So I've been on a journey that started with a Blackberry 7100t from T-Mobile, had a false start on their new Dash (actually the HTC S620) that originally came with Windows Mobile 5, and just a little while ago T-Mobile offered up a software update that bumped it to Windows Mobile 6.
The Microsoft folks tried very hard to convince me that I was going to love the Dash, and I have to admit it sure felt good in my hand...however, I ended up with a list of complaints and features missing in my migration from the Blackberry to the Dash.
- No password vault! I ended up spending a few bucks on SplashID to replace the free version on the Blackberry
- No text editor
- No bare metal backup and restore
- Incomplete support for SSH
- Slow to switch applications
- 4-5 times daily crashing and forcing a battery'ektomy to get it to play nice again
- I actually had to do a registry edit (not the XP machine, but the phone itself) in order to get it to start the voice command stuff correctly for my Plantronics 510 bluetooth headset. It also required a phone reboot to get everything to take effect. See Randy's Rants for documentation on how to get the Voice Command stuff working over your bluetooth headset.
In it's favor, WM5 did have support for One-Note (as long as you have a full copy on your desktop) which I found to be FAR superior to a simple text editor.
So while I'm still not sure I'd concede to eBay'ing my Blackberry yet, the update to Windows Mobile 6 is actually making me consider never going back. Here's a list of new features that are doing their insidious work at making me feel good about this move...
- Voice commands, NOT just dialing...it actually does a pretty good job of reading my appointments and finding just about anything in my contact list. Though I should point out that if you mumble, your contacts may get waken up by misdialed numbers.
- Voice dialing: not just contact list stuff, but you can also voice dial individual digits for numbers not in your contact list.
- Office Mobile: MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint came with this upgrade. So now I have both one-note AND my most used MS Office applications.
- Live Search: You REALLY want an unlimited data plan if you configure this, cause it's pretty habit forming to have a search bar on the phone desktop. (hmm...maybe it's a brainwashing attempt by T-Mobile to get everyone to move to an unlimited data plan)
- Updated Windows Media Player 10 mobile: while it still doesn't support .ogg sound files natively (yeah, who cares except Oceanagraphers) it feels like a pretty hefty subset of the full desktop version. Though this version seems to have worked out some of the bugs in playing media streams from internet radio sites.
- It feels like it has a better power manager. I sure get much better battery life when using the WiFi features, but nothing quantifiable this time.
Most importantly to me is that I've now gone 3 days without a crash. One of the other folks that I chatted with at Interop mentioned that he never had a crash, but then again he didn't have ANY 3rd party software on it. I should point out that T-Mobile does seem to have an allergy to 3rd party apps, but get real. If companies like T-Mobile/Cingular/Verizon want to get better penetration into the corporate world, they'd better get used to it.
One thing that still bugs me is that I still can't cut-paste simple things like LONG ENCRYPTION KEYS!!!! Guys, this typing in AES 256bit encryption keys is going to get VERY old VERY fast. Someone PLEASE put the cut-paste into the menus, though if you take the time to setup a certificate authority, you can do an enroll once you've logged into the cert server. In fact, if your corporate wireless supports LEAP, WM6 also has a LEAP configuration utility in the expanded wireless configuration menu.
My last bitch only really applies if you're like me and administer a collection of Unix/Linux machines. I'd love it if something like Putty actually worked with the native keyboard (the native keyboard won't come out of numeric keypad mode) but if you use the Elekson Fabric Keyboard you have a mini SSH terminal perfect for command line changes to your Linux machine.
So while I'm not willing to call it a win...I am willing to say that this has finally become a horse race and that I'm willing to stick it out on Windows Mobile 6 for a while to see how it evolves.
/brian chee
Posted by Brian Chee on May 29, 2007 11:19 PM
