There has been quite a bit of talk recently about the Samsung Focus and its ability to accept a MicroSD card as additional storage. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of conflicting information, leaving current and prospective Focus owners confused.

Initially, Microsoft had stated that Windows Phone 7 would not support MicroSD.  Later, they stated that they wouldn’t support end-users upgrading the storage via MicroSD. Now AT&T is saying that customers should not install MicroSD cards until specific cards certified for Windows Phone 7 are released, even though the instruction manual for the Focus states that a user should be able to install a Class 2 or higher card with no problems.

I confess that I’ve had some strange issues with my phone, but I’m not sure if I can attribute them to the MicroSD card that I installed.  Twice since I purchased it I’ve had the phone spontaneously reboot and when it rebooted it was at what appeared to be factory settings.  I powered the phone down, popped open the back cover and reseated the MicroSD card. Upon reboot, the device was back to normal.

I’ll keep an eye on it to see how the phone behaves over the next few weeks and will report back if I notice any other oddities.

PopCap Games has brought its popular franchise Bejeweled to Windows Phone 7, and the game does not disappoint. With the release of Bejeweled LIVE, PopCap has delivered a game which offers a smooth, beautiful and fun experience.

Read full review

I picked up a new Samsung Focus at AT&T today, and I have to say, so far I’m loving it!

I added a 16GB MicroSD card to the device for a total of about 22GB of storage. I ran into a problem with the procedure for adding the card that was provided in the Quick Start manual, however. The instructions said to power off the device, put the card in and then hold down the volume down, camera and power buttons to format the card. I did this and it went into a download mode that said it should take 10 minutes but was still stuck there after 30. I finally just pulled the battery and started up the phone again, but it didn’t recognize the card. I then went to Settings > About and reset the phone using the button there. After that completed the phone recognized the additional storage.

I’ve been using the phone since this afternoon and it’s been great. The UI is extremely smooth and responsive. Getting used to the layout and how to efficiently use the operating system will take some getting used to, I’m sure.  I’ll post more thoughts over the coming weeks as I integrate it into my daily life.  If you have any questions about the phone, please be sure to ask and I’ll do my best to answer them!

I decided to wait a little while before I posted my thoughts on Microsoft’s announcement of Windows Phone 7 Series.  I wanted to give myself a little time to digest all the coverage.  I also wanted to gather my thoughts on what we know and what is still up in the air.

For those that haven’t seen the new interface yet (where have you been?), here’s a quick video intro:

I’m not going to go very in depth in this post because many other sites have covered what we know with extreme depth and clarity.  If you’re looking for an in depth article with very good analysis, see this Engadget article.  For my part, I’m simply going to cover things from my personal perspective, picking out the things that I really like or things that I think will really apply to my life.

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft will reportedly be announcing Windows Mobile 7 at Mobile World Congress during a Steve Ballmer press conference on February 15, 2010. There have been rumors swirling for weeks now about what we’re going to learn about Windows Mobile 7 at MWC.

I haven’t talked about Windows Mobile much on the site, mainly because there hasn’t been much news regarding the platform for a while. Sure, Windows Mobile 6.5 and subsequent versions were released, and they were an improvement (somewhat) over previous versions. But they weren’t the big, revolutionary leap forward that we’ve been expecting. Whether Windows Mobile 7 will fulfill that promise from Microsoft, we’ll have to wait and see.

Read the rest of this entry »