Review of Windows Mobile 6-Based "Wing"

opeeeerah sends us to Gundeep Hora's review of the Wing, the first Windows Mobile 6 OS-based smartphone from T-Mobile. He concludes: "Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 is a disappointment. Working with a number of applications or 'heavy' documents was painful. The delay was too much, especially in Word and PowerPoint... All in all, the T-Mobile Wing is... a decent smartphone. If nothing else, it's an interesting gadget for the young and hip crowd, though we wouldn't recommend it for productivity hounds that are looking to do reports and presentations... Not to mention, the sexy and strange appeal of the device can't be pleasing to serious professionals. For $299.99 from T-Mobile, it's a worthy Sidekick replacement."

Re:

[ringfinger]

Now that it's Jobs is saying that iphone will support 3rd party apps [macworld.com], they'll be setting the bar for phone OS's. I d bet the market for phones gets stratified just like the MP3-player market is now -- there's IPods, and then the rest are all followers. http://30days.itious.com/ [itious.com]

Re:

[0xdeadbeef]

You do realize that he basically said that the iPhone is too unstable for third party development? What bar, exactly, will they be setting?

Re:

[dave420]

Well, Jobs hasn't said anything of any great depth. If the iPhone is as beholden to the powers-that-be as iTunes is, functionality will be an issue when it possibly curtails money-making activities of other parties involved in the iPhone. iTunes used to have lots of functionality in its SDK that has since been taken away because of the possibility of piracy, even though the functionality was massively useful for legal purposes. I won't hold my breath for its release, but I hope it's not as much of a clus

Re:iPhone...

[toleraen]

What does the iPhone add to the mobile phone market that isn't already there? Symbian, Linux, and Windows Mobile already have SDKs out there, and have for quite some time. As far as I can tell the iPhone is the follower.

Re:

[stang]

What does the iPhone add to the mobile phone market that isn't already there?

Usability.

Re:

[toleraen]

I'm pretty sure I just used my phone 5 minutes ago. I plan on using it again pretty shortly. Wanna go in depth, even just a smidgen?

Re:

[Silas is back]

Usability != Usability

Come on, have you ever seen an ad for a cellphone [apple.com] which _only_ shows the UI and nevertheless blows you away? I haven't.

Re:

[dedazo]

Not really, because if I'm going to plop down $500 for a device, I don't expect that it will do more than just sit there and look uber kewl.

Since no one outside of Steve Jobs and the dude in the ad (which might very well be Steve Jobs) have ever used an iPhone, your claims of superb usability simply cannot be taken seriously. Just wait until it's released and some random non-Apple-fanboy techie can write a real review based on facts instead of optimistic expectations.

Re:

[Silas is back]

Oh, yes, that's true for sure, but you can't deny that what you see in the ad is already standards-rising. Sure, I want to hold one in my own hands to see how it works, especially the on-screen keyboard. But hell, I loved my Palm until I saw what actually can be done with todays technology.

As for the 500$, don't forget that you get a video-iPod with it, too.

Re:

[toleraen]

If it's the ad I'm thinking of (at work, can't check it), I remember thinking "Great, all things I can do with the d-pad on my 8525." I don't particularly care about flash, I just want functionality. Are there videos yet of someone typing an email or text message? That's the part of the UI I want to see. The forced on screen keyboard (and the lack of 3G) are generally the only things that are keeping me from having any interest in this thing. The ultra-hype isn't helping either, but objectively it's just th

Re:

[Silas is back]

Those ads are mainly about "fun" things, sure. On this one [apple.com] you see the mail client, but not composing a message. You can see a demo with the mail client here [apple.com], though. As for typing a message, me too, I want to try it myself.

I think people who say "Great, I can do that with my XY, too" still didn't get the idea. It's all about the UI, a coherent UI. It's not so much about WHAT you can do, it's about HOW you do it. Simple example: On my phone, I need to press two buttons to read the latest text message. Sam

Re:

[Achromatic1978]

And you know this because you've been using the iPhone without a usability complaint for, what, how long now? Weeks? Months?

Re:

[cornface]

Similarly sized and priced phones, with comparable features, are already on the market and include full keyboards. Removing the keyboard without reducing the size of the unit is a giant step backwards in usability for something billing itself as a "breakthrough internet device."

Re:

[mrbooze]

There were hard-drive mp3 players on the market before the iPod too, I used to own one of them long before the iPod came out. Who's the follower now?

Not that I'm predicting the iPhone will sweep the cell phone market. I think that's going to be a much harder market to dominate. But just because there are competitors out there now doesn't mean a new company can't come in and take the lead.

