[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Unfortunately for Windows Mobile users, a lot of developers have switched to other platforms (most importantly, iPhone) recently. This is one of the reasons there haven’t been, for example, any decent game releases for Windows Mobile for quite a long time, except for Gameloft’s products only available via mobile phone operators. (Check out PocketGamer.org, the leading Windows Mobile gaming news site for more info. Note that it’s just been gone through a serious facelift, also meaning many of my emulation-related articles have been frontpaged there.)

Unfortunately, almost the same stands for applications and tools. Fortunately, much more established WinMo developers have stuck with the platform than games developers. This also results in the remote device controller applications’ (still) being worked on. These programs let you control your Windows Mobile PDA or handset using the keyboard / mouse of your Windows desktop (or notebook) computer

There has been a lot of changes since I’ve published my last all-in-one roundup of device controller applications. (Note that I’ve also elaborated on these apps, at least as far as capturing screens is concerned, in my all-in-one bible “ALL Secrets of making Pocket PC screenshots – everything you will EVER need to know!“.) Several new applications (My Mobiler, EveryWAN Remote Support Personal Edition and mDesktop) with direct control capabilities have been released in the meantime and the already-existing ones (VirtualCE, SOTI Pocket Controller) have undergone a serious facelift. Now, there are much better and more sophisticated phone controller tools than in 2006, during the writing of the previous roundup; this is why I don’t elaborate on outdated and/or plain not recommended applications like rCE, VNC server-based ones, MS Windows Mobile Developer PowerToys and PDA Controller but only on recent and (with the exception of mDesktop) recommended ones:

VirtualCE 4

My Mobiler

EveryWAN Remote Support Personal Edition

mDesktop

and, last but in no way least, SOTI’s Pocket Controller, which has just been updated to 6.02.

As the last batch of my reviews doesn’t contain a well-documented performance comparison (it was back in 2005 that I published [a Pocket PC Thoughts frontpage] my last performance comparison with real videos), I found it necessary to augment my past reviews with a real performance evaluation.

This also means this roundup doesn’t really compare features and capabilities (just follow the My Mobiler, EveryWAN Remote Support Personal Edition, mDesktop and VirtualCE reviews for a complete overview) but another very important aspect: performance. (Except for a row dedicated to elaborating on the image capturing features of these apps.) When you control your phone with the mouse / keyboard of your desktop (notebook) computer, you’ll want to see as good performance and responsiveness as possible. With QVGA (low-resolution) screens and using standard operating system or utility / application (read: no games), this won’t really be an issue – all the current phone controller apps are able to deliver acceptable to excellent results, performance / responsiveness-wise.

Not so with the CPU usage of the controller app (which does need some handset-side processing – for example, compressing and send the current screen), which should be as little as possible (the more the CPU usage of the controller app, the less responsive the entire phone becomes). There are huge differences between these apps, even in QVGA mode (let alone the far more demanding high-res ones). This is why I paid special attention to measuring the CPU usage of the controllers.

And, there is a question of high-resolution (VGA or WVGA) screens and capturing game screens / videos, which, in cases, put an enormous burden on the phone (CPU usage-wise) and/or don’t result in any kind of usable control.

Test videos; evaluating them

I’ve, in addition to exactly measuring rendition speed with them, I’ve also published the benchmark test videos. They are at http://winmobiletech.com/012009PDAControllers so that anyone can evaluate / review my benchmark results him/herself.

There are several videos there for each of the five apps and the four test cases: two for QVGA, two for VGA and one-one for the GUI rendering speedtest with my benchmark tool elaborated on in my already-linked, 2005 benchmark article and another for the full-screen game animation test with Nanobotz. Note that while I talk about five apps, I offer six sets of videos: with SOTI’s Pocket Controller, for both 6.01 and 6.02 so that you can evaluate the performance differences yourself; note that with the two 6.02 gaming cases, I’ve also published comparative videos of an interim and the final 6.02 build for both QVGA and VGA.

The filename convention of the videos is as follows:

Phone name (either the VGA HTC Universal or the QVGA HTC Wizard) – either Draw (my tool) or Game (Nanobotz) – one of the five[/i] (six/seven) apps.avi

That is, Univ-Draw-mDesktop.avi means it

- has been taken on the Universal

- shows the GUI benchmark results (as opposed to the game)

- using the mDesktop remote controller app.

Evaluating interface speed; slowdown of the device

The easiest way to do this is playing back the counter benchmark videos slowed down and checking out how many figures are left out of the rendering. For example, if, in a video, all you see are 1, 5, 9, 13 etc., then, this means every fourth animation phase is displayed on the desktop.

The easiest way of slowing down the video playback is using Videolan VLC. Being playback and, then, right-click the 1.00x label on the bottom right, to the left of the elapsed/remaining time display. Drag down the slider so that the animation becomes far slower so that you won’t miss any number shown. This way, you can be absolutely sure you’ll see all (even the slightest) changes.

There is another issue some controllers (most notably, mDesktop on both QVGA and VGA and MyMobiler on QVGA) suffer from: the phone slows down because of them running. You can easily spot these problems too: just run the counter tests and check how much time it takes for them to get from 0 to 299. Basically, it should be 9 seconds; with the, in this regard, worse apps (most importantly, mDesktop), this can rise to as much as 14-15 seconds. Note that, in parentheses, I’ve also published these results.

Computing gaming fps

It’s pretty easy to compute the exact speed (frames per second, FPS) of rendering games: just divide the number of frame changes by the total time. For example, the VGA video taken with the current build of Pocket Controller 6.02 is 20 seconds long, and it contains 13 frame changes; that is, the net speed is 13/20 = 0.65 fps. Of course, the bigger, the better.

Key differences between SOTI Pocket Controller 6.01 and 6.02

As is pretty much clear from the performance results, (if you have the money,) the most recommended application is SOTI Pocket Controller. Let’s take a brief look at how the old (6.01; released about two years ago) and the brand new, 6.02 versions compare, performance-wise. (Feature / compatibility-wise, take a look at the list HERE) Note that the comparison chart contains numeric data on both versions (so does the video repository) in the second and third columns, respectively; here, I just emphasize the differences.