I've had enough of Windows Mobile

[Lurks]

. The bottom line is I just can't stand windows mobile. It's nothing short of diabolical despite me giving it the best try out possible. I've got a HTC Touch HD and I've got a cooked firmware on it which delivers a good boost in features and performance over the firmware it shipped with. It's still so poor as a phone, as a web browser, as a messenger, that I just can't take it any more. I know from a past email exchange with Mike that we're not really going to see eye to eye on this and being as Pleco is wedded to C++ (which as a developer I also understand), there aint going to be an Android version any time soon.

That doesn't really absolve WM. Having to mess around just to get Chinese language support and the sub optimal third party input systems that either don't work right, don't work at all, or are just plain a pain in the ass even when they do work... bit of a deal breaker. At least as much as the lack of a plain jane decent gmail system (the browsers are a farce). Also I have bsolutely zero faith that MS will fix this with 6.5 or even 7 to my satisfaction.

Then there's the whole stylus thing. I think it's ironic how much extra hardware I'm carrying around and yet how much more useful it was walking down the street having the Oxford Beginner's Chinese Dictionary on an old N95 because I could easily launch the app and look words up with one hand. I think the era of the stylus and resistive touch screens has well and truly gone.

So diatribe aside, I've got a problem. I love Pleco, it's pretty good on the big touch HD screen (although it could do with some optimisation in that regard) so I've no complaints there. However the Touch HD has to go. I'm going Android because Android is phones done right. It's like an iPhone but without the retarded Apple restrictions on what you can do. I've got an iPod too, which is semi useful for some Chinese applications and Pleco will apparently show up on that at some time in the future. Hooray!

So the choices are... snipe some old HP off ebay to tide me over or wait for iPhone/iPod version? I'd really rather not carry around 3 devices so Android phone + iPod is the better solution. On the other hand I wouldn't mind knowing if I'd be expected to cough up the full whack for Pleco on the iPod either. That'd be a factor but... I'm kind of thinking Pleco on iPhone will at least have a finger operable UI and there's really no doubt in my mind that this is sufficiently more useful to be worth money to me.

Decent Android phones aren't far off so the clock is ticking. I'd appreciate any comments or insight into what might be the better approach. I'll don my best flame retardant jacket

 

[mikelove]

Well you could probably run Pleco on a Palm Pre, we'll know for sure about that next week. If you want a non-Apple option anyway. But I certainly see your point about Android.

I really wish I could say something about iPhone transfer / upgrade policies, but there's absolutely no way to be certain about that until the finished app is approved by Apple - there's no way to get them to "pre-clear" something (we've tried), you submit the app and then they decide what they'll let you get away with, and if they say we can't let people move their old licenses over then there isn't much we can do about that.

 

[character]

FWIW, I have an old WM, an Android, and an iPod Touch.

WRT one-handed WM, there are a number of "finger tip" styli of varying levels of dorkiness you could try. (If you find the normal stylus awkward, there are pens with a stylus built in which are much easier to use.) I did remap the buttons on my WM to make it easier to operate flashcards with one hand in Pleco, and can operate most of Pleco (except the WM keyboard) with a fingernail. But as you note WM as an OS is severely lacking.

I think long term Android has great prospects as a mobile platform, but we won't see Pleco on it until the developer of Pleco agrees. I whipped up a simple C-E dictionary on it in a weekend, but I suspect my decade of Java experience helped.

If you want one device, just stand pat until iPleco comes out. Then you could have a single device, an iPhone, either one of the new ones coming or an older, jailbroken model (once they make jailbroken phones work with iTunes 8.2).

 

[Lurks]

I'm happy with the idea of two devices, but more of that isn't happening. I understand why Pleco isn't going to Android, that's fine. I'm happy with the idea of Android as my smart phone and some other device pretty much just to run language stuff on it. Not really crazy about the idea of using an iPhone as a one-device solution because I find the Apple restrictions a bit toy town. No multitasking, the DRM silliness etc.

Palm Pre looks pretty cool but I'd prefer to go where I'm certain there's going to be a thriving app store (or equiv) so really it's Apple or Google and having used both, Google is more 'me'. I guess it helps when you're a Google fan that uses a lot of their online stuff anyway. I'd put the Pre in the same place as the Nokia N97 there then, bit too late to market for them to have thriving app stores I think. Obviously just a bit of rampant speculation there. Bottom line, with Android this year I can pretty much choose the phone with the spec I want. On the other platforms there's pretty much one phone and that's it. I also know there's some folks working on very nice Chinese input systems for Android where as naturally enough Apple wont let anyone do that for the iPhone. It's system is actually perfectly servicable but a really really good input system like, say, TouchPal, makes a hell of a difference.

