There is no industry standard definition of “smart phone”, per se, but the term is used to describe a device that allows you to make voice telephone calls, but also includes advanced features, such as email, or word processing, more often associated with a PDA (“Personal Digital Assistant”) or an ultra portable laptop. Smart phones rely on mobile, or handheld, operating systems for their operation, and there are many different variants – BlackBerry, Palm OS, Nokia Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc. – although applications are typically not interchangeable between the various platforms. Smart phone are becoming increasingly important for business, and personal, use and some analysts predict that sales could increase by anything up to 30% during 2009.

Windows Mobile Phones

To avoid any confusion, “Windows Mobile” is the brand name for the handheld operating system, and applications, developed by Microsoft. Windows Mobile devices typically include a suite of Microsoft applications, including an email application – possibly Outlook Mobile, which allows you to take your calendar, contacts and tasks with you – and a version of Internet Explorer optimised for smaller screen sizes. Microsoft originally announced, perhaps optimistically, that it expected the use of Windows Mobile to increase by 50% during 2008 and 2009, and although the Apple iPhone, and the Google Android platform, have cut into its market, it is still more widely used, globally, than tooling for other mobile platforms, with the exception of Nokia`s Symbian, and Research in Motion`s BlackBerry.

Leading Windows Mobile phones include the Samsung BlackJack II, which weighs in a just 3½ oz., and features a 2.4″ display, 3G, GPS, plus Mobile versions of Internet Explorer and Office, and the HTC Touch HD, which compares favourably with the Apple iPhone, in terms of display size, and resolution, offering 480 x 800 pixel, or WVGA, resolution on a 3.8″ display.

Increasingly, manufacturers – including HTC – are feeling the need to add a user interface layer on top of Windows Mobile, itself, to provide a unique user experience, etc.. TouchFlo 3D, for example, is a finger operated user interface for Windows Mobile designed by HTC, and allows scrolling, navigation and editing akin to the Apple iPhone. Kaleido for Windows Mobile, designed by Digital Airways is intended as turnkey user interface solution for handset manufacturers, but is, nevertheless, completely customisable. It can be used to create feature-rich handsets, to industry standards, but also allows the creation of home pages, which can deliver new user experiences and services to an exiting mobile phone.

The first thing most people will notice about the application is how similar some of the functions are to TomTom Navigator, which has been largely abandoned for the aftermarket. This helps people migrate from the aging TTN6 with its very out of date maps without a steep learning curve. Since TomTom also own TeleAtlas it can also be assumed that TomTom are probably going to be using McGuider as the replacement. Navigating using McGuider is simple and routes can be chosen from postal addresses, post codes (in supported countries) , points of interest (custom ones are supported as well as the built in ones), points on a map and full co-ordinates. Route calculation speed is not the fastest and long distances can take 2-4 minutes to calculate, but once calculated there is no noticeable lag between current position and listed map position. McGuider gives a highest priority to major roads meaning many minor road shortcuts are missed.  This is good for local residents but does mean you sometimes drive further following McGuider routes than you would with other satnavs. The eta timings are also very ambitious as they appear to use the speed limit of the road instead of more realistic speeds. From experience I now add about 15% to the listed times to get a more accurate eta.

McGuider fully supports custom Point of Interest files using its own proprietary UPI format and a converter is available from Sygic to convert tab delimited text files into this format. There are also a number of third party converters available to convert from other formats like TomTom’s OV2 files. Care needs to be taken with these though as Sygic changed the UPI format slightly when they released McGuider 2009, and older files no longer work. The Sygic converter does have an option to change these older UPI files into the newer UPI format though. For users of PocketGPSWorld speed camera database it is now possible to download newer releases in correctly formatted txt files to be converted easily using Sygics converter. Care does need to be taken with the icons to display on the maps as the only supported formats are 8bit (256 colour) and 32bit bmp files – most graphics applications save as 24bit by default. It is also possible to add custom voice/sound alerts to points of interest, using files in ogg format. PocketGPSWorld have a number available for their speed camera database.

To keep the application up to date there is a McGuider Assistant application provided on the SD card. This requires the card to be inserted into a card reader or the phone to be set to use a mass storage driver. Simply using ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center will not work as the device does not show in MGA. TeleAtlas have recently released both a free map update and application update which should be run as they improve both post code lookups and application usability. For Symbian devices the application update is actually a necessity as it fixes a program crash when using custom POIs.

To conclude McGuider 2009 should be high on the list of potential sat nav software for Windows Mobile and Symbian based devices. It is not only cheap but also well featured. My mgsupport.co.uk is also available for answering any support questions you may have.

Not to be put off I decided to have another look around for a solution and found plently of others (although not with the XDA Graphite) having the same problem after installing WM6. There also appeared to be a potential solution which worked for some of using an installer to add in the old ‘Modem-link’ files used for BT DUN. The file (found here) should be copied to the phone and then installed by simply running the cab file. After this a soft reset of the phone is required (I found it worked best by removing the battery for 10 seconds) and then to pair the phone and TomTom together. For me this was all that was required and the pairing process worked first time, allowing me to use the TomTom Plus features again.

Once O2 get round to updating the firmware again, I hope they will have the foresight this time to include the legacy BT DUN files. It will make using the phone with my TomTom much easier.

1. Setting up Live Writer was a problem as the installer didn’t like me. This could be a Vista thing though and just removing all the Windows Live Dashboard Installer files fixed this.
2. At first WLW could not connect to the xmlrpc.php file on my server. This turned out to be easy to fix by adding the following to my .htaccess file.

   <Files xmlrpc.php>
   SecFilterInheritance Off
   </Files>

3. I also found a weird bug in WordPress that did not like saving this post via the web admin interface. I ended up adding some of the text, then saving it as a draft so I could add the Ultimate Tag Warrior tags from the web interface before finishing the text in WLW again. The bug is very odd and seems to be caused by the web console not liking saving files with xmlrpc in them anywhere. I have only been able to add it to this post as WLW doesn’t mind and once it is in the database it can be parsed correctly by WordPress.

In future I will be playing more with WLW, so there may be some updates more often than I would normally do – but don’t hold your breath