What's Wrong Now & What Will WM7 & WM8 Hold?

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/what.s-wrong-with-windows-mobile/whats-wrong-with-windows-mobile-and-how-wm7-and-wm8-are-going-to-fix-it-333536.php' target='_blank'>http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/what.s-w...x-it-333536.php</a><br /><br /></div><i>"We just got the scoop from Microsoft on Windows Mobile 7 and Windows Mobile 8, the two upcoming platforms that will fix what is undeniably broken about the Windows Mobile platform to date. This was originally going to be a piece about how Microsoft had no idea what the consumer wanted, where I would explain what I thought Microsoft needed to do to fix it. Oh, I still discuss the flaws, but while talking to the Windows Mobile team, I learned about the next two versions of the mobile OS. Turns out, Microsoft knows exactly what's wrong with the WM platform, and it knows what to do to fix it. Trust me: there's hope on the horizon."</i><br /><br />We enjoy pointing out what pains us about our OS of choice around here, and it looks like somethings will be addressed in the next few years as Windows Mobile rolls on to post-WM6 releases. Points made in the posts here include the fact that service providers may simply have too low of a bar to meet when it comes to application responsiveness and phone optimization, as well as the fast that the WM team has been focused on Enterprise features and leaving regular users a bit out of the loop. Some of these regular user features are mentioned in this <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/14/windows-mobile-more-of-whats-going-on-in-the-next-two-versions/">piece by Engadget</a> discussing Windows Mobile 6.1 and it's new features. Personally I'd love to see Windows Mobile catch up to the ease of use that some other UIs enjoy, and we NEED a better browser. That being said, despite it's short commings, I'm still feeling like I'm most suited for Windows Mobile - and I sometimes wonder why! I guess I'm used to the compromises that we've all made working with Windows Mobile that current devices in other OS'es don't seem to make their users adapt to. Thoughts?

[midtoad]

I've been all over the map on PDAs, from Palms to PocketPCs to a Zaurus, over the past 10 years. Recently I decided to dump my Palm once again and move definitively to WM. Within a month of that decision I'm already second-guessing myself. Why? Because it doesn't "just work". It's as though Microsoft's motto is "making simple things difficult, and hard things impossible".

Over the years I had very few problems with Hotsync. But in only a month, I'm now up to 4 different synchonized files folders on my desktop, having suffered two hard resets, and my ActiveStync 4.5 (latest version) says it's connecting to Device #5. We're on the 6th major version of the operating system and Microsoft still can't make an application that syncs my device to my desktop reliably?

Other elements of the OS are unbelievably kludgy. It's as though the engineers that designed it never actually eat their own dogfood. One simple example: At home I run a wireless network with fixed IP addresses. It took a lot of effort to figure out how to make my PPC-6700 connect to this network. And each time I venture out to an internet cafe where they have DHCP, I have to try to remember where exactly in the bowels of the OS have the IP settings been buried. Then the same thing again when I come home. Microsoft, steal a concept from Apple and introduce the concept of Locations!

At work I plug my PDA into a sync cable and ActiveSync springs to life. Then it insists on re-syncing every five minutes, all day long. Each time, it bogs down my PC (a 2.8 GHz P4) while it takes up to 10 minutes to sync. There's no way to stop this behaviour except by mucking around in the system registry. Even then it springs back into action like a zombie, and you can't close ActiveSync except by killling the WCESCOMM process in the Task Manager. And oh, you wanted to have internet pass-through from your desktop to your PDA so you can test out some websites on PIE? Good luck finding out what registry settings you have to change to make that work!

Now Microsoft says it knows what's wrong, and it will only take another two iterations of the OS to fix it all. The unmitigated gall! Even if they deliver an all-singing, all-dancing version of the OS in the very next iteration, it'll help few users, since many device manufacturers and many carriers choose to refuse to provide OS updates to their customers.

No wonder Apple has captured more market share in just six months than all of Microsoft's partners have in the past several years. And in that short time they've not only issued several updates, but offered them to every single owner of their iPhone product.

Come to think of it, the iPhone is the only PDA-like device I haven't tried yet. Maybe I should give that a shot next. Knowing Apple's reputation on the desktop, I have a good expectation that, finally, I may have a device that "just works".

[bacchus_3]

I've switched long ago to the Mac platform by buying a Macbook but didn't really give up on WM until recently when I got myself an iPhone. Note that anything I'll say here doesn't say that the iPhone is better than WM. I've learned to give up push email as gmail imap seems to work well with me. The iPhone has features that 'work' with me and that's a major thing I detest in using a WM phone - but I still look for my next one in the next few months (the Asus P750 is a candidate).
True that WM really needs a better browser. Safari Mobile beats it big time. I hope the WM team at Microsoft really knows how to reach the end-goal of user satisfaction but my comment to them for now is that Apple does well in avoiding its users to qualm and complain about features (it's not perfect on the other side too :) ).
Reading this article, I hope the next updates for WM can still convince me to keep on checking its progress for me to finally get a WM phone again.

