top 50 finalists $25,000 as an incentive to program the "best" of the first-ever Android applications.

Indeed, we were hoping to see more lucrative prizes from a company whose mobile operating system long ago lost its gleam to the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and now even the Palm Pre. With such a modest purse, it's doubtful that the contest will lure important developers more than the promise of sustained profit and saturating the mobile market on all platforms would. It might attract the smaller fish, whose success could likely be eclipsed by fast-acting bigger players.

Still, for the hopeful winners, odds clearly favor the free and premium applications that are promoted in the app store the longest, and among them, apps already popular on earlier Windows Mobile builds and on other mobile and desktop platforms (Google Mobile App might be one example).

The backdrop to Microsoft's challenge is its submission process, which Microsoft estimates will take 10 business days from start to finish. Developers will be able to chart their apps' progress on a dashboard, and access a report if Microsoft denies the submission for breaching content policies (PDF), prohibitions (PDF), and submission guidelines (PDF).

Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile application storefront will premier on Windows Mobile phones running the upcoming version 6.5 of the mobile operating system. It will be the distribution nexus for free and premium Windows Mobile applications that is similar in concept--and likely in form--to Apple's iTunes App Store, Google's Android Market, and RIM's BlackBerry App World.

Windows Mobile 6.5 phones are expected to hit shelves in early autumn.

Interested developers can access everything from the developer toolkit to the marketplace registration here.

Microsoft is accepting submissions from developers in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States.

(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)

Google Maps for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones can plot you, your friends, and businesses on a map. Now it can also layer on transit lines, traffic, and points of interest that correspond to Wikipedia articles.

Google Maps for Mobile 3.2's new layers option for its mobile Maps is accessible by pressing the "2" key or by selecting "Menu" and "Layers." In addition to traffic and transit, Google opens the door to personal maps you've saved using the My Maps feature on Google Maps for the desktop. The latest version of the map app also adds to its approach to search results. In addition to a handful of points marked as red waypoints, you'll see many more small red dots that represent other applicable locations. These won't show up on the text list, but you will be able to tap them to access their Web site, reviews, and other practical details.

Users in the U.S. and China can furthermore browse popular search categories (like Restaurants) to cut down on typing time.

As good as Google Maps is, there are still areas open for improvement. We weren't able to input text into Google Maps for Mobile from our preferred keyboard on the Samsung Omnia. Reverting to the cramped default one diminished the experience and made typing a challenge. We'd also like to save new maps and direction routes to My Maps, and would like to interact with transit lines directly from the map, not only through the Directions menu.

Google Maps for Mobile 3.2 is available now for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones. You can download it by pointing the mobile browser to m.google.com/maps. Release notes can be found here.