How's That Windows Mobile 5.0 Upgrade? [Archive]

Darius Wey

11-17-2005, 05:00 PM

<img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20051118-WM.gif" /> It has been a few weeks since the Windows Mobile 5.0 upgrade was released for the Dell Axim X50/X50v series and the HP iPAQ hx2000 series. Many of you took the plunge with mixed results. For some of you, it has worked great, while for others, it has been less than rosy. And then there are a select few of you who can't even upgrade (for some strange and twisted reason). Whatever your issue is, let it be known. Now I know quite a few of you may be experiencing more than one issue. If so, please pick the one that dominates. Please note that this poll is only for users who have upgraded their existing device from Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition to Windows Mobile 5.0.

stevelam

11-17-2005, 05:18 PM

Yeh other. I'm not getting an upgrade. Grrrrr. Go fail HP. :evil:

Nurhisham Hussein

11-17-2005, 05:33 PM

I got a kick out of the number of people who selected "What's Windows Mobile?"! LOL :twisted:

Tracy Daubenspeck

11-17-2005, 05:34 PM

Thank God for Dell's roll back program.

Pocket Plus kills the battery. Avanto Go looks terrible. Bluetooth support is very limited with no A2DP support. Activesync runs every 2.5 minutes. Any program it doesn't like makes the processor run at full speed. No wireless sync.

On the bright side, the office programs are much better. The media player sync is integrated into Activesync.

I will reinstall after the planned? update if they include A2DP profiles in Bluetooth. It is apparently in the OEM package but is a processor hog so they haven't included it.

jutae

11-17-2005, 05:47 PM

Initially, i iwas impressed with the new features. That was before My battery went dead. Daily, I had a message informing me my battery life was at 1%. I too have an axim x50v and pocket plus. I didn't know pocket plus was the culprit. I restored it back to 2003 se!!!

Clinton Fitch

11-17-2005, 05:59 PM

My upgrade process got off to a pretty rocky start but everything is running pretty good right now.

When I did the upgrade the first time, my x50v just tanked. I couldn't get applications to install, it was painfully slow and resets were common place. I ended up rolling back to WM2003SE thinking I'd wait a bit.

After some talking within another group I decided to try it again and this time the upgrade went smoothly with no application issues.

Unlike some, I've seen a pretty impressive jump in battery life and I haven't had any issues with BT or WiFi. My biggest complaint is the sluggishness when starting applications or closing them. I suspect this has to do with the way WM5 treats the ROM now but I can't verify that is the case.

I've had no issues with Pocket Plus btw...

Regards,

ronb

11-17-2005, 06:26 PM

I have the X51v. Had to pick "other".

The main problem/issue I have is the device not turning on: the black-screen-or-white-screen problem (which is little discussed in these forums). You could call this an "unexpected soft reset", as I shouldn't have to expect to have to do that to get it to start up.

That said, the reason I can't make full use of the device is that apps that are key to me are not yet WM5 compatible, either admittedly or in my experience. But this is secondary to having to do a reset to start my device most times.

Does anyone know if the X50 "rollback" works on an X51?

damager

11-17-2005, 07:05 PM

I've had many of these issues, but most (like the battery drain) can be attributed to programs like Pocket+. My only remaining issue is that every night while I read ebooks before going to bed, the x50v "loses" the SD card, requiring me to reopen the book - not a huge deal.

powder2000

11-17-2005, 07:16 PM

Does anyone know if the X50 "rollback" works on an X51?

No, since you started with 05 you have nothing to roll back to.

pocketpcadmirer

11-17-2005, 07:42 PM

Oh.it really makes me feal bad to hear those things..It looks like u hv downgraded.

Also I'm flumoxxed to hear that u ppl have problems with battery life.
IMO win mob 5 should make ur battery life better.

Anyway cheer up guys !!

Sunny

cab124

11-17-2005, 08:26 PM

I have had most of the problems mentioned in this thread since I upgraded.

I have had problems with the device no longer seeing my CF card, not turning on without a soft reset, unexpected hard resets, VERY sluggish performance, decreased battery life, screen redraw issues (especially in ListPro), decreased BlueTooth functionality, application incompatibilities, and some of the ActiveSync 4.0 issues. The only one I have not yet experienced is the complete battery drain (though I am using PocketPlus).

The only real positives that I can think of are the new office applications, and the new memory model.

