Gadgetory

hey guys it's Brandon minimun from pocketnow.com and in this video we're gonna take a look at the windows mobile application store done by hand Ango it's called in hand and it's actually been around for a while now but most people don't talk about it most devices don't come with the program pre-installed although the sony ericsson xperia x1 will have it so I thought it would be kind of cool to take a look at in hand and see how it does for an application store now I've already installed the program so I'm gonna go into the Start menu go to programs and click on in hand right here now this program tries to be a bit more than just a application store it also lets you get to the weather see some traffic with real-time traffic data and even see a report on stocks it's trying to be kind of a hub for all kinds of information but I'm gonna focus on just the application store aspect of this so this is the kind of main screen it's not too flashy it's kind of ugly the good thing about this whole interface and you're gonna see that it's it's not flashy at all throughout is that it's fast which is which is a really important thing to have in an application store so I'm gonna start off I'm going to go right into software and here's what we get we get a menu so we can go to Best Sellers recommended what's new we can go by category so I'm just gonna start off at bestsellers and click on there and we get a list and the list is simple we don't get the entire catalog of Han dango software for Windows Mobile but just certain ones although you can search through the whole catalog to find the software that you want you don't get to see your ratings on the screen like you can in the iPhone application store if we want to find out more information about a particular title we just tap on it we'll get a rating which is good although I'm not sure if this is five stars out of five stars or five out of six it doesn't really tell you that and then it tells you a little description you can also go on to click screenshots and it'll download them from the Han dango server which is kind of nice you can see an animated screenshot that will go through different screens of the program now unfortunately there is not a trial functionality so you can't download a trial although with the iPhone application store you can't do that either if you go to Han dangos website you can get a trial of pretty much any piece of Windows Mobile software so it's unfortunate that they didn't port this over to the in and application okay now I'm going to take you through the process of actually buying a piece of software I have this hooked up to my hand dango account on on the computer and it has my credit card information in there so just like the iPhone you can instantly download applications just as long as you log in so I'm gonna search I'm gonna go to software I'm going to search for chess I'm gonna get it inexpensive chess game just so I can demonstrate I'm gonna do search I'm just gonna do proceed over an EVDO connection right now so it's pretty fast and I'm just gonna go to the first one I see here these are all the chess programs called rampart chess I'm going to click buy and I'm gonna cut out for a minute as I log in okay so here we are and I'm covering up the screen just so for security reasons from a year we can press Continue and you can enter a promotion code if you have a coupon or a 10% off code or something like that but a click continue and it's doing an order verification that's purchasing right now and it says do you agree to pay this price it's 1295 and I'm going to say I agree now it's important to note that Windows Mobile applications are more expensive than those on the iPhone platform and that's because the stores like hand Ango and pocket gear take a higher percentage from developers so they have to price the applications higher hopefully this will change in the future if if Microsoft comes out with a sky market platform to deliver mobile software and charge a lower percentage but you should expect that if you're gonna get premium software for Windows Mobile it's going to be more expensive ok so here I am now no software activation required and I'm gonna click download now and you're gonna see it downloads pretty fast and you can't do simultaneous downloads unfortunately from hand Ango in hand but that said the downloads are very quick faster than they are on the iPhone because I think the applications are a little bit smaller in most cases so it automatically launches the file and starts to install it which is great seamless experience ok and it's done and now I can exit the program or I can just go right into the programs menu and find the application I think it's going to be listed up in it's an email message is gonna be listed up in games and yet there it is rampart chess and here we are we're done so hand an go in hand is a really good piece of software actually it's very fast it's a seamless experience that lets you search for software pay for it download it and install it all within a few minutes the only trouble is that the the interface isn't very good-looking as it is in the App Store on the iPhone now you can get the software by going to hand Ango comm slash client and from there you'll be able to download the software directly to your phone through an SMS or you can use the the installer for your desktop now I should note that I tried to get this to work on the HTC Touch pro but unfortunately wasn't listed in the list of compatible devices or some reason nor was the HTC touch diamond2 I think hand Ango needs to update their list but as you can see here see here I'm using the Verizon the X 60 900 and it works just fine and I'm sure it will on any other cube eg a Windows Mobile touchscreen device and it also works on Windows Mobile standard non touchscreen so that's it for now