Windows Phone 7 Regresses Back To Windows Mobile 2003, Boots In 30 Secs

[Nurhisham Hussein]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.wmexperts.com/windows-phone-7-boot-speeds-are-speedy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wmexperts+(WMExperts)' target='_blank'>http://www.wmexperts.com/windows-ph...rts+(WMExperts)</a><br /><br /></div><p><object width="600" height="360" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/qIrH0eeRclQ&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qIrH0eeRclQ&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" /></object></p><p>When I first plunged into the world of Windows Mobile, it was with an&nbsp;iPaq 2210 PDA running WM2003. Apart from a slightly washed out screen and limited onboard storage (a measly 4MB), that was a great little device. One of the better things about it relative to&nbsp;devices running WM5 onwards was that a soft reset took under 30 secs - this was back when WM devices couldn't be switched off, only suspended. Contrast that with my current phone, which takes&nbsp;more than a&nbsp;couple of minutes to load up fully (inclusive of startup porgrams). And now we've come full circle, with the hardware specs and software optimisation finally catching up to&nbsp;OS demands and design constraints - Windows Phone 7 booting up in 30 secs. Enjoy!</p>

[Gerard]

Um... a "measly 4MB" of memory? According to published specs, the iPAQ 2210 had 64MB of RAM and 32MB ROM. Perhaps you just dropped the '6' from an intended '64'?

I recall with fond regret how I used to wait a full 7 seconds for my Casio E-115 to soft reset and become completely ready for use again. Actually, there were times when that felt like a long time... I couldn't have known how incredibly longer it would take in the coming years. Every new device took longer. My current HTC Kaiser is up around 90 seconds, running WM6.5.3. Of course it's also dramatically more stable than the original Pocket PC OS. That fine old Casio would routinely lock up several times per day, using very modest apps compared to what I expect the current model to run. I soft rest maybe once per day now, sort of an 'apple a day keeps the doctor away' thing, though a couple of times per week a reset is actually necessary due to some sort of slowdown or a rare lock-up.

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Um... a "measly 4MB" of memory? According to published specs, the iPAQ 2210 had 64MB of RAM and 32MB ROM. Perhaps you just dropped the '6' from an intended '64'?


Gerard, I was referring to the onboard storage, which is the user-accesible portion of the ROM. The spec sheet is accurate and there is 32MB ROM onboard, but some 28MB of that is taken up by WM2003, leaving the 4MB I mentioned (and nearly half of that was taken up by the included consumer IR program).

[Gerard]

Ah, sorry about that. My thinking was skewed in reading that comment as I generally found onboard storage - leftovers not used up by a ROM image - to be a decidedly unstable place to do anything important. My old Casio EG-800 came closest to being reliable there, with its two extra file stores called Flash Disk1 and Flash Disk2, totalling about 22MB. But as with the iPAQ 3835 and Toshibas e800 and e830 to follow, the flash memory store would sometimes become invisible and inaccessible if over-filled. I learned the hard way a couple of times by losing rather important files, not to put anything of value there.

[landswipe]

Gerard, I was referring to the onboard storage, which is the user-accesible portion of the ROM. The spec sheet is accurate and there is 32MB ROM onboard, but some 28MB of that is taken up by WM2003, leaving the 4MB I mentioned (and nearly half of that was taken up by the included consumer IR program).

You said 'onboard storage' which one would assume is RAM+ROM, regardless of how the operating system footprint uses it.

Why is this a big deal now anyway? It was only a pain for existing users as WM devices needed to be rebooted once a day... WP7 should be a lot more stable now, right? I mean it's a completely new operating system under the covers (*cough*), and more importantly, OEM's are not going to touch the device drivers, right? ;P right...

[ptyork]

Just to give you a comparison, my 32GB iPhone 3GS cold boots (i.e., hard reset--even turning it fully "off" just hibernates it) in around 20-30 MINUTES. No exaggeration. I've no CLUE what the heck it is doing--reindexing my entire 25GB media library--doing a sector-by-sector chkdsk--who knows? But it is crazy. And it has taken to locking up once a week or so. Only a hard reset fixes the problem. PITA, let me tell you.

[Gerard]

There's an object lesson in why removable storage cards are a great feature. Not to bash the iPhone, which in its own ways is a rather impressive piece of technology. But a 32GB SD card can be popped out of a slot, into a PC slot or USB reader, and the full horsepower of a big computer can be leveraged to run maintenance on the thing. Asking a phone to do that isn't nearly so practical. I did some testing years ago running repair routines and defragmentation using SoftWinter Storage Tools. Great little app... but it takes forever to do anything serious with a larger sized card. Quite comfortable to use in the 1GB and lower range, as a defrag takes less than half an hour in those cases. But for an 8GB card, like I tried in the program just recently, it took an hour just to make it to about 10%. I interrupted the defrag (took about 2 minutes to stop the routine) and then did it on my netbook with Power Defragmenter in about 10 minutes, running a triple-pass routine.

I'd hate to be saddled with a phone running more than a gig or two or built-in memory. Just sounds like trouble. Card capacities are getting easier to pay for by the month these days - just got a 16GB class 4 SD for $29 - so what's the point in having it be part of the machine? Oh, right, upgrading your phone makes more profit for the manufacturer... that's a good point. Just not for the consumer.

[Fritzly]

I'd hate to be saddled with a phone running more than a gig or two or built-in memory. Just sounds like trouble. Card capacities are getting easier to pay for by the month these days - just got a 16GB class 4 SD for $29 - so what's the point in having it be part of the machine? Oh, right, upgrading your phone makes more profit for the manufacturer... that's a good point. Just not for the consumer.

Excellent point; the lack of removable cards is one of the reason why I do not like the iPhone and I will not buy a WP7 phone.

[Jason Dunn]

Looks like they're continuing to work on this: the CNET article I read today said they were cold booting in 18.5 seconds, and that's within 1 second of the goal...so a goal of 17.5 seconds. Impressive!

As for why that's important, there are scenarios where you want to power down your phone (say, to conserve battery life) and being able to have it up and running in 17.5 seconds would be pretty sweet. :)

[doogald]

There's an object lesson in why removable storage cards are a great feature. Not to bash the iPhone, which in its own ways is a rather impressive piece of technology. But a 32GB SD card can be popped out of a slot, into a PC slot or USB reader, and the full horsepower of a big computer can be leveraged to run maintenance on the thing. Asking a phone to do that isn't nearly so practical. I did some testing years ago running repair routines and defragmentation using SoftWinter Storage Tools. Great little app... but it takes forever to do anything serious with a larger sized card. Quite comfortable to use in the 1GB and lower range, as a defrag takes less than half an hour in those cases. But for an 8GB card, like I tried in the program just recently, it took an hour just to make it to about 10%. I interrupted the defrag (took about 2 minutes to stop the routine) and then did it on my netbook with Power Defragmenter in about 10 minutes, running a triple-pass routine.

It's too bad, then, that Apple did not expose the internal storage as a drive when connected to iTunes, as it did with the iPod non-Touch, as it would be just that - a USB connected external drive.