There are threads that list potential fixes for some of these issues, but I am really starting to wonder what the real benefit of having WM5 is, even if it ran perfectly. What are we really gaining????

I haven't rolled back yet, but I am on my third hard reset and beginning to lose patience.

PetiteFlower

11-17-2005, 08:46 PM

For all the X50 users having problems:

I strongly suggest you go to the Aximsite forums and check out the WM5 board. There is a thread just for listing fixes to some of the common problems. After following their advice, I was able to get Activesync to stop starting itself every 5 minutes when I'm not even connected to the cradle and also helped with some of the slowdown and reset issues I was having. I still have occasional sluggish performance and still sometimes find the processor stuck at 624 (in auto mode), but it's much less frequent then before, the vast majority of the time it works great (faster then before) and I'm happy with the upgrade. There's a fix for the battery drain issue too I think, but that seems to be connected to the CF slot somehow and I don't have a CF card so I've never had a problem with battery drain.

Please note, Pocket Plus is NOT responsible for slowdowns or battery drains! At least not the most recent version. I am running it and it seems to work just fine. Like I said, the battery drain problem seems to be related to having a CF card installed.

The Aximsite forums are your friend, really, there is SO much information there!

Sven Johannsen

11-17-2005, 09:48 PM

.....Bluetooth support is very limited with no A2DP support.

Not sure I understand this comment. The X50 didn't have A2DP support either. I think there is an issue of now not being able to stuff the HP headphone driver on the Dell since it went from the Widcomm stack the MS one. For those upgrading the HP model, do you still have the Widcomm BT stack, or did you get MS's too? If the latter, HP owes you a BT headphone fix. They did this last time when they provided an MP10 update which broke the headphone, and they fixed it.

capo

11-17-2005, 10:12 PM

I'm usually as close to the bleeding edge as I can afford to be, but this time I'm holding off. My x50v is working reasonably well right now, thank you. I don't see anything that makes WM5 a gotta have for me, but I see a lot of potential headaches. Those I definitely don't need...

ronb

11-17-2005, 10:53 PM

Does anyone know if the X50 "rollback" works on an X51?
No, since you started with 05 you have nothing to roll back to.
Okay, never mind the 'rollback' terminology (that's why I used the " " in the first place).

My question: Has anyone tried installing a X50 (WM2003SE) software (OS) pack on a X51?

alex_kac

11-17-2005, 11:09 PM

WM5 should work a lot better than WM2003 did in many areas. Unfortunately - as I've said many times both here and on my own forums this is one of those things that's just best to wait until it matures. Wm5 is a very different OS underneath. Many OEMs are just getting their feet wet and many drivers are very weak in their implementations at this time. ActiveSync 4.x is still in beta. WM5 wasn't rushed out (though it did have several slap-the-forehead-bugs shipped that I just shake my head about), but the OEM implementations were. My feeling is that about 3-6 months from now, most of the early adopter issues will be gone and we'll be looking at a stable platform.

But I also don't suggest anybody who absolutely relies on their PDA right now to do more than stock functionality upgrade to WM5.

rkopper

11-17-2005, 11:26 PM

My biggest issue was I bricked my original x50v. Ran fine about 3 days with numerous problems, with the biggest being dead battery. On day 3, I had soft reset and that was the end of it. The loading status indicator would begin to move, and then stop halfway never to boot again. THANKFULLY, my warranty wasn't up yet and Dell was good enough to send me a replacement. I'm not certain if it was caused by WM5, but 2003SE never gave me many issues.

crimsonsky

11-18-2005, 12:50 AM

Interesting that all the comments in this thread so far are from X50 users. So where are the hx2000 series users?

I have an hx215 that I've three times tried WM5 on and I keep going back to WM2003SE, where I've just decided to stay. The 2415 doesn't really have enough memory to make WM5 feasible. You only get about 17 megs of free memory to store programs out of 64! It's way to easy to eat up this space with programs that MUST live in RAM (MS Reader, Battery Pack Pro, Pocket Informant, etc). I wound up with only 2.3 megs available. Not good.

And all the other problems - not turning on and requiring a soft reset, one random hard reset, slower than molasses, randomly not being able to see either the CF or SD card, BT not working with my phone, flakey behaviour of the D-Pad, etc. The program compatibily issues I could have lived with since most of the programs I use either are, or will soon be WM5 compatible.

