Windows Mobile 5 - I'm Sold!

If you have read any major Windows Mobile centric site - or even some that are not so centric - you have heard plenty of things about Windows Mobile 5.0.  Some of the reports, articles, reviews and newsgroup postings have been positive while others have been damning reports of failed or crippled upgrades, sluggish performance and the much-maligned ActiveSync 4.0.

A lot of these issues I've experience as well.  As I shared online and in emails, my first attempt at the upgrade on my Dell Axim x50v was less-than-stellar in the final results.  Don't get me wrong:  the upgrade itself went terrifically smooth.  The instructions provided by Dell were terrific and easy to follow.  The problem was the resulting sluggishness, install issues and applications just not working.  Within 12 hours of that first upgrade I had rolled back to Windows Mobile 2003 SE and assumed I would be staying there until ROM image A02 was released (rumored to be around November 24, 2005).

That all changed after discussing the upgrade within the Microsoft Mobius group and thanks to some helpful hints from Jason and Ed along with some great posts in the Pocket PC Thoughts forums.  I upgraded again and this time things have gone pretty smooth save the sluggish performance.  What are some of those hints you ask?

1.  Disable Error Reporting.
2.  Disable any Safe Mode functionality in any applications.
3.  When doing the hard resets during the upgrade process, leave the device on A/C.

Simple, I know. 

Effective without a doubt.

So with a good installation and with only a few minor application issues (I'm working with the developers on them and will post the results when they are resolved), sluggishness at startup and when switching applications and some quarks within the x50v itself, I was satisfied but slightly less than thrilled with the upgrade.

That changed on Friday, November 18th.

I was on a business trip in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, a short 30 minute flight from Dallas.  As a VoIP Call Center Engineer, the usual gear came along for the trip:  Laptop, Smartphone, Pocket PC and all the miscellaneous cabling that makes the TSA folks nervous.  The trip was an all day trip and when I got back to the airport at 4:30 that afternoon, I decided to pull out the x50v and play a little Tower Mogul from PDAMill.  I hit the power button and no response.

Hit the power button again... no response.

Double-check to make sure the button lock isn't enabled.  It isn't.  Hit the power button again.  No response.

I decide at this point - feeling a tension building in my stomach - to try a soft reset.

Nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.

I had just become victim to one of those "quarks within the x50v itself".  Seems that if you leave the SD or CF card in the slot while the device is off, it still draws a considerable amount of power - thus draining the battery.  If you have both an SD and CF card installed in the device - which I did of course - it drains it twice as fast.  I found out about this quark after-the-fact of course.  This one I will be very glad to see fixed.

So here I sit in the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, one of the last places on the planet I can't get WiFi, and I have a completely dead Pocket PC.  There is only so much corporate work you can do offline these days so after killing an hour or so doing that, I trudged onto the plane to head back to Dallas.

It was on that flight that I began thinking about my x50v and the fact that if everything worked as advertised, I shouldn't be too bad off.  With the design changes in Windows Mobile 5 and the way applications are stored, the theory was that you could completely drain the battery and everything would still be safe and sound.  Why?  Because in Windows Mobile 5, unlike previous versions of the OS, everything is stored in ROM.  ROM doesn't require battery power to keep it "warm" or running at a low power level.  This is not the case with RAM.  RAM requires power - albeit small - to keep its memory intact.  Prior to Windows Mobile 5, RAM was used to store applications and if you completely drained the battery, you were looking at a device that would be returned to factory defaults when you recharged the battery.

Painful.  Very Painful.

When I arrived home after a drive that took just as long as my flight itself, I immediately dropped my Dell into its cradle and pushed the power button.  I was greeted with a warning screen saying that my device had encountered a memory error and to press the Calendar hard button to attempt to correct the problem or to press the Power and Reset button to hard reset the device.  Obviously I opted for the Calendar button and watched.  After all, I was expecting to have to hard reset so what did I have to loose?

Within minutes I was back up and going.  No hard reset required.  This was the moment I was sold on Windows Mobile 5.

To be sure, there are some shortcomings in Windows Mobile 5.  I suspect though that through upgrades and patches from Dell and Microsoft, things will improve quickly.  The nature of this OS is completely different than what Microsoft had done before with Windows Mobile and there are going to be some bumps in the road without a doubt.  But it is clear that this bold new step in direction will work.

Some of those upgrades and changes are already coming to be.  Microsoft announced on November 18th they had released ActiveSync 4.1.  This new build solves a lot of syncing problems and USB issues.  You can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/downloads/activesync41.mspx.  If you have a Windows Mobile 5 device or are a developer, you should download this free upgrade.  As mentioned before, Dell is expected to release a ROM update for the x50 series on November 24th.  Other OEMs have already released or will be releasing updates as well.  Most developers who have Windows Mobile 5 support software do work and work exceptionally well.  Other developers are releasing "dot" releases or upgrades to become compatible.  All-in-all, six months from now I suspect that grumbling on Windows Mobile 5 to settle down a bit.

If you've tried Windows Mobile 5 and it has been a rough trip, don't panic.  Help is on the way and all it will take is one experience like mine to see the advantages of this new and very much improved OS. 

You too will be sold.