The State of Mobile Devices: Part I
The state of mobile devices has been pretty idle for the last few years. Only since the iPhone came out has there been interest by Microsoft, Google (Android), Palm (WebOS) and other Windows Mobile device manufacturers to innovate. The iPhone has been wildly successful because it just works. The iPhone OS (although Apple claims is really a full version of OS X, I beg to differ) was built to do one thing and that’s to work as a phone and have apps that can integrate with it. Unfortunately for Microsoft that’s not what their Windows Mobile OS was built to do. Windows Mobile is built on top of WindowsCE and over the years has gone through a few name changes but generally it remains the same thing with features added. Until Microsoft decides to overhaul their entire OS it is still going to suffer. Throwing in a new menu option or changing the theme or adding a Today theme to mimic the scrolling of an iPhone is not going to cut it. The bottom line is this – Windows Mobile is simply a version of PocketPC with an added phone application. Read more about my experiences after the jump…
Over the last 10 years I have taken quite the interest in digital organizers, then PDAs and finally smartphones. My first device was an Apple Newton. I loved the device but there really wasn’t all that much I could do with it short of showing it off to friends. As much as it seems a backwards move – I next start playing with the Texas Instrument TI-85 calculator. I probably had more fun with this than any other toy I had through high school. Not only was it allowed in class, I was able to program for it and add software to it. It had a OS shell called ZShell that allowed others to write programs in assembly for it. Games such as Tetris and Snake became very popular at my high school. My interest in this dwindled as soon as I got my hands on a Psion 3a. This device was a quite a bit more advanced than the Newton – focusing more on the personal organizer side of things with the the more advanced ability to create and modify documents. However, the thing that really set it apart for me was I had the modem for it. I was able to connect to CompuServ and check my email(Yes, back when you had the digits as your email ie, 70471.4202@compuserve.com). Although it was painful to do, that was expected back then. The idea of using it for anything more than that faded away after a few months and it ended up sitting in a closet.
Then came Microsoft PocketPC, Microsoft’s embeded OS built on WindowsCE. The OS is only available to OEMs and to this day customers must rely on their device manufacturer for any OS updates. The devices were Microsofts first entry to the market that was otherwise controlled by Palm. To this day I have never owned a Palm device that ran the PalmOS – although I have owned several Treos running Windows Mobile. When PocketPC was first launched I was a early adopter picking up two devices in less than a year. The first was the HP Jornada 568 which came with PocketPC 2000. Not much further down the road I purchased a Compaq iPAQ H3835 which came with PocketPC 2002. The 3835 was the best PocketPC available having more memory than any other and was the first to have a 16-bit screen. It also had SD Card and CompactFlash expansion slots. I was able to purchase a D-Link CompactFlash wireless card to get me online. This is where my obsession with these devices really began. I would push both these PDAs to their absolute limits – even going as far as getting a working Linux port running on it with working wireless drivers.
As 2003 moved in Microsoft started to rebrand PocketPC to be called Windows Mobile(WM). With the release of Windows Mobile 2003(WM2003) came widespread support for a Phone Edition of the product. Although there was a Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition it was not wildly adopted in any way. Essentially, it is still Pocket PC with some added enhancements such as Bluetooth support and a phone dialer application. Right around this time I once again emptied the wallet and purchased a Dell Axim x50v. This is still the workhorse of all the PDAs i’ve owned. It was the first to offer a full VGA screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 624mhz Xscale processor and shipped with Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. Not long after Dell offered a upgrade to what is probably the largest update ever to the Windows Mobile line – Windows Mobile 5(WM5). The major change was Microsoft completely changed the way memory was used. Prior to WM5, your data was stored in RAM which caused data loss if you lost power. Changing to persistent storage and using flash memory as storage devices was huge. WM5 also introduced the ability to receive push email via an Exchange Server.
Although there were various Windows Mobile devices available that had a phone embedded in them I did not jump to one until Sprint offered their first in late 2005, the HTC Apache (Sprint branding: PPC-6700). This phone to this day was one of the most solid i’ve owned. It was the first to be released in the United States with Windows Mobile 5.0 and it was quick and snappy. With Sprint offering EVDO-3G I was able to surf the web and do without even having to ever use the built in wireless card. Sure, it had it’s issues. The keyboards would become unresponsive at times and require a repair, the phone radio stopped working once and needed to be replaced, the phone came to a crawl when doing anything that was video card heavy. I actually used the Apache for a couple months while waiting on a new phone not too long ago. Still holds up with the best of them.
Market leader Palm was struggling in sales and just having spun off into a few companies they did what I would never have expected. They released their first Windows Mobile phone, the 700w through Verizon in early 2006. The hardware was comparable to the 700p Sprint version of the phone that ran the PalmOS. The phone came to Sprint in the form of the 700wx in late 2006 with more memory. I snatched this up and was very peleased with it. The phone was fast, responsive, had tons of hardware buttons, SD card slot, great battery life and best of all – no slide out keyboard, a keyboard on the front. Palm took it upon themselves to do what no other manufacturer of these PDA phones had previously done – customizing the OS and adding custom applications. The most useful customization was their today plugin that allowed dialing from the Today screen. I never had to open up the phone dialer app to dial a number. I simple hit the power button and started to dial the number or type the name of the contact. The phone was not without its problems or complaints though. The phone shipped with Windows Mobile 5 and never received any update to Windows Mobile 6.0. The phone had major bluetooth issues. Although it was included in the phone it was broken beyond software repair making it virtually impossible to use a bluetooth headset or headphones without it randomly shutting off or disconnecting. Although Palm would release an update to address the issue the problem was never really resolved. The fact that Palm was willing to also release updates to their phones and were responsive to customer inquiries was a very pleasant thing to see. Up to this point it had seemed that phone manufacturers took the stance that once their phones were released any problems that existed would never be acknowledged. This has changed somewhat but is still largely the case.
