Huge Speed Drop on X50v after Mobile 5.0 Upgrade

[ames]

I received my Windows Mobile 5.0 Upgrade Disc yesterday, and installed it as well. The new OS is beautiful, definitely, and makes a number of tasks easier to do. I for one was thankful for a passable photo viewer... finally...

However, I know that Windows Mobile 5 also moves all program data to the Flash ROM disk, and I have noticed a corresponding drop in speed when doing nearly anything. Even "Bubble Breaker" runs slowly, and I have the processor running at maximum (624)! Has anyone else noticed this problem?

More importantly, how can I correct it?

[Darius Wey]

On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being unnoticeably slow and 10 being extremely laggy (a bit like playing Doom 3 on a TNT2 ;)), how would you rate it?

There is supposed to be an associated slowdown with Windows Mobile 5.0's new persistent storage, but not a huge one. Day-to-day tasks should still be responsive. Only programs which rely on large databases, etc. should have noticeable slowdowns.

[ppcinfo]

I've experienced the same sluggishness after upgrading my x50v to the WM 5.0 OS. I expected applications that read and write to a database file to slow down, but not general operations (e.g., bring up the start menu, displaying the programs screen, etc.). Just in general it all seems slow.

When compared to the previous WM 2003 OS, I would rate the slowness at a 8 (for 1-10 scale). Very noticable and distracting.

ppcinfo

[ames]

Unfortunately I have to rate the slow-down pretty high. At least an 8! Whereas I can understand a small slow-down while playing the demo of Arvale II, I do not understand the Pocket PC taking 10 seconds at least to process a single keystroke in that game. Further, a perceptable slowdown in Bubble Breaker is laughable...

The only thing that I can think of is that I am running PocketPlus3, and I love the program, but does it hog too many system resources?

[ames]

If I may, I have uninstalled Atomic Cannon and Arvale II (both were installed previously) and it's running at a more normal speed now. I suspect the reason is that Atomic Cannon is NOT authorized for Windows Mobile 5 yet... their website says that they're working on a WM5 capable release sometime soon. I even re-installed PocketPlus and it's still working at a passable speed.

The lesson: make sure your programs are either compatible or too small (eWallet is not but it's a minimum resource hog) to matter.

[Darius Wey]

The only thing that I can think of is that I am running PocketPlus3, and I love the program, but does it hog too many system resources?

Pocket Plus most likely isn't the problem. Make sure you're running the updated version (v3.04).

The lesson: make sure your programs are either compatible or too small (eWallet is not but it's a minimum resource hog) to matter.

Yeah, you should make sure all your programs are compatible. As some users have found out, installing incompatible programs can cause erratic behaviour in Windows Mobile 5.0. We're in that transition phase now where developers are learning to sort out issues associated with the move to the new platform. In a few months time, I'm sure there'll be less headaches.

[MitchellO]

I haven't noticed any slowdown between my XDA mini (WM2003SE, XScale 416Mhz) and new K-JAM (WM5, OMAP 200Mhz). I am very impressed with WM5's performance, even on progs that aren't necessarily designed for it.

May be a problem in the WM5 ROM for the X50/1v?

I have installed into ROM:

* TCPMP
* Total Commander
* PHM Regedit and PPC Plus
* SPB GPRS and Pocket Plus
* Opera Mini (MIDlet one)
* MS Stock Scramble (MS Games Pack)
* Monopoly
* Macromedia Flash ActiveX
* Skype 1.2 Beta
* Agile Messenger (the free one)
* AE Uptime
* PocketRAR
* RSS Sync

[PetiteFlower]

Some people on Aximsite were saying they had good luck with taking out any storage cards and soft resetting, then putting the cards back in. They said there was a noticeable improvement in speed after that, even faster then before the upgrade.

I'm doing my upgrade now....cross the fingers, I hope I'm a lucky one!

[Don Tolson]

I, too, have noticed a considerable slow down in performance after upgrading, particularly when recovering from a soft reset. It gets to the end of the 'bar' at the bottom of the screen, then just hangs there for almost 30 seconds (or more) before the Today screen appears. However, I have both a CF and an SD card installed. Perhaps I'll try PetiteFlower's (gotta love that name!) suggestion and see what happens.

[PetiteFlower]

Heh I've been using this screenname since forever :)

I have not had any significant slowdown problems in terms of actual performance. Soft resets do seem to take a while but once it finishes booting, seems to be all good.

[Don Tolson]

Anyone able to get the Data Backup utility to work? i tried it instead of Sprite Backup (cuz someone said a WM5 version wasn't available yet) and it just hung there.

I finally gave up and soft reset.

This thing is still slower than molasses when it first starts up. After a while, it seems to get back into the groove, but it seems the memory management routines are taking a while to figure out where to put resources. BTW, I don't have that much stuff running, and I haven't even STARTED loading my other software yet -- I've been running WM5 pretty much bare bones.

Yuk...

[cab124]

Some of the people over at www.aximsite.com were saying that when they notice the WM5 slowdown, they also notice that if you go to the Processor tab in the power settings dialog, the CPU speed will be stuck at 642 MHz rather than dropping to its normal 104 MHz (assuming processor speed settng is set to Auto). This seems to indicate that there is a background task that is using most of the CPU cycles.

I have noticed this as well. When my device bogs down, my CPU speed will be stuck at 642 MHz. A soft reset will fix this, but I am not able to figure out what is causing it.