Regarding the stylus it's not an objection to the actual stylus, I find it fine. I just find it inconvenient. I personally believe any electronic dictionary ought to be operable with one hand while walking. In fact I've become semi-adept at closing Pleco's flashcard page via the close gadget with the edge of my thumb. Sometimes it takes a few goes Switching back to Pleco using the WM task manager is inevitably a stylus job though... Hrm, I had a replacement task manager mapped to a button before, I must try that again.

I think things will pan out as I expected... Mr Love and Friends is going to *have* to make Pleco a proper finger operable app (nice finger swipey stuff to move between tabs maybe?) to get it on the iPod. So Google Phone and iPod sounds like a pretty good solution to me.

Don't suppose you've revealed or feel inclined to reveal you're thinking on pricing on ipod/iphone Mike?

 

[character]

One thought for one-handed dictionary lookup is to change from the keyboard to one of the handwriting recognisers and write with your thumb.

 

[mikelove]

Pleco for iPhone is definitely finger-operable - actually more so than a lot of other iPhone apps, I'd say. As far as one-handed operation, that's quite doable in most places but for handwriting recognition we find that two-handed works a lot better - the recognizer doesn't care if you're only drawing in one little corner of the fullscreen box (it automatically scales its recognition area to whatever box your strokes fit into), but for anything with more than 7 or 8 strokes it's really hard to line your strokes up accurately if you're just drawing with your thumb in the corner of the screen.

Pricing I'd rather not say anything about, both because I'm waiting to see what the second of the two upcoming ABC-based competitors charges (we'll almost certainly charge more than either of them, but we probably won't be able to get away with charging more for our ABC module on iPhone than they do for their entire product and because there's still the possibility Apple might throw a monkey-wrench into our current plans by refusing to approve our software unless we make some change to our sales / distribution system.

 

[Lurks]

Yep fair enough Mike.

I'm curious as to how the handwriting recognition is going to work on the capacitive screen, it doesn't seem that accurate to me. Now I can't write Chinese at all, only on a computer (I know I know...) but I've had absolutely no worries sketching characters in Pleco. I imagine you'd just sketch out bigger with a finger. Still more intuitive than trying to use a stylus I think. I can draw a straight line with my finger but good luck with a stylus!

Hrm, I should experiment a bit more with keyboards on WM. I messed about for awhile, ZT4 or whatever is quite good. TouchPal is fantastic but wont scale and barfs on the current hacked ROM I've got on anyway. The full screen qwerty really does use up too much screen so I should learn to use something else.

 

[Lurks]

While we were talking about WM on-screen keyboards I had a look at TouchPal again and... stone me there's a 4.0 out!

It's also lovely. I mean it's deeply and utterly wonderful. Finally works perfect on the touch HD. The Chinese support is fantastic and it's just a quick press to switch between English and Chinese. What more could you want?

Hehe there's an Android pre-release version too.

 

[mikelove]

One thing to bear in mind on WM, incidentally, is that they still haven't released WM devices with the much faster next-generation ARM processors that we've seen crop up in the Pre and iPhone 3GS - those are definitely coming soon, and since one of the principal complaints people seem to have with WM devices is interface lag (admittedly much more of a problem on VGA ones, which is why I still push the iPAQ 110 over the 210) there's reason to hope that things will be better on that front with these new devices.

WM for all its quirks is actually a lot more efficient at some core functions than iPhone - for example, most text on the screen on an iPhone is actually formatted and rendered via WebKit, which is really a pretty absurdly inefficient way to go about doing it, while WM is still pretty much just telling the font renderer what it wants and painting it to the screen.

 

[garysaville]

I don't find the problem with WM to be speed at all as the past two devices I've had are an HTC Diamond and a Samsung Omnia. My gripe with WM is the puny icons and cica 1983 blocky interface. Palm almost died because they fell asleep at the wheel. Microsoft sure do not seem to be fixing the glarring age issues with their mobile operating system either.

Gary=-,

 

[Lurks]

Agreed, they're not. The UI needs to be thrown away, it's diabolical now.

Speed wise. I dunno Mike, we've been here before with Windows haven't we? You just got a faster PC to make up for how garbage Windows was. Eventually EVENTUALLY Microsoft got the idea with millions of people moaning about what an utter joke Vista was so they decided to tackle performance. I wonder what it would take on WM? MS only appear to be able to do one thing at a time and more than likely they've got their hands full just trying to brush up the UI to look like it was made some time in the last decade.

You use an Android phone and things happen genuinely right away, when they should. I'm tickled pink at how it takes, I dunno, 10 seconds to swich between software keyboards on WM with a 528MHz CPU. I get inexplicable lock ups in Pleco for seconds at a time. It takes minutes to install applications... over a decade ago I worked on an Amiga magazine. We used a third party UI enhancement called MUI which had a breathtaking number of features so you could customise the appearance of your stuff just how you like. It was gorgeous, it was snap fast and it did it on 80s-tech video hardware and rubbish old 14Mhz processors.

