First Impressions: Windows Mobile 6 Upgrade
After the first 24 hours of having the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade on my T-Mobile Dash, I thought I’d share my first impressions of it. Hopefully, my friend Mike M, who kinda talked me into getting a Dash in the first place, can chime in with his thoughts on this, too. In this review we look at the Major Improvements and Some Strange Behaviors.
Major Improvements
There are several significant improvements in this new operating system, some that I am probably not yet aware of. But, the ones that impress me a lot are:
- HTML email — I love being able to view HTML email on my Dash.
- Calendar improvements — The calendar now shows timebars on the daily view so that you can graphically see where your time is going, and the new weekly view is fantastic: it is a graphical view of your appointments, and you can see the details of each by just using the D-pad to scroll from left to right throughout the week.
- Task application — the built in Task application is now more than just the simple task viewer it once was: you can actually create new tasks with the app and edit existing ones.
- Mobile Office — You can now view and edit Microsoft Word and Excel documents on the Dash and you can view PowerPoint presentations on it (no editing capability for the latter). Moreover, the viewing mode for Mobile Word has a great smooth scrolling feature: makes it darned easy to read a Word document on the Dash.
The built-in Internet Explorer also seems to be much nicer, although I am not sure how to quantify the improvements in it.
I won’t inundate you with screenshots, since there are tons of WM6 screenshots on the web now. But here is one to show the timebars in the new Calendar application:
It’s Still a Smartphone Operating System
When it comes to installing third party software on this implementation of WM6, one has to note that it is still a Smartphone operating system. For example, when I install eWallet, I have to install the Smartphone version of eWallet. And, I can still use the Smartphone app, Jeyo Personalizer, to organize my Start Menu. Now, it could well be that software developers still have to tune their applications to run with this flavor of WM, and my suspicion about this comes from using Documents To Go for Smartphones. It seems to work great, except that it coughs on a couple of PowerPoint presentations. Unfortunately, I can’t say whether it coughed on the previous WM implementation I had on the Dash or not, since I didn’t try those particular PowerPoints out until today. It does fine with some PowerPoints and can’t handle others … whether this means it needs tweaking for WM6, or that it is a bigger bug, I cannot say. Update: By the way, PowerPoint Mobile handles well all of the PowerPoint presentations I threw at it, so there is nothing wrong with the files that Documents To Go couldn’t handle.
Some Strange Behaviors
I’ve had a couple of really strange things happen since doing this upgrade.
First off, I now get an SMS message for every email that is delivered to my inbox. This a huge nuisance and I don’t know how to turn it off … I sure hope I’m not paying for these messages. To go even further with the strangeness, I have actually gotten a couple of text messages that were addressed to someone other than me. Really strange. Now, I will have to say that I am not totally convinced that the blame for this, which just started, is to be placed with the upgrade: I also had some repairs done to my DSL lines two days ago, and one of the fixes they implemented was to switch my circuitry to a different port. Perhaps this is the culprit. Perhaps neither is. But it is darned strange.
The other strange thing is that Agenda One didn’t show yesterday’s appointments in any of its views. I finally got it to show them by editing the appointments using the built-in calendar application, simply adding a space to the end of the appointment descriptions. Strange, huh? I have no idea what caused this. I can say that these appointments were either created on or modified on my Dash (rather than in Outlook), but so were other appointments that did show. Anyway, all seems to be well with this now. (Not sure if the problem has to do with modified databases within the new operating system or what.)
Well, those are my initial thoughts.
Update (2007 May 16): After getting some advice on how to stop the annoying SMS messages, I finally got rid of them (went into the My T-Mobile site and changed my email account to not use alerts). Also, Doug notes in the comments below that he has also had some problems with his calendar since doing the WM6 update … hence, the calendar issues I had do not appear to be isolated.
Update (2007.06.21) Manny, in the comments section of this post, points out that he has had trouble with reminders ever since the update: all the reminders vibrate instead of being audible, even in the normal, audible profile. Turns out that this has been happening to me, too, but it did not occur to me that it was a problem with the upgrade. Now, I believe it is a problem with the upgrade. At least the reminders work, but it would be nice to have them be audible when I have the phone on the audible profile.
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[...] this post first appeared in my personal blog some time back, I thought it would be a good idea to share it with the broader audience here. This [...]
