[General Topics] Menneisyys:
The handheld controller scene (a desktop Windows computer controlling a Windows Mobile device) is pretty lively. SOTi, the market leader, have just released a brand new and pretty nice series of their well-known, market leader Pocket Controller (see my SPT / PPCT-frontpaged review HERE). Other developers haven’t been lazy either: BitBank (developer of PQV and SmartGear, both kick-butt, highly optimized, assembly-based applications) have announced a brand new upgrade to their Virtual CE too, now, promising compatibility with all recent operating systems and, what is more, SPEED, pure SPEED (I hope it really turns out as good as promised!). Finally, the MTUX folks have recently released another, very promising and, despite its comparative sluggishness and severe lack of features, very useful remote controller tool, MyMobiler. In this tutorial & review, I review the latter – and also provide you with a tutorial.

(Current, tested version: 1.0 70626)

(controlling Call of Duty 2 on the 2700G-based WM5 Dell Axim x51v)

(a standard WM6 VGA Pocket PC screenshot)

Compatibility

Pocket PC (WM6 Pro / Classic)

It’s compatible with all Pocket PC’s running at least WM2003. Has no problems with VGA (except for one Pocket PC model, the Pocket Loox 720), Landscape and/or WM6.

MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard)

MyRemoter is not only compatible with Pocket PC’s, but also MS Smartphones – both 176*220 and QVGA ones. It works flawlessly on the WM5 AKU3 176*220 HTC Oxygen (s310) as can be seen in the following screenshot:

On the HTC Vox (s710), it works with the keyboard (in landscape mode, with opened keyboard), as opposed to SOTI’s Pocket Controller. This is definitely a GREAT thing. It, however, doesn’t support copy / paste from there (ViTO CopyPaste, of course, works), unlike with most (all?) other Pocket PC’s and Smartphones. (Controlling the HTC Vox has always been problematic.)

Tutorial

Using the application is, fortunately, really straightforward. As the program has no decent help (except for some advanced tips HERE), I’ve written a quick tutorial to get you going.

Get the controller HERE; install it

Click the shortcut icon (note that it will NOT be put in the Start menu, but on your desktop); it’ll display a runtime icon, , in the system tray.

Clicking the system tray icon, you’ll be presented a context menu where you can initiate a connection. This can be done by either Connect or Open Mobiler; the latter not only starts the connection, but also shows the main GUI. As Open Mobiler is the default operation for the icon, if you just double-click it, the GUI will immediately come up (after connecting, if necessary).

Note that, by default, the connection is automatically established. This results in Should you want to disable auto connecting when you cradle your handheld, you can easily do this in the menu – just untick “Auto Connect”

The main GUI of the application is really easy to use as it’s really simple

Don’t forget that, if you have more than one device, you may want to force an Exit in the context menu if you encounter connection problems upon swapping your handhelds.

Compared to SOTI’s Pocket Controller,

Pros

Free!!!!

HTC Vox (s710) keyboard support

Lower CPU usage on QVGA devices

Cons

Only ActiveSync is supported – no real TCP/IP connections (that is, you can’t for example control your handheld via a Wi-Fi or a mobile phone connection)

As far as capturing screenshots / videos is concerned, only BMP and JPG output; no video recording

No on-screen drawing

No printing support

No manual screen rotation (this means you won’t be able to manually rotate for example GAPI games using non-system-level landscape mode – you’ll always see them in Portrait, unless you start them explicitly after switching the entire system into Landscape mode and the game doesn’t rotate it back to Portrait upon starting. Several games do so; for example, Call of Duty 2.)

Not any kind of extended desktop-side functionality (registry editor, file system access, task manager etc.)

Really simple menus (menu screenshots: Mobile, Edit, Options (the key menus: 1 2)

No support for pre-WM2003 operating systems (even the latest, 6.0 version of SOTi’s app supports all WinCE-based, even ancient operating systems)

On MS Smartphones, an icon is shown on the task bar and it can't be hidden. Pocket Controller 6 doesn't do this (neither does the 5.x series if you apply my registry hack).

Leaves low-res, QVGA, pixelizated screen on all VGA devices after exiting; fortunately, any kind of a refresh operation (for example, going to Start / Programs for a full screen refresh) helps this. On top of this, the bottom third of the Dell Axim x51v (A12 ROM) screen is garbled – a common problem with this model / ROM version with several other, similar controller titles

If you disconnect (for example, remove from the cradle) a handheld while a remote session is active, the screen becomes garbled (even on QVGA devices). Again, this can be easily helped by a forced screen refresh – but, even better, try to disconnect before removing your device from the cradle. This isn’t the case with the SOTI app either.

While I encountered no similar problems on other VGA devices (WM6 Universal, A12 x51v, AKU3.5 hx4700), it has never recognized the WM2003SE Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720 as a VGA device. With it, should you want to make non-pixelizated screenshots, you will end up having to use the native VGA mode, which works OK on all VGA models (hx4700 screenshot; this shot also shows the pretty big, ~65% CPU usage on the iPAQ). Note that forcing \Windows\remote.exe doesn’t help either (I’ve tested), unlike with, say, the Microsoft controller.

Much higher CPU usage on VGA devices

If you have more than one device, you may end up having to completely shut down and restart the desktop-side client every time you switch machines to avoid being unable to connect to the new device. This is not the case with SOTi’s app, which rarely (if ever) needs to be shut down even if you actively (re)connect different devices and start / stop control sessions.

Compared to other free solutions, it’s

Definitely faster than any else free controller

Compatible with (most) VGA devices (and Smartphones)

Supports clipboard operations (even using the PC keyboard for shortcuts – Ctrl-C and V)

Has no problems with dynamic screen orientation changes or the native VGA mode

VGA support on most devices (except for the Pocket Loox 720 in standard SE VGA mode)

HOWEVER, it doesn’t support manual screen rotation, unlike some of the other titles

CPU usage

If you’ve ever used any handheld controller tool, you surely know the client running on the handheld consumes a lot of CPU cycles when in a controlling session (but NOT otherwise) and, therefore, slows the entire device down.

On VGA devices, it’s definitely using more CPU cycles than SOTI’s Pocket Controller: on my x51v, about 59%, as opposed to the 41% of Pocket Controller.

On QVGA devices, on the other hand, the situation is just the opposite: it seems to use considerably less CPU cycles (~21% as opposed to ~33%).

Verdict

Well, I pretty much like this controller application. While it certainly has bugs, shortcomings and lower speed than the SOTi Pocket Controller, speed-wise, it is still WAY better than any other free controller tool I know of. If you don’t want to pay for SOTi’s excellent Pocket Controller and / or MUST use a freeware tool (because of, for example, enterprise restrictions), this should be the first remote controller app to check out.