I finally got tired enough of the shitty Diamond ROM to flash it as someone suggested in the comments of my strong-worded article about why I hate Windows Mobile. Keeping in mind Rogers will never ever bother releasing a ROM upgrade, I decided to head back to XDA-Developers and find a 6.5 ROM that suits me.
I know this is not the kind of article that should come from a Windows Mobile developer, but today I’m writing about something that I’m constantly angry about: Windows Mobile.
I’ve been using Windows Mobile for two years now. I’ve had three different devices, one of them I absolutely hate, developed applications with each of them and I now work on a software repository project for the platform. In other words: I know what I’m dealing with.
The main reason why I hate Windows Mobile is because it just doesn’t work. I used to say Windows Mobile allows you to do about everything from browsing the web to editing pictures with something close to a mobile Photoshop, but when you look at it, it does nothing right. Calendar, contacts and tasks applications are a pain in the ass to use as their tiny controls make on-the-fly appointment or contact creation nearly impossible. Windows Media has a mediocre support for common formats and often stops seeing the storage card. Text messaging support is just as bad. Internet Explorer mobile is slow and outdated when you compare it with the competition. Thankfully, HTC started to include Opera as an alternative on their devices, but the software hardly launches in under a minute and is riddled with bugs. On top of that, many of these applications have the tendency to bug at random especially on HTC’s most recent devices. So far my Diamond crashed while adding a contact, calling someone, browsing the web and many, many more reasons. Sure, it does cool things, but nothing other smartphones can’t do
Using Windows Mobile on the go is rarely a fun thing. Turning off Wi-Fi or bluetooth, surprisingly enough, cannot be done by clicking the respective icons in the notification area. Scanning for a wireless network requires a trip to the settings panel and even then the list of available networks will not refresh itself. Things as simple as changing the ringtone or adding new applications are overly complicated and require way too many steps. Such things as the latest .Net Compact Framework should not even be required in the first place. Mobile phones should not require such things to be installed to run applications developed with official tools. For some reason there is a Windows Update tool there, but I’ve never seen it in action, no matter how useful it would have been in some situations.
Many people cope with these problems because they want to be able to multitask on their devices. Microsoft had a huge opportunity to absolutely nail this feature, but they botched it and left it unchanged since then. The X button only minimizes applications, but there is no way to switch between those applications like on desktop operating systems (or like with the Pre’s brilliant cards system). How can a beginner figure out he has to go in Start>Settings>System>Memory>Running applications to free up some memory? I can only wonder why this kind of thing made it to 2009.
What you have left is customization. Windows Mobile is a really good platform for those who enjoy hacking their devices. Everything can be customized with some knowledge and that must be the only reason I’m still using it. After so many years, all you can say about Windows Mobile is “well… I can customize it. It crashes when I add a contact, but I can customize it”.
[UPDATE 07/01/2009: Windows Mobile 6.5, while being a really small update to 6.1, added finger scrolling, which is a nice addition, while not bringing anything noticeable otherwise.]