I actually do not believe HP actually tested this device on the 24xx series - I can't believe they'd actually put out something this flawed if they had tested it. If I could, I'd defintely request a refund on the $40 I paid for the update.

kotkinjs1

11-18-2005, 12:54 AM

Had to vote "other" too because you couldn't choose more than one problem. After the upgrade, every aspect of the Axim ran slow from opening menus to starting programs to handwriting in Word. A very noticeable and frustrating delay. With WA2 it made it 5X worse.
AS would always stay on in a trying to synch state and hog system resources. It would also block me from doing anything for minutes on end because I couldn't close it out.
Lost my CF card once but then that resolved itself. One card issue that didn't resolve itself was that I lost a whole folder worth of documents in my SD card - it was strange because it was only that one subfolder in the My Docs folder. But of course it was a pretty important folder for me. :(
Then I had random soft reboots (on its own) when using different 3rd party apps (TextMaker among others). I noticed I was soft resetting (voluntarily) about 3-5 times a day with WM5 just to clear lockups, etc. Had to hard reset twice just to try ands start over after trying some registry hacks that were supposed to help but didn't pan out.
So I did the downgrade yesterday in hopes of a patch release soon. My system was just to unstable and slow. Slow doesn't even describe it really. Slow to non-responsive.
Oh well. :? I'll wait and see some testing and posts after the 1st patch is released before I rush out again and upgrade.

Nurhisham Hussein

11-18-2005, 01:42 AM

PetiteFlower

11-18-2005, 02:09 AM

I think he meant in Main Memory as opposed to a storage card.

Hugh Nano

11-18-2005, 02:15 AM

I have to admit, I'm pretty disappointed with the Dell WM5 "upgrade" overall. Many of the problems I had with the first versions of my x50v seem to be back with a vengeance, with the addition, now, of incredibly sluggish performance.

isilver

11-18-2005, 02:27 AM

Mine keeps telling me that a memory error has occured and then asks me to click the calendar button. Once I click it it does a soft reset except for once where it did a partial hard reset.

When I say a partial hard reset I mean that it forced me to go through the startup process of aligning screen, cutting and pasting entries. then when it started up all programs were still installed but weren't registered anymore. I had register everything. Then all my calendar items duplicated themselver.

I almost think that this might be more of a software issue. It was really glitching on some of the programs, even to the point of resetting all the time.

Despite all the problems I really like the wireless option where I can turn off the pocketpc and it turns off. Then I turn it on and the wireless starts up almost immediately. Pretty sweet. I don't really think it drains the battery more then the windows 2003SE but I haven't calculated it down to the minute.

I think I am going to go back to the 2003SE just because I am not looking for the newest OS but rather a stable one. If only I could figure out how to go back.

Hugh Nano

11-18-2005, 02:39 AM

Mine keeps telling me that a memory error has occured and then asks me to click the calendar button. Once I click it it does a soft reset except for once where it did a partial hard reset.

Mine too.

Despite all the problems I really like the wireless option where I can turn off the pocketpc and it turns off. Then I turn it on and the wireless starts up almost immediately. Pretty sweet. I don't really think it drains the battery more then the windows 2003SE but I haven't calculated it down to the minute.

Hadn't noticed this. I'll have to try it. I have noticed that my battery has been completely drained a couple of times - perhaps not turning off after a notification/alarm? Possibly a 3rd-party software problem. I'm thinking of hard-resetting and just running with the built-in apps for a while. Not a good solution, but I might learn a bit from doing so.

I think I am going to go back to the 2003SE just because I am not looking for the newest OS but rather a stable one. If only I could figure out how to go back.

Try downloading and running the appropriate ROM reinstallation package from Dell Support (http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/devices.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&SystemID=PDA_AXIM_X50&os=PPM&osl=EN), under System and Configuration Utilities.

crimsonsky

11-18-2005, 02:47 AM

You only get about 17 megs of free memory to store programs out of 64! It's way to easy to eat up this space with programs that MUST live in RAM (MS Reader, Battery Pack Pro, Pocket Informant, etc).

I'm not sure I understand this. I thought under WM5.0's memory model, programs can only be installed in ROM and on external cards? There was some talk of using a RAM disk - does HP's implementation of WM5.0 have this? Or am I missing my morning coffee too much and completely misreading you?