How is it something which looks like a photo copier UI takes 10 seconds to do anything? I just don't really get it. I sort of get it on desktop but I genuinely do not understand HOW they've managed to make a 500MHz embedded computer so excrutiatingly slow.

Chuck in a 1GHz processor and it'll be faster sure, but it'll still feel like a bit of a dog I reckon. Next to other OS phones still running on half GHz CPUs.

 

[Shadowdh]

I am always surprised when people say how lame WM is and how slow it is... I have an X1 and its pretty quick but then I am not a programmer, dont know much about technology and just use it as a layman... switching between apps and IMEs works well and very quickly... I also use a few different apps to help with tweaking my phone to enable it to go faster and smoother... but again I have no idea so I guess I am pretty easily impressed and satisfied...

 

[sfrrr]

I used a Palm until the day WM (Or windows ce) devices came out and, with the exception of the Lifedrive (or whatever it's called) never looked back. (One of the biggest days of my techie life was the day PD was released for the WM OS.) Like the Windows-Mac divide, PDA OSs are a matter of personal taste. Macs and iphones and Palms all cover up the inner workings, making the devices far less flexible, in my opionion. I like being able to get at the inner workings of Windows and WM machines, because then I can dig every bit of power and flexibility out of them. Yes,this means I have to spend time and money on a replacement interface, but that measns I can define it, it doesn't define how I am to use it. n my experience, WM gadgets are as fast or faster than their competition, assuming you haven't overloaded the WM thing with clunky, overstuffed programs (which third-party interface programs tend to be).

I am not trying to start a wm vs palm/iphone war. I'm merely pointing out that there is no one truth and people must make their buying decisions based on their own personal taste.

 

[hairyleprechaun]

I agree with Shadowdh and sfrrr. If you like the ability to have pretty much full control of your device than WM is the way to go. It is simply much more powerful and has many more options/adjustments available. MS Office programs and documents on your device are also a given, something my iPhone only does, though not very well, by hacking the software and jailbreaking it. WM might not be the intuitive, shiny OS that my iPhone is and that some people prefer, but if you are the person that is a power user and likes to take the time to explore the various "corners"of the OS and tweak the plethora of settings made available to you to customize it to your style, WM devices are definitely the way to go. BTW, even though I bought my HP iPAQ back in 2005, I have almost zero lag between apps on my WM device and I usually have about 10 of them open at once. My iPhone apps, even native ones like contacts and notes, hang for a few seconds every time I open them.

Again, it all comes down to personal preferences and what you really want in a "smart phone/PDA", especially since a "smart phone" these days does not have the same meaning that it used to. Now days multimedia devices that include a phone are considered to be "smart phones".

 

[Lurks]

Fair enough too, I'm definately too old for my phone is better than your phone type stuff

I too like the hackability of WM to some extent although I think it had gone a bit far when I was editing the registry just to get some decent Chinese font support.

I'd like to reflash the phone rom to another cooked version but ... I'd really like to keep the state of Pleco. I don't know if I just copy all the files in (from the current dir) after a reinstall it will come back into that state/settings?

 

[sfrrr]

I'd like to reflash the phone rom to another cooked version but ... I'd really like to keep the state of Pleco. I don't know if I just copy all the files in (from the current dir) after a reinstall it will come back into that state/settings?

I don't understand what you mean "keep the state of Pleco."

It seems to me that copying the files (from a storage card, for example) will preserve more of your settings than if you reinstall. But maybe I misunderstood your question.

 

[mikelove]

Speed-wise, bear in mind that WM phones nowadays are pushing basically twice as many pixels (480x640 versus 320x480) as the iPhone, Pre, or most Android devices - if a WM device feels like a dog running the same processor as a non-WM device that doesn't, that's a big part of the reason why. And that's really as much due to historical accident as anything else - Palm first got going in the age where 160 pixels were about all a mobile processor could handle, and the easiest upscale from there was 320, while Pocket PC 2002 came out when the 100-200 MHz ARM processor was the norm and 240 was about as much as you could comfortably manage with that, so their upscale was to 480. Eventually they got around to supporting 320 too, but after a couple of years of that they still haven't gotten very many developers to optimize their apps for it (we didn't until 2.0), and HTC et al seem disinclined to use it for fear of losing out spec-sheet-wise to higher-resolution phones.

Graphically-rich UIs also don't help - the iPhone for all of its glitziness is surprisingly spartan about special effects, not a whole lot of alpha-blending, mostly just a bunch of fades and wipes and gradients, while TouchFlo 3D is a lot more demanding. Non-effects-laden WM devices like the iPAQs feel much faster than phones in large part because they're running a lot less of that graphically-rich stuff in the background.

