The general response to Microsoft’s new version of Windows Mobile is a kind of fixed grin. Everyone’s trying to be positive about it, despite the fact that it’s obviously still just another variation of Windows CE, a decade-old mobile OS that’s now way behind the curve. Joshua Topolsky lays out 10 simple reasons why it’s just not good enough.[Engadget]
It’s a list of plain, unvarnished WTF moments. For example: it still doesn’t even have a proper web browser and won’t officially support modern touchscreen technology.
Hmm, yeah, the HTC Touch Pro is still a more useful and capable productivity device for me than the iPhone is, but I’m willing to admit this is in mostly spite of WinMo’s design sense.
I’ve got mine hugely tricked out, which is one of the beautiful things about WinMo (it’s customizable like nothing else is at the moment, though Android certainly might be soon), but on the other hand in a pristine state it’s kind of a dog.
WinMo’s openness is pretty much its greatest feature. It’s somewhat ironic that until those rumored Android dev sets come out that it’s even more open than Android.
… because the competitors do everything well. Riiiiiiiiiight …
I’m gonna go with Oldtaku on this – one of the good things about WM (and PalmOS before it) is the fact that you can actually customize it with add-on programs. Beats the heck out of yet another “YOUR OS IS DOING THESE ___ THINGS WRONG” retort list, and Apple’s is just as bad as WM.
… and if I see one more “waaaaaah, it’s a resistive touchscreen” post, I’m going to hurl a sharpened stylus at them. The smoothness is handled in software, and if the hardware is decent at all there is more than enough resolution to use your fingers to poke at the screen. Being able to use something skinnier than your finger to increase visibility is also a semi-nice feature if you’re like me and try to squeeze as much data on the screen as possible …
i had word,excel,pdf, ebooks, fotos and divx videos in my hand since 2003 on my compaq pocket pc with win ppc2000 and at the time it was quite a sensation. it had (actually still has) a touchscreen that works even without a stylus, and it has a browser. i’ll give you that the browser sucks but there were alternatives like opera or something tho’ i never bothered to look for one. but there was nothing wrong with the OS. only complaint is that it loses all settings if you let the device to completely discharge. and i still use it as an eBook reader. perfect screen for reading even outdoors. so it seems that the OS and device are not worse than the oh so modern devices feature wise. in my opinion they are just hyping stuff that was there for years but to a larger audience, trying to pass it as new.
actually if it wasn’t for dated hardware that PDA was better than most of modern smartphones.
i used other WinMo smartphones and i find them pretty easy to use, even easier than symbian devices. i prefer symbian myself for the greater variety of free apps but as an OS WinMO was easier to use and crashed less (tho’ this may depend on the hardware. winmo phones are usualy high end but you can get entry level phones with S60)
the iphone is a joke, noone who actualy needs a smartphone would buy one. what with no keyboard, copy and paste, no video, no mms, no video calling no BT transfer etc. so i hardly see that the iphone was a step ahead as an OS. slick hardware maybe (if you are in the apple minimalist design) but a crippled device that lacks features that i used for years even in entry level phones. actually i can’t get used to the press hype for mundane stuff as bt transfer or mms on the iphone (after jailbreak) WTF? just buy a phone that does it out of the box.
so i don’t know about “modern touchscreen tech” but there are plenty of third party apps for winmo since forever including browsers. nobody likes IE in the pc why would they use it on a phone?
winmobile is not obsolete per se.it’s obsolete for people that get paid for writing about it (like gizmodo and engadget) or that want changes for the sake of it or for those that want new bloat and bling twice a year. for the rest it works just fine no need reinventing the wheel. minor adjustments will do. did you notice that people actually like XP so much they keep it around by paying for it?
I went from a Palm OS Treo to a touch pro and was kind of shocked at some of what seemed like glaring mistakes on the part of the WinMo interface (and Touchflo – ack) but it was definitely a step up in functionality – and without a doubt a better fit for me than an iphone. I am still working on getting my touch pro properly customized though (which may be a worthless effort when the pre comes out and I almost certainly switch over) – any suggestions?
@Lizardman: Read every post at http://www.fuzemobility.com/ – the Fuze is the AT&T version of the Touch Pro but they are effectively covering the entire line. They will point you at just about every useful HTC Pro tweak.
Looking at my own post up there I see I was less harsh on WinMo than I intended. It IS a throwback. I consider the openness to be really the ONLY redeeming feature of it, though that ends up being the most important. Both Palm OS and iPhone are much more pleasant to use out of the box and I really don’t know what the hell MS has been doing since WinMo 2003 (trying to save Vista? focusing on hotmail.com?). I too don’t see a lot of substantial difference between that and and 6 either, much less between 5 and 6 or 6 and 6.5.
Another bit of proof that all the money in the world can’t build a proper OS. Nor, a mobile OS. How much did Ubuntu(for example) cost to develop again?
Gotta agree with most commenters here. Windows Mobile, though riddled with problems, is still the most useful mobile OS. The competition may be pretty, but it’s not better.
Well I can certainly see what folks are talking about.
When I got My Omnia and delved below the fingerable levels I could see why they included a stylus.
Wow, it was like a drippy Windows Mobile basement under the shiny new building!
That being said, I also love how much I can configure things exactly to mu liking.
One thing I didn’t like about my phone was the screen unlock method, something I DO like about the iPhone.
Fixing THAT was as simple as downloading “Slide to Unlock 2″ and installing it on my phone.
It’s versatile and pretty damn _OPEN_ even though it and PalmOS went to college together.
Resistive touchscreen hate is just a meme.
mememememememem
Don’t give in to it.
Josh is just a hater, and his complaints are mostly unfounded.
Windows Mobile 6.5 WILL come with a good browser, and will also support Adobe flash. This browser will also allow you to cut and paste text, unlike the iPhone, which clearly can not support this function as its based on a Unix OS originally dated to the 70′s. (if that argument sounds stupid, its just as stupid as complaining Windows CE has been around for a while also).
The OS has numerous supports numerous features missing from the iphone (such as full device encryption or remote deployment of applications for example) and has military certification.
Its amazing how easily the supposed technorati is seduced by a pretty UI, rather than real freedom, power and customizability.
Isn’t jailbreaking a crime now?
WinCE isn’t a mobile OS, it is a generic embedded OS, that is quite modern in design- it is a far more recent creation than NT, Linux, or the BSD core of OS X. It is small, quick, and modular, and in many thousands of product types that are not mobile phones (GPS, set top box, voip phones, etc). It is primarily a kernal and API/function library, though it does have some default UIs out of the box to use as samples. Wince does not equal WM and your comparison is essentially the same as bashing BSD because the iPhone doesn’t allow third party apps to run in the background (how antiquated).
WM (Professional) is based on Pocket PC, the bloated and poorly shell that runs on top of CE- that is a decade old and needs to be ditched. Bashing of WM is entirely merited, as they have been very slow to innovate, but at least be accurate in your bashing. There isn’t anything wrong with WinCE, but there is quite a bit wrong with WM.
and won’t officially support modern touchscreen technology
because not everyone wants to have a touchscreen phone. when will gadget people understand that? I want buttons that I can feel and click and not have to look at the phone to do something that takes me 3 seconds without looking.
“…Furthermore, the company is saying that no phone without a Start flag hardware button will be eligible for 6.5…”
Awesome, I guess I better get new batteries for that old PPC6700 I got lying around somewhere.