[superrrguy]

I can't tell if MS stopped trying so hard after the whole DOJ thing so they won't be blamed for being a monopoly or if MS just stops caring if there's no competition and think people will use their stuff by default or if their good ideas only come from imitating others, or if their products just suck as of late.

Besides all the obvious reasons to love or hate WM I have to say I hate the 'unlock' screen which has gotten worse in WM6 with the new unlock key added. First, as a phone/organizer I wish I could get a peak at my day without unlocking the thing every time but more importantly, why is the 0 so big and the "clear" so small? I have 6 numbers in my pin now and not one of them is a 0! I'm sure more people hit clear than 0. In fact, they should make the 0 the same size as the other numbers and change the big button to "unlock".

MS hasn't really bothered to update PIE and Media Player but now that Apple is in the game, they're talking about great things to come. Too late.
Why are they talking about version 8! Fix it in 7 if you know it should be done.

Even the layout of the onscreen phone keypad sucks. The important buttons are too small. How hard is it to fix that?

[stevew]

Well sure now the IPhone has come out, now Microsoft gets off their *ss. They no longer take the lead anymore. They wait until something threatens there market share and either buys the company or in the IPhone case they won't buy Apple so they have to do something.

I purchased an IPhone after years using WM and putting up with the same nagging flaws that never get fixed. The IPhone is very good at what it does. Is it missing features? Sure it is, mostly business stuff. But I bet Apple will continue to evolve the IPhone and Microsoft knows that.

[twpd]

Every iteration of Windows Mobile I have used has been rubbish. Complicated, slow, buggy and un-intuitive. Psion was a perfect example of elegance - sadly they've gone so, I've moved to a Treo 680 which, despite a few shortcomings (no wifi) is a delight to use in terms of speed, reliability, synching and a simple, but effective UI.

[pocketpcadmirer]

One thing they must hard code into their OS that they must put the phone feature to always work no matter if some apps are fully utilising the CPU.
eg: if the phone is busy downloading data from the internet on IE/opera and if a call comes in, the phone starts to behave erractically. This is because it has to decode the 300kb mp3 ringtone and play it, but, since the opera is busy downloading data from the internet, it takes a lot of time to decode and then, if you press the answer button, it takes it few more seconds to respond.

We atleast want the phone feature of phone edition(ok, WM professional) devices to work reliably.
I know the radio ROMs which communicate with the OS for phone functions have undergone a great deal of change, but, a lot needs to be done in this area

[superrrguy]

I totally agree. The phone needs to work and keep working no matter what else is happening.

I use both a Standard and Pro during the day and I think Standard is quicker and easier to use. I'm not sure if unintuitive is the word to describe what's going on. Everything is more or less where it should be. It's just that it takes too many buttons or taps to do it.

I've been doing everything the iPhone does since PocketPC 2003 and I don't know if the iPhone made it easier or prettier. Thank god the iPhone came out! It's not for me but at least I'll make the competion try harder. Everyone I know that had a Treo or Blackberry now has an iPhone. Former Blackberry owners say they miss the Blackberry but the iPhone is so cool and fun to use. No one misses their Treos.

[Russ Smith]

I'm glad MS is re-thinking the UI. The last time they really made an effort at that was between Pocket-Sized PC and Pocket PC and (not coincidentally) that was when PPC began to overtake Palm. The UI is important, but, I think MS may have missed a bigger issue with WM. Synching is still buggy, unstable, unreliable, and really needs a serious overhaul. It's such an important feature, I can't see why it isn't (or at least doesn't seem to be) priority 1. Seriously, if you can't get your appointments to synch, who cares if you can easily navigate to the screen that should show them?

End rant. We now return you to your reguarly scheduled thread :)

[Dyvim]

I look forward to the coming improvements but for the time being I will stick with my new iPhone as my daily driver (after 8 years of using only Windows Mobile devices).

I love my Advantage and Toshiba e830 for eBook reading, but that's about all I use them for these days. I would use the Advantage to watch more movies if video playback wasn't so sluggish (the e830 has it beat on video playback despite a slower processor and no GPU).

