03-29-2008, 11:00 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 6,305
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Are Windows Mobile Phones Underpowered?
"Its been nearly 2 years since the Dell Axim X51 and the HP iPAQ 4700, but those two Pocket PCs are still regarded by many as the best Pocket PC out there. Well, there aren’t really that many standalone Pocket PCs being made anymore. Think about it though, has there been any advances in processors in the last two years? Not really. You can go buy the hottest Pocket PC Phone on the market and still get the same specs as the Dell Axim X51 from 2 years ago. Look at the AT&T Tilt… It has a 400mhz processor."
 Well let me think, browse the Internet on a Windows Mobile device or take out my own appendix with a warm spoon. Thinking, thinking. I'm going to have to find a spoon. The question of whether or not WM is sluggish is answered every time you try to turn one on from a dead sleep. The wait is almost comical. To me, most of the latest WM devices are no faster than the first iPAQs I used. I have a Tilt as mentioned above, it seems sluggish to me. How many times have you sat there looking at that stupid little pie spinning around waiting for something to happen? How often has it just stopped dead letting you know your device had vapor locked. Then you get to soft reset and wait for the wonderful startup sequence to play out. Not to beat a dead horse but after this many years WM should be much much better than this. The above link leads to a survey as well. Go take it and weigh in on this issue. Then let us know what you think here.
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03-30-2008, 12:25 AM
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Oracle
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 841
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My iPaq h4150 was the best performer I've ever seen. Since then all Windows Mobile devices are slow... Very slow.
I have a couple of HTC touch devices here and it's annoying. I also got two i-mate Ultimate series, and my goodness they are the worst things I've ever seen!
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03-30-2008, 12:40 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 86
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I know I'm alone in saying this, but some of us here have been beating that dead horse for a couple of years now. I remember one particular rant I spewed out that went into painful detail, chronicling the time line of desktop CPUs and GPUs vs. the hardware advances of PPC/WM devices.
Well with absolutely nothing on the horizon that seemed to have a whole lot more than my 6+ years old iPAQ 3975, I finally went ahead and abandoned ship - got an iPhone. Went from the Flinstones to the Jetsons overnight. When my two year contract is up I'll take a look at the WM side of things again but I seriously doubt they'll have anything more appealing than what Apple or Google will be offering by then.
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03-30-2008, 02:34 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 6,305
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The iPhone has redefined what to expect from a device, at least in the area of the interface and responsiveness. It did this on the first try.
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03-30-2008, 03:35 AM
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5000+ Posts? I Should OWN This Site!
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 5,616
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imo, this is tied into the whole WM stagnation issue. I've had four "native" Pocket PC/Windows Mobile devices and a Windows Mobile Treo. The Treo is a pleasure to use; the other four were painful in comparison.
Then do that comparison to the iPhone/iPod Touch... 
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03-30-2008, 04:03 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 607
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one thing i can agree with you is the fact that the newer devices seem to faster than some of the older ones. i still have my x50v, which i use as my "digital camera's assistant." I also have a tilt which i love to death. I dont think its the device's hardware per say.
one of the many things XDA has thought me....a "cooked" rom goes a loooong way. For those of you who dont know what a cooked rom is, these guys rip the rom apart, tweak the hell out of it, remove unwanted things and add nessary apps. My tilt is atlease 3 times faster as it was from att. not only that but i get way better battery life.
so i dont really think the phones are underpowered. as much as it pains me to say it, MS has got to optimize the OS some more. wm6.1 really does feel alot better than 6.0. but the gap between WM and the compition is getting larger.
im still pulling for MS tho....have been for 5 years now!
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03-30-2008, 07:37 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 53
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i my friends have a imate 8150 which is blazingly fast and not sluggish at all !
i also have a htc p3600 (trinity) with a wm 6.1 custom rom that is even faster than the 8150 ! i dont know about the tilt , but not all wm devices are sluggish
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03-30-2008, 09:32 AM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 9
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Nothing of late has even come close to my hx2750. That thing was brutal. And when overclocked handily destroyed anything else on the market (I don't remember exact numbers but I set a record with init13's graphics bench mark when I doubled the memory bus @664Mhz clock).
If they could've swapped out one of the memory card slots for a cell radio, and put in a VGA screen, it EASILY would've been the most powerful smart phone ever made. Would've been better than most phones out now...
But here we are years later, and we're only just now stumbling into 128MB of RAM. There hasn't been ANY processor development in years (if anything we've regressed). The OS is LESS stable. I don't care what they say, WM2003SE was the fastest OS they've made, and the least buggy. I'll deal with losing info on battery discharge. Iwant to be able to use my expensive uber phone without all this lag!
Also security is laughable. Biometric just plain works the best. People are wanting to use these things like little mini laptops, but putting in a password is excruciating!!!
Why are we SO LESS ADVANCED from the days of the h5500?
I shouldn't be missing my hx2750 (or my old h3970 for that matter) THIS much...
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03-30-2008, 09:53 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 17
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I went back from a HTC TyTn to my HTC Universal because of the screen and was amazed to find it much faster aswell, the last generation mobile CPU's from Qualcomm and Samsung just weren't that good (let alone those from TI). I hope the new generation recently announced will be the step forward we need.
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03-30-2008, 10:09 AM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 554
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Underpowered? Sometimes. Stuffed with crapware that slows down performance? Most of the time.
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