How I love Windows Mobile

| No Comments

OK, I really don't love it but at least after six months I've made my peace with it. I have Windows Mobile 6.1 on a HTC TyTN II. It's often sluggish, sometimes crashes and has issues with corrupting the data on the storage card if the battery level drops too low. But, it does synchronize data with my desktop PC and there are tons of applications available so I've been able to get it set up fairly well. It's no iPhone and in some respects that's a good thing: I can run several applications simultaneously, I've always had cut and paste and I can buy my applications from a variety of competing software aggregation sites. Oh, and I have a spare battery and storage card in my knapsack.

The TyTN II has a slide out keyboard which I prefer to the virtual keyboard of the iPhone for typing longer documents (this review was typed entirely on the TyTN). The screen tilts to a perfect angle for reading the news sites when set on the table next to the cereal bowl in the morning.

Which leads me into one of the biggest deficiencies of the Windows Mobile OS. The built in web browser sucks. This is well known, but honestly it only sucks as much as the built in browser on my previous device: the Palm TX. At least with WM there are a few third party replacements (Opera, Iris, Skyfire) that I can install and use instead. My personal favorite is Opera 9.5, which while it's a decent browser, falls way behind when compared to Safari on the iPhone.

I've learned to install applications on the storage card rather than main memory because the device slows to a crawl if there's less than 20MB free; I've come to accept that I have to reset the device fairly often to keep it performing; I'm now used to double checking my data after a sync to make sure it was all updated both ways correctly. I've given up trying to get a decent picture using the main camera. The shutter lag is horrendous and I don't know if it's a hardware or software issue. Windows Mobile 6.5 is due out soon and even though my phone was released just over a year ago it's considered old and likely won't be updateable.

But, as I mentioned, I'm slowly learning the tricks to getting it to work for me and have downloaded some plugins to add search and twitter and useful info to my Home Page so me and my WinMo are settling in with each other just fine. If I could get the darn camera to be somewhat useable I'd even crack a smile when I talked about it!

Leave a comment