Re:

[GodfatherofSoul]

Each has its problems. With Symbian it's cost (don't know about the available developer resources). At a few dollars a seat, the licensing fees add up quickly. With Linux its standardization. There is no one Linux OS out there with a ubiquitous platform SDK; but that will all change if/when LiMo [limofoundation.org] pans out. As for Windows, its, cost and end-user usability. Windows has a great suite of developer tools and resources, but for a mobile OS it really sucks. Win CE is essentially stripped-down Windows with a

disapointment comes from expectation

[bombastinator]

You'd think after 6 revisions each of which was as bad as the last that one would stop expecting them to com out with something decent. With what appears to be the possible future demise of Palm though it may stop being thought o as awful simply because there is little to compare it to. As the old joke goes Q: how many microsoft engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: None, they just change the standard to darkness.

Dissenting view

[mcbridematt]

Being a former Palm user, I'm quite happy with WM6, and theres no way in hell I'm going back.

Unfortunately better quality control is needed from all manufacturers. There seems to be a habit from all sides of sending devices to the shelves with woefully crap software.

Re:

[PetoskeyGuy]

I used to be a palm user too. I've developed for handheld devices since Palm III and CE 2. Windows Mobile 5 was a big slow down compared to 2003. This was a design choice by microsoft to preserve data in the event of power loss instead of performance. I'm not saying it was a bad choice but it is why WM5 devices are slow to startup from sleep mode. Also WM5 power management shuts down the whole OS so there is a good chance your programs will wake up before the OS remounts the storage cards so you can ne

Re:disapointment comes from expectation

[ClarionCall]

Blaming the Operating System for the speed on this is off base. The specs on this 200MHz TI processor, 2-megapixel camera, 64MB of internal RAM, 128MB of ROM Show that this is a step back down from other HTC machines, the Old HTC Blue Angel had a nominal clock speed of 400 MHz. The other things is all of the junk that T-Mobile loads up on the machine, with a 200 MHz Clock, and a limited 64 MB of ram, you really don't want to fill up the available RAM with all sorts of junk like all of the standard carrier roms do. But heck, blame WM6. I know that WM5 was slower in some ways than WM2003SE, but it had data persistence that was missing in WM2003 & WM2003SE. WM6 is faster in my experience than WM5 on the same hardware, other than that I don't see a big difference. The Bluetooth stack is said to be more stable, but I still use wired headsets, so I can't comment on that.

Re:disapointment comes from expectation

[toleraen]

Exactly. I'm running WM6 on an HTC Hermes, and it's extremely fast and responsive. There are several improvements 'under the hood' such as Office Mobile 2007, updated Pocket Internet Explorer, HTML email, improved internet sharing, Windows Live integration, better bluetooth, better battery life, windows update, etc. There aren't any blazingly new features over WM5, just a lot of tweaks to the software. I'm guessing that's why MS has offered free WM6 upgrades to the carriers.

Of course the carriers will load down their roms with a ton of crap, so to get the most out of it you'll have to cook your own rom to get rid of it...but they should be blaming their carriers for that one.

Re:

[Arterion]

Actually, the windows update is "blazingly new" feature. Have you tried to "update" a WM5 phone? The only way to do it is flash in a new ROM. And usually, the cell carriers won't provide such a thing unless they absolutely must. Sure, the "community" puts some roms together with the updates, but it's a huge pain to figure out. Mostly pouring over forums for hours and hours, and understanding the technology. Not for joe user at all.

Re:

[toleraen]

Yeah, actually I flash the rom on my phone every few weeks. Radio updates, custom booloaders, unlocked extrom, etc. I've generally hacked my phone in every way possible, but that's just my thing. These days on the 8525 it's honestly as easy as connecting active sync, and running a few automatically installing files. No, not for joe user at all, but it's possible if you want to spend an hour or two figuring out the device you spent $500 on.

Re:

[tjensor]

It also ignores T-Mobiles bizzare incompetance at configuring Windows mobile devices. I have an MDA and it took a switch to the I-Mate configuration to get any kind of performance out of it.

Re:disapointment comes from expectation

[mgblst]

Blaming the Operating System for the speed on this is off base.
 
Sure, this sort of makes sense, until we think about hardware from the past. When I think about what we used to do on the original Palm 33mhz machines, or even back to the old Amigas. The fact is that Microsoft is not trying at all to produce a better operating system, they are just shoe-horning the PC version of windows onto these things. That is why it is so slow, and there is no excuse for it.