Yep - they are installed in ROM, but after the upgrade, only 17 megs or so is free. Even the RAM is not 64 megs as there is stuff there on a newly installed system, so you only get about 40 or so megs of free RAM (although this is more than sufficient to run programs).

To make WM5 feasible, a device really needs at least 96 megs of ROM. 64 Just leaves too little free.

Darius Wey

11-18-2005, 03:15 AM

I got a kick out of the number of people who selected "What's Windows Mobile?"! LOL :twisted:

It's common to include a dud option, though I'm thinking it was a bad choice this time round. ;)

Darius Wey

11-18-2005, 03:17 AM

My question: Has anyone tried installing a X50 (WM2003SE) software (OS) pack on a X51?

What do you mean by an OS pack? Are you referring to Dell's ROM updates? If so, then it won't work.

Stephen Beesley

11-18-2005, 04:13 AM

My only remaining issue is that every night while I read ebooks before going to bed, the x50v "loses" the SD card, requiring me to reopen the book - not a huge deal.

Not sure if this will work in WM 5 but it sounds like a very similiar issue to the one discussed HERE (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27614&highlight=).

Could be something that has been carried over to WM5.

cab124

11-18-2005, 05:03 AM

I finally threw in the towel and rolled back to WM 2003 SE. As much as I wanted to stick with WM5, I rely on my Pocket PC too heavily to deal with all of the instability. Wow....it feels sooooo much better to have a smooth running OS once again.

My only problem is that I uninstalled ActiveSync 4.0 and reinstalled ActiveSync 3.8, but I am getting the message "critical communications service have failed to start" every time I try to sync up. Has anyone else seen this issue after rolling back??

pocketpcadmirer

11-18-2005, 10:51 AM

jamesbe2759

11-18-2005, 03:30 PM

isilver

11-18-2005, 03:37 PM

Hi..I want to give u guys a suggestion.

Chilllll....
win mobile 5 is still a young OS. Lets it grow, nurture and then u will see its potential. I know all we can do is yammer but it wont give us the stuff what we need. Will it ??

SUnny :oops:

It's hard to believe how much a person needs a Pocket PC. These days I rely on it everyday. Whether it's to play music, view my calendar and contact information or to use the wireless option to connect to my home computer and transfer files from any wifi location.

Yup it's a way of life and unfortunately I don't have the time to Chill. I know it will become better, and applications will be better but in my opinion this version is still in the beta phase and should never have really been released. But that is just what I have seen, one person with one Dell Axim X50v who upgraded to WM 05. When you think of the probably hundreds, or maybe thousands of people I'm sure I'm sure my issues pop up very rarely when someone upgraded to this new OS.

kiwi

11-18-2005, 04:13 PM

Wow,. you guys have made me rethink about doing the upgrade to WM5.0.

Maybe its best I stay on WM2003SE on the 2410..

cab124

11-18-2005, 04:21 PM

Yup it's a way of life and unfortunately I don't have the time to Chill.

Couldn't agree more.

pocketpcadmirer

11-18-2005, 04:26 PM

Wow,. you guys have made me rethink about doing the upgrade to WM5.0.

Maybe its best I stay on WM2003SE on the 2410..

Yes, if its aint broken dont fix it. If win mobile 5 suffix ur needs then why whine ??

Sunny 0X

pocketpcadmirer

11-18-2005, 04:28 PM

kiwi

11-18-2005, 04:44 PM

Sunny wrote:

>WHat was the thing(s) that u didnt understand in my post ??

I think it was the word "flumoxxed " :wink:

MasterOfMoo

11-18-2005, 05:37 PM

:evil:

OK, running on an Axim X50v:
Upgrade

Upgrade went smoothly
Noted that "Built-in storage" no longer existed (I now had a larger amount of "available" storage space equal to my previous "user space" combined with what was previously listed as "Built-in storage" - sweet)
After the upgrade, had many instances where I'd end up with a painfully long startup time when I'd power on the device, just to receive the "memory error has occured" error message, ultimately resulting in about a 7/9 rate of hard resets (the other two times, the device did come back up after a soft reset)
Performance was a nightmare (sluggish is being too kind)
Every time the device was removed from the cradle, I would lose all USB devices connected to my PC (this may be a side effect of the ActiveSync hell of 4.0, but I'll leave that for others to tirade against) until I rebooted my PC

With all of that joy going for me, yesterday I finally gave up and decided to perform the rollback:
Rollback

Rollback performed smoothly
Noticed when I was going to reinstall applications that my "Built-in Storage" was not listed as an install location, and my available memory for installations/data and program memory was reduced back to the original 61.75 total "main" memory

The rollback that has left me with less of a device than I had before I started the whole upgrade experience has me furious. I'll be placing a support call to Dell later today to try to isolate what has happened and what needs to happen to resolve it.