I also had trouble with appointments. I use Outlook and can not get the whole day to show on the Dash 6 Calendar. Bug for sure.
Thanks for letting us know this is not an isolated problem, Doug.
Very frustrating isn’t it?
Have you had any issues with reminders? Mine are only coming with vibrate (no sound).
As a matter of fact I have had a problem with it, Manny. I figured I was just doing something wrong in switching between the normal and vibrate profiles so often. It did not occur to me that this is a generic problem, and it sound like it is, given that you and I both have it.
I’ll mention this in an update to this post. Thanks for telling us about it.
FYI…
I just called T-Mobile and a “clear storage” and set to factory defaults is the only solution they have.
Another question/comment:
With WM6 feels like too much memory is being used. Do you have that issue as well?
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
It’s nuts that they don’t have a fix for it. I had at first thought they were among the more advanced of the carriers, and that they introduce new products quicker than most. Maybe I was wrong on this.
The best advice I can give regarding memory is just to use SKtools Lite to clean the internet cache periodically. I have not, yet, seen anything else that helps with memory for Smartphones. But, hopefully during the judging period for the Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine awards, I will test out some new smartphone utilities and will certainly post on a good memory utility for smartphones if I do find one.
I meant when you use regular applications (messaging, contacts, calendar, etc.).
Looking under task manager, “free memory” keeps shrinking thus slowing the device.
I believe Active Sync is sucking up a lot of memory as well, for some reason. Have you noticed?
Hadn’t noticed it that much, Manny. However, when I used to keep a close watch on my Pocket PCs’ memory, I noticed that the graphics module (gwes I think is its process name) tended to grow over time and never release any memory back, after apps were closed. And, I have always thought ActiveSync continued to grow in its memory demands the longer it was left activated and the more times one used it to sync. Seems like it grabs a little more memory after each sync, and of course never gives any of it back.
I haven’t noticed this being worse on the Dash than on any other WinMo device I’ve owned, but, as I said, I haven’t paid that much attention to it. It does seem to me that each new release of WinMo continues to demand more in memory, just as has been the case with the OS’s of its larger brother. When I got the Dash, I just assumed the memory wouldn’t be that great on it, and figured it would worsen if anything with the WM6 upgrade (given MS’s history), so I just haven’t paid attention to it. Sorry. Wish I had some good advice on it.
I’ll tell you the guy who knows how to manage memory in spades, though, is Werner over at Smartphone and Pocket PC Mag. His blog there is well some investment of time.
Check out the comments on exactly your issue and a solution
Dash Tips and Tricks Article 1 - Fix your alert sounds
Karl,
Thank you! This does look like it would work.
However, step 3 seems to not be showing a key piece of info on my browsers:
“Step 3: Edit this XML file - add the following blurb to the SoundCategories section:”
The “following blurb” shows as blank in both browsers I tried to view it with (Firefox and Safari).
Do you happen to know what the “following blurb” is?
Best regards. Thanks for pointing this out. Once I get it to work on mine, I’ll do a writeup on it (and/or update this post appropriately).
Bruce
All right! Thanks Bruce I fixed it up and reposted it! Any interest in being a proof reader for me in the future!!
Have a great day and good luck. We will be doing a whole bunch of Dash Posts today. Check us out… Add us to your rss list!
Thanks, Karl !!
I just added you to my Google Reader feeds.
Thank you again, very much!
Bruce
No thank you Bruce - you are exactly who we are trying to help! Please if you have any other questions leave them for us in the comments on our site and we will get them answered asap!
If you have technical abilities and want to help out let me know in the comments on asktheadmin. We can always use help to help others!
By Admins for Admins… And the end user
Karl L. Gechlik
Thanks for the invite, Karl, but I more than enough to do already. In fact I have a consulting project that I need to start on today so I don’t miss the deadline on it.
Take care. I look forward to the additional Dash info you will be providing.
Bruce
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I have an HTC Touch Cruise with 128 MB of RAM running WM 6.0. Unfortunately, CompanionLink told me that WM can only handle up to 5,000 contacts. It will successfully load once, but then eventually crashes, cannot resynch and needs to be hard-booted to restart.
Mike,
I have heard of people running into trouble with huge contact databases before, but have never experienced it myself: my contact list is in the hundreds, not thousands.
I’ll write a post mentioning your situation and maybe someone can chime in with a solution.
In the interim, good luck.
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