Re:

[hxnwix]

Remember that in terms of IPC, xscale : arm :: p4 : athlon. The old HTC wizard also sports a 200MHz OMAP (a TI ARM + goodies processor) & performs quite well in comparison to 416MHz PXA270 products - if you overclock it ;)

There's no reason to be squeamish about overclocking your phone. [htcwizardweb.net]

Re:

[erko]

After seeing that Skype could run on smart phones/pdas with a 400Mhz clock, it's suspicious that cell phone manufacturers have shipped fewer 400Mhz phones/pdas and more phones with processors around 200Mhz. Well, maybe it just seems that way to me (I don't follow cell phone releases that closely). If everybody could use wifi for phone calls, would the cell phone service providers lose a lot of money?

That being said, they could just be minimizing physical battery size and maximizing the time between rec

Re:disapointment comes from expectation

[everphilski]

If a companies embedded OS cant work on that speed of a processor then they need to simply give up and stop.

Yeah, at the speeds processors were running nine years ago. I had a Phillips Nino with over 200mHz processing speed in 1998. Seriously, the hardware is gimp, that's the problem.

Re:

[iocat]

I assume the lame processors these days are due to power consumption. I'd happy go back to a monochrome screen in return for a wicked fast processor. Or a really efficiently written OS. I have a Cingular 8525 abd while it's nice in some respects, it chugs terribly at times.

Re:

[jandrese]

It matters a lot though. Comparing my old 7100t Blackberry with the new Blackberry Pearl the most noticable difference is that the processor in the Pearl is way faster than on the 7100. You can really tell when the browser is open, but even the menus are snappier. The second thing you notice is that while the 7100t would easily get a week on a single charge, the Pearl is dying after two days. Both phones have big bright screens and use similar (identical?) batteries. Granted the Pearl has a bunch of ot

Re:

[Stocktonian]

I'm no Microsoft fan but of all the Windows operating systems, I like the Mobile edition best.

If you knew me you'd realise that was almost high praise for an MS product. I've used a couple of earlier versions on mobile phones and found them to actually be stable and productive. I always tell people when I'm bashing MS that at least they can make a mobile OS.

---
http://www.linuxlaptops.eu/ [linuxlaptops.eu]

Re:

[bryan1945]

"You'd think after 6 revisions"

95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista........

Re:

[bombastinator]

Windows mobile not windows. Different animal entirely. Though it might be noted that each of the systems you mention is actually slower than the one before. (with the possible exception of 95' - 98')

wait!

[chelanfarsight]

"Not to mention, the sexy and strange appeal"...but, but i like sexy and strange.

Re:

[MickDownUnder]

*Cough*

http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/treo70 0w/ [palm.com]

Palm?

Even palm are using Windows Mobile in preference to their own OS.

The Palm OS is history.

Re:

[bombastinator]

they sell treos with both OS's on them.

The only statement about relative sales I could find show the palm os version outselling it's windows based sibling pretty soundly even though the palm version was significantly older and had fewer features.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9165/npd-report s-smartphone-growth-spurt/

Some better numbers could help here but I can't find any.

Re:

[bombastinator]

Well from a personal perspective, I still find it easier to deal with. Most windows mobiles I find viable come without touch sensitive screens which I have always found annoying. I do take your point about palmOS being long in the tooth.

If one compares palmOS 5 to the versions of WinM available at the time it came out it was really much better. The problem is that palm has been unable to successfully update it.

Even compared with the modern versions though the main disadvantage is merely that palm is unabl

Over it

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical Slashdot FUD. I've been using WM6 with my Dash for a few months now and think it is great. I can do pretty much anything including monitoring my house through wireless cameras while I'm away and play a ton of bittorrent content I've downloaded. The Voice commander is just awesome as well.

Re:

[bombastinator]

You monitor your house with wireless cameras while you are away?! How.. um... obsessive.. btw anything with a full web browser can do that. Assuming of course you have your house festooned with web capable security cameras.

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

I can do pretty much anything including monitoring my house through wireless cameras while I'm away and play a ton of bittorrent content I've downloaded.

What do you use to play videos, and are they h.264? I've been having a devil of a time getting videos to reliably play in Windows mobile.

Re:

[martin_b1sh0p]

I just got a T-Mobile Dash (HTC Excalibur) with WM6 on it this weekend. First thing I did was install TCPMP (http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/). Trust me, WAY better video player than Windows Media. Although I still use Windows Media to play music since TCPMP removed the m4a codec (non-DRM iTunes music).

Re:

[wikinerd]

I run Windows Mobile 5 on HTC Universal and it makes my life difficult. The perfect hardware combined with the most stupid software. It sucks big time.

