Research:Mobile Technologies

Overview
As part of Kathryn's research into mobile technologies, I have created this page so we can record any observations. Please feel free to add comments/notes if you can help contribute. Just a reminder that you will need to create a login to edit the page. I would really have like to allow editing without the login but unfortunately the web has users that insist on adding graffiti to any open pages.

It would be good if we can manage this by adding the date of the comment and your initials so we can monitor changes and learning :)

Nokia E52


For someone not trained up on text typing too slow. Tried interactive messaging - couldn't keep up WiFi: At EIT timed out all the time.

Convenient in pocket

JasJam
Windows CE

Flash now out of date so wont play many new youTube videos (and there is no way to update) PLEASE SEE BELOW AS THIS IS NOW POSSIBLE USING SKYWIRE BROWSER

When switch off Wi Fi automatically goes to 3G. Which can be a nusiance - had someone else use the phone and almost 3G'd to the net. My pre-pay woould have vanished quickly.

Contacts: Message book much better that E51. User interface confusing when want to cancel (after getting to the Phone/text option) need to go ok which seems like you are going to call or text.

Keyboard: Typing text messages much faster (easy to end up with a double text message)

Quite bulky, easier to hang on belt.

Managing the Connections very difficult. WiFi keeps switching ( hopefully with a better application this will be fixed)

Unable to connect to net via WiFii - in Joyces Office and Tutor Office (keeps wanting to go to 3G)

Jul-5 [MV]
 * 1) Last week we (really KM) added Opera and sky Fire to the JasJam. SkyFire proved to be more difficult to configure and insisted on going 3G.
 * 2) Opera proved to be the better option connecting to MS Outlook Web Access (MOWA)fine. Just need to test whether plays YouTube Videos.
 * 3) Investigating IE it appears that MS don't provide updates as the phones change too much - so you are stuck with the version of IE installed with your original Windows Mobile. So in my case this means that MOWA doesn't work and the youtube videos dont play .. which pretty much renders the phone useless for anything other than basic browsing.
 * 4) Today installed ActiveSync onto the JasJam. Wanted to copy some photos onto my Laptop. Ended up searching for how to do this.. solution really basic - click on the Explore icon in Active Sync - duh!

Aug-? New Wireless modem. Spent a couple of hours (on-and-off) trying to make it connect - very frustrating. Aug-17
 * 1) Very little use. Find the Power up time too long. No real reason to use the WiFi capability.

Overall observation: The functionality of the device: Hardware(Battery life) and Software (Time to start, ease to zoom text, ease to browse) are an important factor as to the user experience and subsequent use. The JasJam is probably a little too old now to be a good tool to evaluate eLearning experiences/perceptions on as I don't think it gives a positive user experience.

HP iPaQ
The HP iPAQ I'm using is now 2 years old running Windows Mobile Version 5.0 OS 5.1.195 (build 14957.2.3.1). Attempts to update the system to version 6 has proved difficult with the machine rejecting our advances. This means Explorer won't read my remote work email. We installed Opera to get round the network issues associated with this and this solved the problem. However the wireless network at EIT is very patchy. Wireles at home is very robust and have been able to 'surf' adequately. However getting used to the small screen has been interesting and challenging. Looking forward to getting more functionality out of this PDA.

The main problem encountered to date is that Microsoft ActiveSync doesn't seem to retain its settings and syncing is erratic which needs to be sorted as I need to be able to sync with my electronic diary daily to make it worth while having the unit. I can't play YouTube video as the player is too old I presume.

Resources

 * Thom Cochrane's wiki on the iPhone for Unitech students ( http://ctliwiki.unitec.ac.nz/index.php/IphoneTutorials )

Accessing YouTube and Mail Exchange
July 2 -KM
 * 1) Not all webpages are viewable on a mobile phone/PDA due to Flash issues and technical constraints. However a "good" browser that overcomes these issues is SkyFire (http://www.skyfire.com/). It seems to work fine on most pages that IE does not.
 * 2) One drawback is the webpages can look very blurry unless zoomed in heaps. SO as long as you can live with zooming in and out to see pages it works fine.
 * 3) The incompatibility is NOT a problem on iPhone. The browser is great and heaps better to use the SkyFire.

Turning off Data Connections but leave WiFi enabled on WinMo
Jul 2, 2009 KM
 * 1) Found a good solution that will stop phone from trying to connect to GRPS (and wasteing money!) Please see below or view the solution on their website (Microsoft ,2009) :
 * 2) ''"All you'll need to do is disable the data connection - you don't even have to delete it.
 * 3) ''I disable the data connection temporarily on my IPAQ hw6925 by tapping Start > Settings > Connections tab > Connections icon > Advanced tab > Select Networks button > tap the down arrow next to the first item and change to "My Work Network"
 * 4) ''Disabling the data connection in this way ensures that internet connections are handled via WIFI connection. If you want to enable the data plan, you can go back and change that setting from "My Work" back to "IPAQ GPRS" (or whatever it was originally set at).
 * 5) If you get a Smartphone (no touch screen), instead of a Pocket PC (touchscreen), I'm not sure that you'll use the same sequence of key presses to get to the place where you can disable the data connection."