I have now owned 2 Windows Mobile phones and have had so much trouble with both of them locking up. The first was an O2 Atom Life with Windows Mobile 6.0. My current phone is an HTC Touch Pro with Windows Mobile 6.1. With this phone I must do a hard reset several times after turning it on to get it to work properly. The problem is the touchscreen does not work and the graphics are distorted or blank. Both phones have 4 G/bytes of memory and only 3 extra programs loaded on the expanded memory, never the main memory. In the past I have owned two Blackberrys and one Nokia E61 with the Symbian OS. Those phones too were not were not without some OS glitches but not nearly to the problem level of the Windows Mobile phones. I don't know how Microsoft expects to compete with Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian, and the Linux based phones. I know I will probably never buy another Windows Mobile phone especially if Pleco has a version of their software the runs on another platform besides Palm. Is it just me or are others having problems with Windows Mobile?
Is Windows Mobile the Worst Smart Phone OS?
- Thread starter dvbssman
- Start date
dvbssman said:
I have had an HTC touch diamond, for over 9 months now with windows 6.1. Basically the same phone you have without the keypad and micro sim card and have never had to do a hard reset once since I have had the telephone except for when I upgraded the ROM or when I first installed Pleco in the main memory. In all that time have also only had to do 2 soft resets when the phone locks up. I use Pleco for at least 2 1/2 hours each day and with additional use of other programs the phone gets over 3 hours of use each day. Touch flo is on all the time and it gives me no problems and don't have problems with pictures or graphics.
I did have a problem on the first day by installing pleco 1.0 at the time (now have Pleco 2.0.2b1) in the main memory of the phone and the phone was not happy at all because too much of the phone memory had been used up. I removed pleco at that time and reinstalled it in the 4GB of Internal storage and had no problems after that. Also installed a small program called memmaid 2.3 which cleans up the memory on a daily basis. I really don't think Windows Mobile is your problem.
Personally I'd dig up that old Churchill quote and say that Windows Mobile is the worst smartphone OS except for all of the others.
iPhone's slick, modern, and powerful, but is missing a lot of features that other platforms have had for years (even in OS 3.0), is incredibly locked-down yet very easy to crack (taking away most of the stability / security / anti-piracy benefits to its being so locked down), requires one to tithe 30% of one's revenues to its creator and comes from a company with a pretty terrible track record in general as far as how it treats developers.
Symbian to me at least seems just as buggy / slow as Windows Mobile, but is harder both to program for and to use (I've complained here in the past about how long it took me to set up WiFi for the first time on a P1i), and given the direction they're moving it could easily end up as locked-down as iPhone soon.
Android aside from what I consider the unpardonable sin of being Java-only is woefully immature at this point (c.f. Sparkletron's comments in the Android thread), and requires you to ignore the fact that it's probably not in Google's long-term corporate interests to encourage a healthy market in "offline" software for it or any other platform.
webOS looks promising but won't be able to run Pleco or any other "serious" software until it adds support for native development (which could be years away), and BlackBerry can't run any "serious" software even now owing to its lackluster programming environment. (and commits that same Java-only sin as Android)
Windows Mobile, for all its quirkiness and instability, is easy to program for, easy to use, more open / customizable than any other widely-used smartphone platform, and comes from a company which for all its faults has been downright heroic at times in its efforts to help and support developers - nobody puts as much effort into API design or backwards-compatibility as Microsoft, or gives developers access to its future product plans as completely and as far in advance. It's handicapped by its reliance on the somewhat-creaky Windows CE, but if you believe Steve Ballmer's recent comments they're eventually going to merge it with (or at least link it much more closely to) desktop Windows, and combining the openness and ease-of-use of Windows Mobile with the speed and stability of the Windows NT kernel would make for a really formidable mobile OS.
iPhone's slick, modern, and powerful, but is missing a lot of features that other platforms have had for years (even in OS 3.0), is incredibly locked-down yet very easy to crack (taking away most of the stability / security / anti-piracy benefits to its being so locked down), requires one to tithe 30% of one's revenues to its creator and comes from a company with a pretty terrible track record in general as far as how it treats developers.
Symbian to me at least seems just as buggy / slow as Windows Mobile, but is harder both to program for and to use (I've complained here in the past about how long it took me to set up WiFi for the first time on a P1i), and given the direction they're moving it could easily end up as locked-down as iPhone soon.