But they do seem to be finally making progress on redesigning the UI with WM6.5 - the hexagon program launcher screen may have gotten laughed at a bit, but it works well, and it's a much better design for a touch-driven device than the old Start Menu. They're never going to abandon the more basic concepts of the Windows UI - they can't, Microsoft would rather disband WM altogether than do anything that diminishes Windows and the biggest selling point of WM to corporations remains its similarity to / easy porting of proprietary apps from Windows - but if they steamline things like program launching / switching and the Today screen to the point where they're finger-friendly and smooth / attractive enough that HTC, Samsung, et al don't feel compelled to add their own, oft-buggy, performance-draining alternate UIs, they'll be well on their way to making WM competitive again.

Still, to really get WM out of the doghouse WM7 needs to either be an absolute slam-dunk (and hey, Palm managed to design a pretty cool OS in a similarly short timeframe and Microsoft's got far more money / engineers to devote to this than they do) or the first major step towards desktop-mobile OS convergence (in which case the features / excitement coming from that would probably eclipse any remaining weak spots in the UI design).

Lurks - copying the files won't back up your preferences, but it will back up all of your flashcard profiles and such (assuming you include your flashcard database, which is in My Documents). Backing up preferences will require you to export / reimport all of Pleco's registry keys, which are under HKLM\Software\Pleco Software\Pleco Dictionary.

 

[Lurks]

Mike that seems like a pretty good analysis to me but I think I'd have to disagree on the pixel issue. We are talking about extremely simply UIs (I just mean Windows control panels and all that) and lower resolution screens than the 16-bit computers of your, yet processors which are 20 times as fast.

I had a fiddle with a Nokia N97. This has a surprisingly lower spec CPU than today's winmo phones, a 400MHz CPU. It's demonstrably faster than any winmo phone though. It's actually snappy. Not quite as snappy as an android phone but it's perfectly servicable.

Having watched the evolution of multiple microsoft products over many many years... I think we can say this, Microsoft generally gets there in the end. They make mistakes, lots of them, then they fix them and come out with something that's great. The thing about WM is that for whatever reason, it just hasn't actually been worked on in this way. Why when the WIndows operating systems got major UI overhauls did WM not get a sniff? I don't know. Maybe MS thought that the future on the phone was sitting in the background so you never really saw the UI. That's certainly how it ended up panning out but I'm not sure which came first.

There's absolutely an argument that a lot of the issues on phones are caused by the front end swish apps and maybe stuff will be a lot better when they're no longer needed. I'm tempted to give one of the 6.5 roms a burn sans touchflo 3d... See what a difference it makes.

Thanks for the tips on the backing up. Hrm, is current status of the flashcards (which I've learned/not learned) in the flashcard database? So I'll just need to mess around with fonts and bringing back coloured tones when I reinstall? (This always takes me ages because after setting it up you seem to need to do other stuff before it 'takes').

 

[Lurks]

Well that'll learn me for not reading your post properly! I thought the flashcard db was in the Pleco dir!

Argh!!! Oh well, I suppose going back through whatever I learned in the HSK series so far wont kill me...

 

[mikelove]

Sorry about that - we actually store it in My Documents for the sake of making it more likely to get backed up (since people generally want to back up any other documents in there before resetting their phones anyway), but it's certainly still easy to miss.

Pixels do matter - rendering an outline font is as tricky on a simple UI as it is on a more elaborate one, and the use of ClearType on WM makes it even trickier. Drawing a screen full of text on a 640x480 WM device takes a *lot* more processor time than rendering one on a 320x480 Android phone. It's tough to really compare PC to mobile processors - based on pure integer MIPS I think the chip in your average new WM phone is probably about equivalent to a Pentium II, but the Pentium would clean its clock at floating-point, and I don't think the memory / bus performance would be in quite the same ballpark either.

WM I think is just a slightly-dysfunctional Microsoft division - they've had so many restructurings / been juggled between so many different VPs over the years that it's not really that surprising. They're also handicapped somewhat by the fact that they're not closely integrated with the Windows CE people, and Windows CE in general is targeted to a much more specialized / slow-moving sort of environment than WM - the sort of radical architectural overhaul they seem to need is unlikely to be forthcoming from CE, so that desktop integration I mentioned may be the real boon for them; swap out Windows CE (which is based on a very old version of the Windows NT kernel) for a forked version of Windows XP, say, and slap a mobile UI on top of that, and they could instantly take the lead architecture-wise over most of their competitors.

Anyway, I think they realize how serious the situation is for them now and I'm optimistic that they may finally manage to right the ship with Windows Mobile 7 - at the very least they should finally be able to support capacitive touchscreens with that release.