In early 2007 Microsoft released Windows Mobile 6.0(Crossbow). It included a minor facelift to the look and included support for “soft keys”, the concept of having hardware buttons on the bottom of the phone that corresponds with text that appears near it at that specific moment. For example, the same way the buttons generally work on ATM machines. It would also include full Exchange 2007 support, Internet Sharing, new version of Office Mobile as well as HTML email support. As usual, this was not released to end users and obtaining it was dependent on your device manufacturer. Shortly after the announcement it became clear that HTC and Palm would not be releasing a ROM update for either phones I owned, the Apache and Treo 700wx. The phone community started to build their own WM6 upgrades for the Apache based off of leaked ROM dumps from the yet to be released successor to the Apache. These upgraded the phone but at first had quite a few issues but in the end became very stable and useable. The low amount of memory caused it to be a bit slow but was certainly tolerable.
In mid 2007 Sprint started to sell the HTC Titan (Sprint branded: PPC-6800, Mogul) which would ship with WM6.0 but would later offer a free upgrade to WM6.1. Because I now had a WM6.0 device in my old revived Apache, my primary interest for upgrading was the added GPS, larger memory, smaller form factor with no external antenna and the inclusion of a EVDO Rev. A capable chip (high speed internet). I would upgrade to this phone and find out shortly after how terrible the experience was. This phone was broken from the day I got it. The amount of memory the build of WM6.0 took crippled the phone and made running any larger programs (ie, Opera) virtually impossible. The GPS rarely worked correctly(which seems to be a problem with all HTC phones), the phone constantly locked up, the signal was weak, and countless other software bugs that made day to day usage of this phone a disaster. To give HTC credit though they did release a WM6.1 update that also addressed bluetooth issues, added EVDO Rev. A and AGPS support as well as a custom Task Manager program.
Palm announced and then released an updated model of my Treo 700wx on Sprint called the Treo 800w in July 2008. This combined the two things I loved on the 700wx and the HTC Titan. It shipped with WM6.1 and had a keyboard that didn’t need to be slid out. It also was much thinner and no longer had an external antenna on top of the phone. The phone was rock solid and again included their own customizations. While including all the previous apps such as dialing from the Today screen it also added a much requested feature that was absent from Windows Mobile – threaded text messaging. In WM6.1 and previous versions text messages come in similar to emails. Each message is a separate window and sent messages are in the Sent box. Threaded messaging groups all the messages to and from the same person in the same window as a “conversation”. This Palm app would later be ripped and released by users to work on other phones as well.
I used my 800w for quite awhile and always told people that I was more than happy with my phone and had no reason to upgrade it. That is, as long as it works. The phone mysteriously stopped working after about 4 months. At first the screen would start to distort showing blue/red/green lines when turning it on, not always come on when pressing power, and finally after a hard reset it froze about a quarter of the way through startup. I never was able to boot the phone up again. This is when I began to look at a new phone.
Sprint and HTC have released a few models of their Touch devices. None of them were all that attractive to me because of either lack of keyboard or the low amount of memory. Also, the fact that Windows Mobile innovation and improvements has been at a standstill for many years. There simply was no reason to upgrade my phone to obtain different hardware. I did bite the bullet though and picked up a HTC Touch Pro. The phone may not be the actual successor to the HTC Titan but I would suggest it probably is. The phone features everything in the Titan including a slideout keyboard but also adds upon it. It features a better camera and more memory. The main difference and easily the best improvement is the addition of the full VGA screen. HTC has also gone the extra mile in creating their own interface rather than depending on the saturated unattractive WM GUI. They call this TouchFlo. The phones screen is not as nice as the iPhones capacitive multi-touch screen however screen scrolling does work. The screen appears to be more sensitive than previous phones. So far I am happy with this phone and I do feel as if it is something new – something I didnt think id be able to get with the lack of windows mobile innovation. Leave it to HTC for this. They do it best.
All in all it’s good to finally see things picking up a bit again. Stay tuned for more..
Part II: Coming soon
April 28th, 2009 at 9:14 am
I’m surprised that you didn’t find much to do with your Newton. Was it because you weren’t allowed to use it at school? What model did you have? I’m interested to see how a Psion 3a was more useful than a Newton.
Here’s an alternative perspective: I had a HP200LX and it had tremendous versatility because you could run most DOS applications written for an XT class PC on it. But because of the small keyboard it didn’t get as much use as my Newton MP2000. I found I used the HP200 for about 30 minutes a day. Newton usage commonly comes in at 3-4 hours a day. Then when I bought an Newton MP2100 and found it could do Wifi and email, the average usage rose by another 2 hours a a day.
The 5.5″ screen enables me to do some serious writing and spreadsheet while I found every other smartphone a pain for getting something done.
The Newton is getting past 10 years now. Even if the software keeps going, and the hardware is working great at the moment, it must eventually fail due to corrosion or decaying capacitors or something; so I have been looking at the HTC Advantage as a potential replacement; I like its screen size; its format is similar to a Newton with added bonus of a built-in cellular radio. Both the main telco’s in our area are adopting WCDMA technologies in a couple of months so there should be some good data deals on offer soon.
On a modern smartphone, emails are kept short because the keyboards and screens are too small. At least they let me see my MS Office and PDF files which often arrive as email attachments.