[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] tucahara:
Reviewing the audioRoute 1.2.010

Reviewing the audioRoute 1.2.010

It's really hard to believe that any VoIP client who play the sound just only on the loud speakerphone will become a real cellular telephony alternative. Everyone who got to be a VoIP nerd know the importance of routing the voice on the earpiece, and know

this is the Microsoft Windows Mobile fatal weakness

comparing with NOKIA and iPhone platform capabilities.

The first company who did some research and progress with Windows Mobile in routing the voice to earpiece was Ageet (with AGEphone). But even the today Mobile AGEphone 2.7x is still far from perfect. The small number of hardwares capable in playing AGEphone on earpiece keep the potential of VoIP technology on a very low scale. Another group who anticipated the importance in routing the voice to earpiece was FRING. Unfortunately, FRING developers team didn't learn that a VoIP application if missing a Dial-pad and DTMF, is incomplete. And the same with AGEphone, the FRING routing voice approach is not running well with all Windows Mobile hardwares. On the other hand, some few phone manufacturers get importance to the earpiece and released customized Microsoft VoIP clients to play the voice correctly.

Until now, there is no general solution, no panacea in routing the sound, so Windows Mobile just hopes.

An excellent approach came on xda-developers by routing the sound from speaker to earpiece with a RIL API sequence. The troca2.exe and audioswitch.exe must be mentioned.

When releasing the DynRIL sources, Teksoft came on the spot. The latest soundswitch product - audioRoute 1.2.010 is empowered with a stylish interface and appear as a very nice must-have software for Windows Mobiles. Unfortunately, the latest release of DynRIL doesn't work as good as previous version. At least, not on TiOMAP850 platforms. I am curious to know if, or on what hardwares, the new DynRIL API sequence have been reported to respond correctly as designed. Let's hope is just a bug, not a set back.

The new audioRoute 1.2.010 came with some innovative improvements: instead build a monolith that run the RIL API sequence, Teksoft released a RIL wrapper, an audioroute-switch that can be also accessed by scripts, and a try-icon executable designed to manage the playing sound-instances from speaker to earpiece.

The try icon interface can be dragged on taskbar, and some hidden features can reveal more if modifing some HKLM\Software\Teksoft\audioRoute\ properties. For example, if want to really know what is happening when tapping the audioRoute buttons, you may enable the EnableDebug to “1”, on Registry.

What personally I consider a downgrade when compare with downloaded DynRIL v1.1 is the missing of a "quit" option (you can only kill the try-icon executable) and also the missing of the coloured sound-routed instances.

Now, you are not informed what instances are active with the new interface.

DynRIL v1.1 had the following improvements:

- Started switching on earpiece directly;

- Colored the taskbar-rectangle accordingly with the instances, especially needed when sound was routed to the earpiece;

- Switched back to load-speaker on exit;

(incomplete) Hardvares list reported to work with: DynRIL v1.1

More necessary customization is expected to be implemented - like tracking the microphone in use, or activating RILInit sequence with a customized list of third-party applications. Are those higher expectations than ever? I don't think so.

Let's hope Teksoft will correct the known buggs and improve this must-have baby.

Congratulations radhoo !

Thank you.

tucahara