[adamz]

Personally I'd love to see Windows Mobile catch up to the ease of use that some other UIs enjoy, and we NEED a better browser. That being said, despite it's short commings, I'm still feeling like I'm most suited for Windows Mobile - and I sometimes wonder why! I guess I'm used to the compromises that we've all made working with Windows Mobile that current devices in other OS'es don't seem to make their users adapt to. Thoughts?

What other OS'es and easy UIs are you referring to and in what way are they easier or do they not make their users adapt?
I find it hard to believe that there is such thing as a UI that doesn't force you to learn something in order to use it. The iPhone has a huge learning curve, why do you think they had all those commercials teaching everyone how to use it? It doesn't have any user interface that's recognizable from anything else we've used (including Mac OS X). The pinch-zooming, browser navigation, scrolling interfaces are not intuitively discoverable at all unless you watched the video training (commercials). And of course, you have to adapt to not being able to copy/paste stuff, not having a file manager, not being able to make phone calls while driving (since you can't feel the buttons or do voice dialing), not having GPS navigation, not being able to search your contact list, etc., etc.

If you're referring to Palm or Symbian, again... there's major learning involved in figuring out how to use those operating systems. At least with Windows Mobile, anyone who understands what the word "Start" means will know where to begin. Anyone who's ever seen a scroll-bar on a computer will know how that functions.

[ADBrown]

I must note that while Gizmodo is implying that this is official Microsoft information from Derek Snyder, Brighthand has talked to Snyder, who has categorically said that the information that Gizmodo presents is not officially sanctioned or confirmed. They're basically lying when they say that they got this from the developers.

[VulcanTourist]

How about configurable scrollbars on the LEFT side of the display, dear Microsoft? Why do you continue to discriminate against left-handed stylus-holding people, whilst at the same time devoting so much care to adding "accessibility" features for deaf/blind/etc. people? What about the MILLIONS of left-handed people who currently have to reach across the very displays they're trying to view in order to scroll them, hmmm?

[absynth]

yea i must say.. it's nice to hear them say this, but did they just recently restaff the entire wm team? who the #### has been making 2003, WM5 and WM6? did they not already know all these problems. wouldn't most people agree here that most of the issues are not new problems, but simply the same old issues dressed up with a few improvements here and there, and some of those improvements are even steps back?

then it's kinda laughable that they'd say "yea we know what's wrong, but we'll get it right in two versions later? anyway, say what they want, iphone and potentially android are going to overtake the market. end of story. there is no way that they will hold their ground for two more years in this market and expect us to still be using WM. personally i'm looking forward to android. open source.. google's smart design.. iphone is cool, but unless i own a mac, probably in a year or two, i refuse to be using itunes on a pc.

here is one, and this is an AMAZING oversight. windows media player for mobile right? ok.. awesome.. i have an sd card.. now i think it's safe to say that some people here play games right? well games like to use wav files for their sound rather than mp3. etc.. how annoying is it that you can't simply filter out wav files. you used to be able to do this!! so right off the bat, the media player becomes useless because it has to scan the entire device for all music.. can't direct it to one folder even (which would fix the problem pretty effectively.

anyway pocket player is amazing. visualization.. great internet radio and podcast support.. even a directory for all shoutcast stations. anyway.. it's this kind of obvious and frankly unacceptable incompetence that shows that either MS has such a buerocracy that it can't keep anything straight or someone is playing too much golf and not doing their job.

of course i could say the same with a lot of cell phone carriers on the hardware side however, i hold the OS primarily responsible for most of WM phone shortcomings.


Thanks
Caleb

[randyzon]

I got tired of the HTC Wizard and the still somewhat glitchy WM5. Without any new products on the market the U.S. I gave up on Tmo and got a simple flip phone with walkie/talkie from Sprint Nextel. It serves my purpose without being a brick on my waist that is twice as thick as it needs to be with half the screen that it could have. iPhone is innovative but even it was obsolete when it was released. I suppose I'll wait another 6 months or a year for someone to put a phone/pda together that has good sound, a decent speaker phone, has contact/calendar synching functions, and doesn't take 3 minutes to load a webpage...also maybe someone can build a browser that you can actually use to enter passwords and get to secure sites. I don't know....seems like the U.S. market stagnated about a year ago and the providers just decided it wasn't worth upgrading their products to keep up with the rest of the world.

[Russ Smith]

Question for all you iPhone owners out there:
Just exactly what is it that's so much better about the iPhone? (On the one hand I've always thought Apple could sell nose hair trimmers just by painting them white and putting an Apple with a byte missing on it. On the other hand, it's not _all_ hype. OSX is a pretty decent OS, for instance. So, what, in the most concrete terms you can come up with, are the aspects of the iPhone -- OS, UI, etc. -- that WM should try to emulate and/or improve on?)