Re:WM5

[Bertie]

I think you're being overly charitable there. It's absolutely dire. I got a Windows Mobile 5 phone because it had loads of seemingly useful features, and I have cursed the day ever since. Really, I should have known better. What kind of a phone crashes regularly when you go to answer a call? And what genius came up with the idea of keeping programs in memory even though you've closed them, so that eventually the phone slows to a crawl, forcing you to kill all running applications?

And as for the UI - oh my. The simplest, most common operations are incredibly complicated. The other day, someone asked me for a friend's phone number, and I went to send it as a text message, like you can with every other phone in existence, and generally with ease. It won't do it. It'll try to send it as a picture message, even though the contact didn't actually have a picture attached, and you don't get any alternative. In the end I gave up and cut and pasted it into an SMS myself. I could quote similar examples all day long.

It's windows 3.1 reincarnated, I'm convinced of it. Avoid at all costs.

Re:

[ozmanjusri]

The other day, someone asked me for a friend's phone number, and I went to send it as a text message, like you can with every other phone in existence, and generally with ease. It won't do it.

Just to clarify that "cut and paste" part, if your friend's number is in Contacts, you have to open their contact page, tap "Edit" from the bottom menu, select the number from the correct field on the edit page, then tap "Edit" from the bottom menu again. Don't worry, it's a different "Edit"...
Then you start a new t

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Contacts --> Press and hold on contact --> Select Send Contact --> Text message from the context menu.

Tick the items of contact info you want to send.

Select recipient of text message in the usual way.

No editing or pasting.

But I suppose it is more fun to hate on Microsoft.

Re:

[RMH101]

to be perfectly accurate, this feature was added in WM5 AKU3.2 I believe - hence not all of them have it. There are downloadable tools to add this feature if your ROM doesn't have it, and of course there are zillions of alternate ROMS available for most of the WM devices at places like www.xda-developers.com.
The thing I love about my HTC Wizard is the sheer customisability of it. You can tinker with *everything* - OK, it's not open source but there's so much free stuff out there for it that's really gre

Re:WM5

[ozmanjusri]

of course there are zillions of alternate ROMS available for most of the WM devices at places like www.xda-developers.com

Not any more, there aren't.

Microsoft insisted that all ROMs be removed as of February this year. They're all gone now.

Offering these ROMs has been an invaluable resource to many developers and enthusiasts. Every once in a while someone uploaded an image that was not supposed to be released yet, but when Microsoft or someone else complained we immediately took it down. Recently Microsoft has begun to complain on a different level, asking us to remove _all_ the ROM images.
http://www.xda-developers.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=showarticle&threadid=294142 [xda-developers.com]

Re:

[RMH101]

OK, what I should have said is something like:
"There used to be loads of ROMS at www.xda-developers.com - these are no longer hosted on their FTP server but can be found via rapidshare links in their forums. There are tons and tons of reg hacks, applications etc available if you register with their forums though."

My HTC Wizard was sold as a T-Mobile Vario when I bought it 2nd hand off ebay. It came with a load of horrible pink T-Mobile branding and a very, very slow ROM. I flashed it with the "Mr Cle

Re:

[Arterion]

I have AKU 3.5, and that feature isn't there. It's the Hemi_C ROM. Are you sure it's standard 3.5, or something that most people making 3.5 ROMs add in?

Re:

[RMH101]

I'm running the AKU 2.3 "Mr Clean" ROM - it's not standard, but it's not too wacky. I've got it in mine. Some standard ROMS *definitely* contain it though. Have an ask at xda devs? In their forums you'll also find a cab file that adds this functionality if you dig around... Ric

Re:

[ozmanjusri]

Contacts --> Press and hold on contact --> Select Send Contact --> Text message from the context menu.

Not on my version, it doesn't.

But I suppose it is more fun to hate on Microsoft.

It'd be MUCH more fun to have a decent phone/pda operating system.

Re:

[zhenya00]

Not on mine either, and I'm on v3.5. I only have the option to 'beam' it. That might have been helpful in 1999.

Re:

[ozmanjusri]

Disclaimer: I write PDA applications for a living.

Funny thing is, I used to do that too - I wrote an auditing tool and an explosives management app that we used to load onto ruggedised Palms and sell to mining companies. It was simple enough that you could hand it to a field assistant and expect they'd be able to use it.

I still believe that's what the design brief for PDA phones should be - not this mess of arcane menus and half-arsed apps that you can't even be confident will sound it's alarms when you

Re:

[jimicus]

And what genius came up with the idea of keeping programs in memory even though you've closed them, so that eventually the phone slows to a crawl, forcing you to kill all running applications?