Recommendation for Axim owners
Just my opinion, but my recommendation would be, whether you have ordered the upgrade or not, don't install the upgrade until the first WM5 (A02?) ROM supplemental update is available.

</my 2 cents>

PetiteFlower

11-18-2005, 07:15 PM

Did you even attempt to look for fixes to any of your issues before you rolled back???

johnnylocust

11-18-2005, 08:06 PM

I got a kick out of the number of people who selected "What's Windows Mobile?"! LOL :twisted:

I selected that because there wasn't an option for "I know better than to try to upgrade"

MasterOfMoo

11-18-2005, 08:58 PM

Did you even attempt to look for fixes to any of your issues before you rolled back???

I don't know about the others who have done so, but I did look. The only support option from the vendor (Dell) is currently the rollback ROM distribution.

Additionally, to try to isolate if it was a factor of a 3rd-party application or additional hardware causing issues, I (attempted) a full day at work with a clean hard-reset to just run with the "factory default" configuration and removed my extra memory cards. The result was one random reset, sluggish performance hit throughout my day of meeting notes and manual transfer of calendar entries (not fun with several back-to-back meeting entries) --- all without being so daring as to add a partnership with my laptop just to remove the possibility of ActiveSync playing into it either.

So, with a standard, "fresh device" approach, I was still left afloat with the only "fix" available being the rollback.

PResines

11-18-2005, 09:41 PM

I had some of the problems, mainly sluggish response, redraw issues and some incompatibilities.

but mostly I rolled back because I greatly disliked the whole WM5 experience because of litle changes in behavior and the ugly softkey interface(I have screen realstate and touchScreen, I want more buttons there!).

There are a lot of details like in WM2003 I can redefine the side buttons to be UP and Down scroll and pocketIE diferentiates them form the main up/down buttons with diferent functions (one pair does scroll up and down, the other goes up or down throug links). On WM5 both pairs do scroll up and down and I dont have a way to traverse links withkeys.

Several of this changes where making my experience tedious and forced me to roll back. I don't know If I will go back even with ROM A02. This are problems with the design the OS is going, not Dell's implementation.

pocketpcadmirer

11-19-2005, 05:48 AM

Sunny wrote:

>WHat was the thing(s) that u didnt understand in my post ??

I think it was the word "flumoxxed " :wink:

Flummoxed means confused. Here I meant that win mobile 5 claimed to have better battery life. Here I see total ANTI-THESIS.

Sunny 0X

Muntasser

11-20-2005, 06:27 PM

ok, so who else is getting a White Screen of Death on their X50?!?!?!

otherwise i'm happy with WM5, although A02 could NOT come a moment sooner.

clbsvi

11-26-2005, 04:33 AM

Bought subject device about a week ago. Am using same w/ a Kingston 256MB Compact Flash card. Installation was easy using both Active Sync and Infrared from an old iPAQ 2675. CF card solves most memory issues. Impoortant to open Active Sync BEFORE inserting the device into the cradle. Battery life appears to be about 11-12 hours if the number of open programs is 5 or less. Bluetooth and WiFi control panel is a dream and easy to operate. Continuous use of WiFi appears to drop battery life to about 5 hours. Some menus are less friendly under WM5, notably Windows Word. If lots of programs are opened simultaneously, battery life drops to about 2.5 hours. Would be worthwhile to buy a single spare high capacity battery if access to a charger outlet is not readily available. One neat feature is ability to recharge battery, both fast and slow, through Laptap USB port/cradle. There is no discernible drain on laptop battery life using fast recharge. IMHO, slow processor response is only a factor if more than 5 programs are open at once. A useful tool to quickly close excess open programs is Clarence Chau's Pocket Toolman application. Device cost me about $325.00 US at local Circuit City with rebate, taxes and included $25.00 Circuit City "gift card."