Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Making the smartphone smart, only €19.99

My HTC Touch HD (a.k.a. Blackstone to you guys across the pond) is my first "Smartphone", and was reputedly an iPhone killer.

It hasn't lived up to that. Not that I've owned an iPhone.. yet.. but it feels a bit clanky to use. And no games has worked well yet. Bah!

But, since it's got 0.5 GHz, ~300 mb ram and 8 gb flash, it ought to be good at something. And I just found out that with WMWifiRouter it becomes an excellent 3g modem + wireless router (that can also play youtube videos in 800x480 :).

This is an excellent piece of software. It installs smoothly, asks for some options, then gives me 6 buttons to start mapping between wifi, 3g, bluetooth and usb whichever way makes sense.

It also monitors the battery's temp in case it overheats... Oookay. I suppose it's a good thing that it does, but it's like having a warning light + engine shutdown in your car in case the rear wheel nut is coming loose.

Can't blame the program for that, though.

I ended up with this because Vista fails to reco'nize my HTC as a PAN supporting bluetooth device. Pfft! My old GSM-only Nokia worked amazingly well (connect to network - bluetooth pan - presto), although it was hideously slow. Well, since it worked for the Nokia, I'll blame HTC this time around.

Anyway, I'm glad that I can now access the net from my laptop _anywhere_. Very nice when on some trains that don't yet offer WiFi. (Most budget trains don't, and the only ones running to my parent's part of the country don't either... although they do have power outlets.)

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