Pocket PC Thoughts: Mobile and Embedded Developer Conference 2005

Day Two

Right-Sizing
This session, given by Ginny Caughey, was a good overview of the different choices available for developers when storing data locally on the device. It looked at a range of technologies from the simplest text files up to the latest version of SQL Server Mobile currently in Beta. A key message from the session is that there is no right technology for all, it should be based on your storage requirements, target devices and required functionality.

New Managed APIs in Windows Mobile 5.0
One of the key new features in the Windows Mobile APIs is support for a number of common dialogs used by the built in apps – the ChooseContactDialog, the SelectPictureDialog and the CameraCaptureDialog. These present the user with standard dialogs which they will already be familiar with for common tasks and require only a few lines of code to utilise. This session was fairly light and more marketing than technical - once you've created one object and called ShowDialog() the rest of the classes are obvious. However this is not to understate these new controls, they do allow you to add functionality to your application very quickly and easily.

Emulator Enhancements
The new emulation tools which will debut with Visual Studio 2005 make a significant step ahead of the current emulation tools available. The major change is that the emulator now emulates an ARM processor (rather than X86). This means you can use the exact same binaries on the emulator as a real device, even allowing you to install third-party applications onto the emulator. The emulator can be connected to ActiveSync to perform synchronisation and access the device file system from the desktop. A Community Preview of a standalone version of the emulator is now available, this makes it possible to demonstrate applications without having the full Visual Studio product installed.

Exhibition Hall
This years exhibition was smaller than at last years event, however since last years event was co-located with VS-Live this is understandable. One side effect of this was that there was less free swag. A number of device manufacturers were present at the show, including iMate and HP. iMate confirmed that they would be making Windows Mobile 5 upgrades available for existing devices from August, but no firm details on which devices would be supported and what the cost would be. HP had their newest device the 65xx series mobile communicator. It’s still early to tell whether users will warm to the square screen format, it would present a problem with older software. When you consider the device has a hardware keyboard and that you wouldn’t need the on-screen SIP the smaller screen size is less of an issue. The device manages to include a number of useful technologies such as GPS, Phone, Bluetooth etc.

Intel won my personal award for the best swag having a very cool pen which doubled as a pocket pc stylus, torch and laser pointer.

Other Platforms
Lets also not forget that Windows Embedded covers a large range of devices beyond the Pocket PC and Smartphone which we are most familiar with. One of these platforms is Windows Embedded for Point of Sale - WEPOS for short. This is built on top of Windows XP Embedded and optimised for point of sale and kiosk platforms.

Closer to familiar Windows Mobile territory is Windows CE - this is the operating system on which Windows Mobile is built but is used in a wide range of devices from Smartphones to Sewing Machines. At the Microsoft booth a number of devices were on show. Of particular interest was a souped up Hummer kitted out with a variety of stuff. One of these platforms is Portable Media Centre which is a handheld video jukebox, with a very slick interface. Another area in which Microsoft is trying to make inroads (sorry couldn't resist) is Windows Automotive. This is a highly optimised Windows CE based platform which integrates with the vehicle and can use information from the vehicle data bus as well as supporting features like driver distraction prevention to reduce the amount of data available to the driver while in motion. It also uses a voice interface. However neither of these two platforms have APIs which developers can take advantage of.

Multithreaded Applications
In the final session of the day, Maarten Struys, described multi-threading techniques and new functionality in the .NET Compact Framework v2.0. A key point highlighted was the need to use the Invoke method to ensure you only update controls in your applications UI from the form in which they are created - if you try to do this from a background worker-thread your app will crash, or in v2.0 raise an exception.

Evening Event
The Blue Man Group show was really good, very difficult to describe as it was a mixture of comedy, music and audience participation (not to mention lots of paper and strobe lighting). The show started with a selection of spoof announcements on a scrolling display, I laughed as the whole auditorium was asked to sing happy birthday to me (It wasn’t really my birthday of course).