Technology

My New & Improved Samsung i730 Windows Mobile Phone

A few days ago, my old and trusty Samsung SCH-i730 Windows Mobile phone decided to bite the dust. One moment, I pulled it out of my pocket to look at the time and it was dead… just like that. No sound. No display. It was an eerie sight. I tried a soft reset, changed battery, hard reset, nothing.

Luckily, since I had purchased insurance for the phone (the only time I purchased insurance for an electronic gadget), I called Verizon. Two days later, I now have a brand new i730.

Samsung SCH-i730 box

Normally, this would be a none-event. However, something interesting happened: the replacement phone works much better than the one I used to have. Read about the problems I had with the old phone here. On the new phone, everything runs noticeably faster. There is no more unexplained slowness. Audio during phone calls now works as expected with no cut outs.

New Samsung SCH-i730 Windows Mobile Phone

I have two theories on why:

  • I had upgraded my old phone to Windows Mobile 2005 and that version of the Windows Mobile OS was causing problems on the phone
  • I had a defective phone

I will never know for sure the real cause, since the old phone is no more.

Samsung i730 owners out there, if your phone doesn’t seem to work quite right and have the problems described here, either try to downgrade to Windows Mobilde 2003, or if you have not upgraded to WM2005, you just may have a defective device.

Search Your Google Reader RSS Feeds

I have been using Google Reader since the 9/2006 release. It’s one of my favorite apps. One of the feature that was missing from Reader that I wished it had was Search. Well, Reader is now complete with a Search feature!

My initial testing indicates that it works well. I could not locate any help page that describes the complete search syntax, but most basic Google search syntax seem to work fine. Below are some observations.

Common words such as “where”, “how” are not excluded like regular Google Search:

Google Reader Search - common words

Phrase searches are supported:

Google Reader Search - phrases

Negative terms are supported. Example: bass -music.

The OR operator doesn’t work. Example: i730 OR i830.

Windows Mobile Device Center

In Windows Vista, Windows Mobile Device Center replaces ActiveSync. I just found out today when I tried to set up a bluetooth link between my home PC and Samsung i730. The process to set up is easy enough. Just download the installer from Microsoft, run it, and follow on-screen instructions.

My initial impression is that WMDC looks a lot sleaker than ActiveSync:

Windows Mobile Device Center - Welcome Screen

WMDC’s beauty is only skin deep however. There appears to be no new major features. I was hoping that synchronization would work with Vista’s built-in Calendar and Contacts but no… that would make too much sense, would it? I hate to have to install Microsoft Office just to be able to look at a Calendar and a Contact list. I now only have Office at home on a Virtual PC that I fires up once in a long while when I do need Word or Excel.

Since I started using Plaxo, I can access my calendar and contacts from any Internet connected PC or mobile device so I don’t really need to have my calendar and contacts sync’ed to my home PC.

Oh, and guess what, it’s not possible to sync your music library from Windows Media Player 11 to your mobile device over bluetooth. Argg!

Samsung SCH-i760

It looks like Samsung is finally coming out with an upgrade for the SCH-i730 Windows Mobile Phone, in the form of the SCH-i760. Major new features include Windows Mobile 6, side-sliding keyboard and a built-in camera. Currently the i760 is not officially on Verizon Wireless’ web site yet.

Don’t know about you but I think this one looks a bit on the ugly side. Still, I really like my i730 and when I will certainly consider upgrading to the i760 when the time comes.

Samsung SCH-i760

More info:

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