Android aside from what I consider the unpardonable sin of being Java-only is woefully immature at this point (c.f. Sparkletron's comments in the Android thread), and requires you to ignore the fact that it's probably not in Google's long-term corporate interests to encourage a healthy market in "offline" software for it or any other platform.
webOS looks promising but won't be able to run Pleco or any other "serious" software until it adds support for native development (which could be years away), and BlackBerry can't run any "serious" software even now owing to its lackluster programming environment. (and commits that same Java-only sin as Android)
Windows Mobile, for all its quirkiness and instability, is easy to program for, easy to use, more open / customizable than any other widely-used smartphone platform, and comes from a company which for all its faults has been downright heroic at times in its efforts to help and support developers - nobody puts as much effort into API design or backwards-compatibility as Microsoft, or gives developers access to its future product plans as completely and as far in advance. It's handicapped by its reliance on the somewhat-creaky Windows CE, but if you believe Steve Ballmer's recent comments they're eventually going to merge it with (or at least link it much more closely to) desktop Windows, and combining the openness and ease-of-use of Windows Mobile with the speed and stability of the Windows NT kernel would make for a really formidable mobile OS.
It sounds like you're having physical hardware problems with your phone. You should get it replaced, hopefully under warranty.
In my experience HTC does a decent job with hardware, but a mediocre job of making Microsoft's OS work well. If you go with HTC you often will need to start surfing xda-developers and wait for the community there to offer a stable ROM. However if you go with another Windows Mobile manufacturer you're missing out on the large HTC hacking community. That's part of the reason I went with the Sony/Ericcson Xperia. It's HTC manufactured with the community support but has SE quality control on the ROM and the hardware specs.
In my experience HTC does a decent job with hardware, but a mediocre job of making Microsoft's OS work well. If you go with HTC you often will need to start surfing xda-developers and wait for the community there to offer a stable ROM. However if you go with another Windows Mobile manufacturer you're missing out on the large HTC hacking community. That's part of the reason I went with the Sony/Ericcson Xperia. It's HTC manufactured with the community support but has SE quality control on the ROM and the hardware specs.
Thank you Renovator, Idolse, and Mike for your replies. I feel a little better and a little more confident about Windows Mobile. Mike's insight about the various mobile operating systems was very enlightening and I think I will try a memory management program like Renovator mentioned. When I fix my problem I'll post the solution so perhaps it can help others.
Yep I am pretty much in agreement with the others here, I have had two winmo phones (a kaiser/TyTN II/MDA Vario III and now my SE X1 Xperia) and they have worked far better than I expected, mainly due to all the neg press or comments (alot from apple users tbh). I have only ever had to hard reset my x1 after upgrading the ROM and its never let me down yet after 4 months or so of ownership... my Kaiser did not let me down once in over a year of ownership and its still going strong... it really does sound like you have hardware issues and need to get the phone replaced...
I fully agree with Idolse... xda is simply brilliant and has so much in the way of support its invaluable.
I fully agree with Idolse... xda is simply brilliant and has so much in the way of support its invaluable.
WM isn't bad, really. It can be kinda confusing if you're using the default OS, though Touch Flo probably helps in that department (if you're using an HTC phone). I've had a few issues with it here and there. Never *had* to hard reset it, though I did it once for a problem that turned out to not be a problem with my phone at all (Thanks Vodafone!). Apart from that, I've had to soft-reset it every now and then when programs stop responding or what have you. I think part of the problem is that I run out of memory fairly easily (Dot Net Compact Framework apps take up absurd amounts of memory), and install Apps that aren't always fully tested.
But it's a very customizable OS, and it's quite efficient once you get used to it. Coming from a Treo 680, I find app-switching speeds aren't fantastic, but the ability to multi-task, the better browser choice (Skyfire!), and going to 3G from GPRS (Vodafone and Edge? Yeah right) are well worth it. That, and I have relatively good eyesight so I like that I can make the font a lot smaller on my Pro than I could have on my 680.
But it's a very customizable OS, and it's quite efficient once you get used to it. Coming from a Treo 680, I find app-switching speeds aren't fantastic, but the ability to multi-task, the better browser choice (Skyfire!), and going to 3G from GPRS (Vodafone and Edge? Yeah right) are well worth it. That, and I have relatively good eyesight so I like that I can make the font a lot smaller on my Pro than I could have on my 680.