No place like Home 1.51a

Finally found some time to write about Home again, and there is a bit to talk about.  A couple of weeks ago I noticed a little change in the home page and a new version of my beloved Home.  Now after my last post which touted Home as a possible saviour for the whole Windows mobile platform, I had to follow up some thoughts on the new version and on the new business model the Pointui team are taking on.

Home is still one of the coolest free apps for a Windows Mobile phone, and even though there are some things missing from the new version, I'm pretty happy.  Before we get into the missing stuff, let's look at the new bits.  One of the failings in the 1.02 version was access to Contacts, but with 1.5a we saw Contacts added nicely into the interface with a direct button on the home screen.  With 1.5a though, you couldn't add Contacts from this new screen, this was a little problem discussed in the forums, and like all good software, was fixed 4 days after release with 1.51a.

1.51a is a good stable release with a nice set of features building on the previous versions without many useful surprises, other than the changes to Contacts.  If you have played with Home before there isn't much new.  The interface has had a bit of a face-lift, and there has been a shift to black as the main colour. 

One of the annoying omissions from 1.51a was the "notifications" introduced in 1.02b.  This was a handy feature notifying you of calender events on the Home screen after the initial pop-up message.  Also Home seems to be a little heavier on memory, and the delay on viewing Calendar and Task details is a real pain.  But I'm still using it because unlike Windows Mobile, I know it can get better.

One of the reasons I know this, is because of the direction the Pointui team are taking with the site and business model.  After noticing that they had a good product and a few people were happy with their work, they have decided to do it right.  Soon we will be able to choose between a free version of Home and a paid version.  The difference looks to be just eye candy, which is a smart move.

Home is still a great interface fix for Windows Mobile and I suggest if you have a compatible phone to try it out.  And hopefully with a reasonably priced paid version with some nice features to support development, and a good community behind them, Home will stay that way.

Jason

Home Demo

Pointui: Home, the savour of Windows Mobile

In the world of technology outside the Apple bubble, sometimes interfaces are not ideal so having a more open platform means things can be fixed or improved.  Here in Australia we are yet to get the perfect mobile platform, the iphone, so that means we have to make do with something a little more primitive.

To give a little background: I was given an Imate Jasjam for work, not the best choice as most of my work work is installation - cabling and crawling through roofs and under floors is not great for even the most robust phones.  As a geek I quite enjoyed playing with the WM5, but although theJasjam was an OK PDA , it was a useless phone.  I'm not going to go into the unreliability of the Jasjam, but it is well known as being a poor piece of hardware, and (nail in coffin) has a Windows mobile OS.  Out of the 4 we purchased for the office, 2 have been back for warranty repairs a number of times.

So as you can gather, this has not been a very happy story, until we stumbled upon a little beta GUI project called Pointui: Home.  Home does, at this stage, a number of things very right that seems to have been lost on the Microsoft GUI people.  The Pointui team have focused on making the handset useable,  by simplifying the GUI, and more importantly, they somehow have made it so I can answer a call.

The great strength, I feel, is setting it up so that it closes programs upon exiting them.  This may sound a little silly if you haven't used WM before, but one of the problems with the device is the lack of memory.  WM5, in order to speed things up, allows programs once closed to live on in memory for the next time you need them.  I'm sure this adds some speed gain to opening the program, but all it seemed to do for me was use up the memory and bring the handset to standstill.  Yes, yes I can hear the "well it IS Windows!" calls from the audience.   But surely there must be a setting to fix the problem of missing calls because the phone program loads too slow due to the memory being full from Calendar, Inbox, Photos, and for some reason Explorer, still being open. (I'm aware that you can get third party apps, and it looks like there maybe a Task Manager in WM6)

There was some talk that in the iPhone SDK all programs will be exited when a call comes in.  This is why Apple seem to always win in the useability stakes as they build/fix these problems before they are problems.  They begin with the question "What experience does the user want/need?" then cut out all the features that may detract from the answer.

What does Home do?  It is a GUI that sits over WM and focuses on the making the PDA a phone.  It has some iphone type magic on the touch screen so that most things can be done with a fingertip, rather than getting out the stylus.  There are some really coolflipping screens and sliding features, and I have found it reliable enough to run at startup and use as default interface.

If you are a jasjam user I recommend downloading and playing with the beta.  I have been using it as the main interface (by having it run at startup) for a couple of months now, with no problems.  It is free with a donation option, and will be receiving one from me.

Jason