Windows Mobile Woes 1

Last year (2007) I switched from using a Palm OS device to using a phone that ran Windows Mobile 5.

Specifically, I got an O2 "XDA Orbit". It seemed a really neat bit of kit - small (it didn't have a too-small-to-use keyboard to clutter my pocket) but with all kinds of connectivity (bluetooth, wi fi, and GPS) built in.

The experience was, well, horrible. So many aspects of the system and its "core" apps (by which I mean diary, contacts, phones...) seemed so poorly designed and unreliable. I'll no doubt write something about it at some point, but basically the one-sentence summary would be that whereas in something like four years of using a Palm OS device I had had to use the reset button twice, the Windows Mobile device had to be reset every couple of weeks.

So when I learnt that there was an upgrade to WM6 available, I thought I'd give it a go.

The most awful discovery was that it was hardly any better.

OK, I've been running it for three weeks now and, apart from when I have been installing software, I haven't had to hit "reset". So that's progress of a sort, I guess.

I won't attempt any kind of comprehensive summary of the things that have disappointed me, because I'll never actually post it. Rather I've put a "1" in the title, and listed what comes to mind right now...

• I use the "Block Recogniser" system for character input, which involves writing into a pop-up space that appears at the bottom when the system is expecting you to type/write. Except that in WM6 it quite often it doesn't actually appear when I select a type-in field: I have to explicitly call it up...


• Phone numbers in the call history are not selectable as text, so it's not possible to cut-and-paste them into a "Contacts" record. There is an option to "Add to contacts", which creates a new "Contact" entry for the number, associated with "Unknown Caller". But there isn't an "Add to existing contact" option. So if an existing contact calls from a new number (say, a new mobile), the procedure is
  1. Add the number to contacts
  2. Select/copy the phone number
  3. Save the new contact entry
  4. Find their existing contact entry
  5. Paste the new number into place
  6. Save the edited contact entry
  7. Find the newly created contact entry
  8. Delete the newly created contact entry.
  Easy, huh. Or, of course, you can just copy the number on a scrap of paper and then edit the contact entry and add it. That's what technology is for.
  
• There is an awesome lack of linkage between the "core apps". When you get a text message, it will automatically look up the number that sent it in the address book, display the message as "From" that person, and give you a button to immediately "Reply" by text message. You want to phone them about the message? Ah! Well, you have to go to the "Contacts" application, search for the sender (that's right, by typing/writing the name you just saw on the text message), select their mobile phone number and then select "Call".
  

And I'm also aghast to see they've introduced the most howling bug into the "Tasks" system: it will no longer display only "active" tasks. By which I mean it is no longer possible to hide tasks that have not yet reached their start date. There is still an option to show only "active" tasks, it is just that ticking it doesn't actually make any difference to how the system behaves. It still knows about active --- the "Today" screen will cheerfully and correctly tell me that I have, say, 12 active tasks. But when I go to the tasks list, it shows me all my tasks. Including a reminder to do my tax return next September --- 6 months before I can sensibly even start it! Which completely cripples what was, for me, the only application that Windows Mobile did better than a Palm.

Masterful.

It is obviously disappointing (or alarming) that such a howling bug got through Microsoft's quality control and pre-release testing. It would be nice to think that one could buy (or commit to use) a mainstream package from the world's largest software company without having to check whether the basic operations actually work.

It is equally, but more subtly, disappointing that none of the reviews of WM 6 that I saw picked up on it. Presumably they just looked at what it claims to do and reviewed how it tries to do it, and just assumed that it did actually do what it said it would.

Sigh.

Robert.