[Non-Touchscreen Windows Mobile Other] Menneisyys:
1.5.2 Toonel

Toonel, the transparent compressor proxy, is a GREAT way to save data usage costs. If you don’t have an unlimited data plan, you really should check it out by, first, reading my related article & tutorial HERE. I’ve published several articles and tips on Toonel; the just-linked one is the one to start with.

While, it seems, it’s not possible to make the native Windows Mobile version work, the Java versions does work on Smartphones.

As far as the native Windows Mobile version is concerned, according to the folks HERE (thanks for the link to the Toonel folks; it's Russian - Babel "translation" HERE), some people managed to make the native (.NET CF) version of Toonel run. I haven’t succeeded in this on either of my Oxygen or Vox.

Fortunately, the Java version works. In general, you’ll only need the (brand new) CrEme 4.12 (download the TI OMAP version of the 4.1 series if you have a TI OMAP-based Smartphone) and THIS JAR file (version 0.45 - do NOT use version 0.50!). Install CrEme (you can do this on the storage card too – then, however, you’ll need to modify the link file I give you), copy the JAR file to the root directory of your handheld (you can, actually, copy it anywhere – but, then, you’ll need to modify the link file I will give you soon) and, then, copy THIS link file to \Windows\Start Menu. Then, just click the latter to start Toonel in the background. Upon start, you should see THIS screen. If you see THIS (note the bind() failed message!), it shows Toonel is already running.

Note that the CrEme process takes quite a lot of memory (but, fortunately, little CPU time – about 1-2% - when inactive) as can be seen in HERE. Beware of this fact – the operating system may kill the CrEme (Toonel) process in the background, particularly if you start other, memory-intensive programs. Then, you will just need to restart the proxy by clicking the startup script.

As, currently, the SP version of Opera Mobile (as with old 8.60 Pocket PC builds) doesn’t have internal support for entering proxy servers, you must enter the proxy information in the config file by hand. However, as with the old PPC betas, you can easily configure the proxy server by just editing \Application Data\ Opera\ opera.ini and adding the following section:

[Proxy]

Use HTTP=1

HTTP server=127.0.0.1:8080

Enable HTTP 1.1 for proxy=1

A screenshot of the Web admin interface of the locally running Toonel on my Vox:

As can clearly be seen, there was about 80% (fourfold!) bandwidth usage saving during the active session. This alone makes Toonel really worthy if yours is not an unlimited data plan.

A quick visit to WhatIsMyIP also shows it’s through the Toonel server that you’re connected (85.25.148.242 is one of the IP’s of the Toonel servers).

It’s VERY important to remember that, currently (as of 07/10/2007), the SP version of Opera Mobile does NOT reliably support proxy servers. Therefore, if you absolutely must use Toonel (or ANY external proxy server), you MUST use IEM and forget Opera Mobile.

As IEM, as with the PPC version, also depends on the operating-system level proxy settings (unlike other browsers), you must also configure the system to access the Net differently than before. That is, do the following:

in IEM, go to Menu / 9 Tools / 3 Options / Connections, untick “Automatically detect settings” and select “Work” in the list as can be seen in HERE

in the system-level Settings, go to 6 Connections / 6 Proxy, press Action on New and create a new record as can be seen in THIS screenshot (as can be seen in HERE, just leave “Type” on “HTTP”). You can name the proxy setting anything; in here, I’ve called it ‘t’. That is, all you need to do is setting “The Internet” to “Connects from”, “Work” to “Connects to” and entering “127.0.0.1:8080” in “Proxy (name:port)”.

Note that, after this, you will need to configure your other programs also using the system-level settings to use Toonel instead of a direct connection. Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to configure the built-in Messaging to use the built-in POP3 proxy support of Toonel (as opposed to the Pocket PC Messaging). Also, remember that, should you have the built-in Live (or MSN) Messenger, defining the proxy will also render them useless.

Unfortunately, it seems it’s not possible to make these programs work with a proxy defined in the above way. That is, you will need to delete the proxy every time you want to access your mail. It seems there are no other ways of disabling it - for example, setting the source / target networks to something else doesn’t work.

Again, keep in mind that you can have Toonel activated for IEM (that is, using a system-level proxy setting) AND still access your mail (both compressed, via Toonel, and uncompressed) via other, Smartphone-compliant mailer clients; for example, FlexMail. With the latter, you can safely use the compression offered by Toonel too and the mails downloaded just OK.

1.5.3 Java applets

While the IEM plug-in of the just-released CrEme 4.12 (the only Java Virtual Machine to be compatible with the Smartphone AND have an applet plug-in) can be registered, it doesn’t seem to be working, unlike on the Pocket PC.

Neither the applet-based Radar Weather test nor the local demo applet (Cube) shipped with the system work: the JVM plug-in just keeps showing "loading applet". Example screenshots: 1 2 (Vox); 3 (Oxygen).