Turn your PocketPc into an Iphone Part II

[surur]

I dont know if its rad or sad, but this person has certainly put A LOT of effort into turning his PocketPC Phone into an IPhone, and so far pretty successfully too.

Watch the iPhone interface running on a Pocket PC
Cor, I can't wait till the iPhone comes out, with its swizzy touch-screen interface, the like of which hasn't been seen on any mobile device ever before, ever. But hang on, what's this below? Some bloke's fiddled with their E-TEN M600 Pocket PC to make it identical to an iPhone ? including the tactile UI and iPod music app? D'oh!

http://techdigest.tv/2007/02/watch_the_iphon.html

There is no taking away from Apple's design flair, but their innovations appear incredibly easy to copy. It makes one wonder why it took them so long to bring it to market.

Surur

 

[Malatesta]

lol

it's both rad and sad. I am impressed with how well they mimicked those features and his device sure seemed speedy.

If just a proof-of-concept that WM is flexible enough to emulate most functions, it sure accomplished that task.

 

[bloodycape77]

I say kudos to the guy for being able to make software like this, opens up more options for us. Malatesta and to the others is sad because he spent time to make his phone look like the iPhone?

 

[surur]

Its a bit sad that its just another copy, and not original designs.

The obvious answer is that if he wanted an IPhone so much, why not just buy one, but from his accent he's European, and wont get it for a year at least, and of course the IPhone lacks in some areas which he may be concerned about.


But its rad because he is clearly a very talented programmer, who seems to have copied many of Apple's much touted features with ease. Kudos to him for that.

Surur

 

[Certs]

There is no taking away from Apple's design flair, but their innovations appear incredibly easy to copy. It makes one wonder why it took them so long to bring it to market.

Surur

To be fair, this is only a few of its "innovations." We won't know exactly how much is left until the phone hits market. And the "ppod" program can't compare to the album art/scroll UI that the iPhone will have...

 

[surur]

True, and there's probably 100's of other smaller touches around also contributing to the look and feel.

Surur

 

[Iceman6]

He got the MultiTouch UI running on a Windows phone? Ummm no.

 

[Malatesta]

He got the MultiTouch UI running on a Windows phone? Ummm no.

iceman, we're quite well aware that this doesn't have everything the iPhone has as discussed right above your post. It also didn't say "Apple" on his phone either but thanks for pointing out the obvious. But considering the iPhone isn't out for another 4 months this is impressive from a programmer standpoint.

 

[vinman]

Wow, it would be cool to have that level of understanding of the ppc os. I'd install that interface on my 8125 and smile every time I used it. Wonder if there are any plans to make it available...

 

[Iceman6]

surur, I agree it's a great hack. I was just reacting to your comment that Apple's "innovations appear incredibly easy to copy." He's using an iPhone skin with large icons for the applications. Big whoop. The iTunes copy is very fun. But there's so much more to the iPhones UI than those two features.

 

[Certs]

Still, what he did is amazing. I like the flick-scroll too, probably the most remarkable thing he was able to replicate IMO

 

[marcol]

It's certainly clever but every time he opened an app it just made me think how ugly and cluttered the WM UI is compared to the (copied) iPhone screens he'd just left.

 

[surur]

surur, I agree it's a great hack. I was just reacting to your comment that Apple's "innovations appear incredibly easy to copy." He's using an iPhone skin with large icons for the applications. Big whoop. The iTunes copy is very fun. But there's so much more to the iPhones UI than those two features.

I assume multi-touch is as much hardware as software, and with Apple having bought the patents its not likely to show up anywhere else soon.

Surur

 

[bruckwine]

Think that's pretty cool for a guy w/o a multi-billion dollar organisation behind him

 

[bloodycape77]

To be fair, this is only a few of its "innovations." We won't know exactly how much is left until the phone hits market. And the "ppod" program can't compare to the album art/scroll UI that the iPhone will have...

Give it time and something very close to that will be added too.

 

[surur]

It's certainly clever but every time he opened an app it just made me think how ugly and cluttered the WM UI is compared to the (copied) iPhone screens he'd just left.

This is true, but that is because it is stylus-centric, which obviously allows for a higher density of control elements. If you are going to be finger centric obviously you will have less on the screen, with wider separation between elements due to reduced accuracy. One wonders if having less on the screen has any productivity implications.

Surur

 

[marcol]

This is true, but that is because it is stylus-centric, which obviously allows for a higher density of control elements. If you are going to be finger centric obviously you will have less on the screen, with wider separation between elements due to reduced accuracy. One wonders if having less on the screen has any productivity implications.

Plus there are aren't hidden, pop-up menus in the way there are in the Palm, WM and Symbian UIs so everything has to be shown on the main displays. The iPhone UI mostly seem to rely on on-screen option buttons at the bottom of the screen and these open a new display. It seems to me that this works very well for the apps demoed at www.apple.com/iphone/ but it remains to be seen if this will be good for all apps. It does make for a very simple, clean and attractive UI (IMHO) that should be easy and quick to use. If they can make it at least as functional as the UIs on the competing OSs that would be a real triumph for Apple and might well have profound effects on what Microsoft, Nokia, Palm et al. offer us.

Big question though: even if it's a real logistical and aesthetic triumph, will people like it? A finger-based, touch-screen UI is really quite different to anything most people will have used before. It's possible to imagine people really taking to it and it being a real success, but it's equally easy to imagine people finding it just plain odd and unusual and not wanting to bother. I'd guess both camps will be populated, but where will the balance lie?

 

[surur]

To play devil's advocate, the Nintendo DS is doing very very well, and its main innovation is the touch screen, so maybe this is the "touch generation".

Apple says its reaching out to the people intimidated by smarter phones, and I can see their point. I just hope when others emulate them they do not remove all the advanced options which more dedicated users like.

Surur

 

[specimen38]

Impressive! (Someone said there they saw multi-touch stuff going on, I only saw scrolling.) But still impressive. I'll wait for the real thing, but impressive.

 

[archie]

I dont know if its rad or sad, but this person has certainly put A LOT of effort into turning his PocketPC Phone into an IPhone, and so far pretty successfully too.



There is no taking away from Apple's design flair, but their innovations appear incredibly easy to copy. It makes one wonder why it took them so long to bring it to market.

Surur

Don't you wonder why Palm or Microsoft didn't bring it to market sooner? I find it incredibly thick-headed to belittle and cast doubt upon Apple for bringing some new interface element to the table only then to praise the attempts of others trying to copy it.

The only thing this guy did was change the instructions for scrolling. Instead of relying on a constant input, he merely instructed/programmed the handheld to continue scrolling until stopped with another touch of the screen.

This is something that actually takes less processing power.

Everything else is just a visual copy of graphics.