Pocket PCs getting square screens soon?
By Peter Rojas 
posted December 15th 2004 12:05PM
posted December 15th 2004 12:05PM
The peeps at Microsoft who handle Windows Mobile stuff have been telling us for a while that Pocket PCs with square
screens (like the kind on the Treo
600 and Treo 650) were on the way (the newest version
of the OS already supports screens with square resolutions), but so far we haven't seen much concrete proof that any
were actually coming out. At least not until now. Darryl Burling reports on getting an email from Handango about a
special marketing program for developers to get cracking on applications that "support the new square screen Pocket
PC." Haven't seen anything about what the first square screened Pocket PC (Pocket PC Phone) might be, but you know
we're on it.
[Via Geekzone]
I just dont get it, whats so great about a square screen?
Dude! It's SQUARE! Maybe it's a Feng Shui issue.
I know if I had a choice between solving the problem of world peace, world hunger, or making Pocket PCs have a square screen, I'd so totally fix the latter it'd make your head spin.
square screen means a Treo form factor device running PPC.
From what I've heard, the reason you would want a square screen on a PocketPC is for a device with a thumb keyboard in a smaller form factor than you can get with the standard 4:3 displays currently found on PocketPCs. When you're using the soft input panel (SIP) on a PocketPC, the remaining screen area that isn't covered by the SIP is a square. In theory, you shouldn't ever need to use the SIP keyboard if you have a thumbboard on the device.
The support for this is already built into PPC2003SE. If you're curious about it, you can actually download the PocketPC emulator from MSDN and see what this would look like.