Makes a lot of sense on a desktop PC when disk is orders of magnitude slower than RAM and you've got the room to implement a proper memory manager to handle such behaviour.

Actually, a similar explanation works for almost any piece of poor design in Windows - ask yourself the question "does this feature make more sense

Re:

[lorddarthpaul]

> What kind of a phone crashes regularly when you go to answer a call?
I had a SONY-Ericsson T616 from Cingular (OK, the old AT&T Wireless) and it would restart/reboot about 1 in 20 times when I would try to answer a call. I cannot remember the Motorola L7 that I have now ever doing that. Motorola also understands direct shortcuts, and I can even carry a handful of favorite songs along with the L7's (rather limited) iTunes. The T616 had a case of "really bad UI", often unable to do the obvious thin

So many reviews..

[consonant]

..from [pcworld.com] "decent [pcmag.com]" sources [gizmodo.com], and still the submission with a CoolTechZone review makes it to the front page. CoolTechZone sucks, leave it out of here, even if the occasional Microsoft-bashing does go on there..

Amen

[Yonzie]

CoolTechZone are all trolls, all the time. I have no idea why they keep getting linked here. Even with this review, it's so obvious they completely and totally subscribe to the Microsoft line when they review something that didn't come from Microsoft.

Whith articles such as there, who can take them seriously?
"Report: Mac OS X Market Share Declines"
"iPhone and Mobile OS X: Doomed to Fail!"
"Amazon Unbox: iTunes Movie Store In Jeopardy"
"Apple: Mac OS X Doomed?"
"Column: Apple Tries Hard to Wake Up to Consumerism

Re:

[Churla]

I've got to agree on this.

On top of that Those three articles and even the majority of TFA here all say it's a decently good smartphone. Heck PCmag gave it something like 4.5 out of 5. OTOH towards the end of ONE of the reviews is a disparaging comment about Windows Mobile 6, so what becomes the quote in the story lead in? Well that of course!

I've got Karma to burn and a full desire to call out the level to which this site is becoming more about hating the right things to hate and loving the right things

World's most vapid review

[Ed Avis]

T-Mobile has always gone after the young and hip crowd, and the Wing is no different in that regard.
The vibrant exterior of the Wing is bluish in color, an ideal color choice for teens and 20-somethings. We get the feeling that T-Mobile may be going after the professional crowd, but we doubt too many professionals would go after such a trendy looking device.

I will never get back the 30 seconds of my life wasted reading those two sentences. Could they not have said 'it is blue'?

Re:

[WaZiX]

Well, at least it's not brown...

Re:

[jimicus]

If they carried on down that path, ultimately the review would read "It is blue and it sucks".

But it's pretty hard to justify your pay if that's your idea of a review.

Re:

[jollyreaper]

quote> T-Mobile has always gone after the young and hip crowd, and the Wing is no different in that regard.
The vibrant exterior of the Wing is bluish in color, an ideal color choice for teens and 20-somethings. We get the feeling that T-Mobile may be going after the professional crowd, but we doubt too many professionals would go after such a trendy looking device.

I will never get back the 30 seconds of my life wasted reading those two sentences. Could they not have said 'it is blue'? My initial reaction is that anyone who selects a mobile device based on colors rather than features is a total yutz. But then I considered, would I want to use a Slashdot-branded OMG! PONIEZ!!! phone, complete with hot pink exterior and "drag queen purple" pinstriping? We're all susceptible to appearances, just to differing degrees.

Worst Review Ever

[Stevecrox]

I have no idea if this particular phone is good or not that review was quite pants. For starters yes its larger and heavier than most smartphones most Windows Mobile phones are, is it substantially heavier than those? Mentioning outlook synching and the fact location appears with the appointment makes me question if they even used a Windows Mobile 5 phone (hint a WM5 does just that.) What is a 'heavy' document and how does WM6 compare to WM5? I want to know if the word functionality is better I already know trying to open a 2MB document in Word Mobile takes ages (10 seconds or so.)

That review was awfull to read, they didn't compare it with other offerings or even talk about its features my computer iliterate sister could have done a better job.

Re:Worst Review Ever

[thebdj]

I have one, so let me give you an idea. First, it is about on par with most smartphones I have used. I am talking real ones that have full touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard. None of these lame ripoff phones like the Q (from Motorola) or Blackjack (from Samsung). Features wise it is pretty complete, except for 3G, but then again, T-Mobile doesn't have a 3G network yet, so you have to live with EDGE. But you can get T-mobile hotspot plans and it does have 802.11 support. The one problem I have is the program memory is bordering on insufficient. Unlike a normal PDA (and maybe some smartphones), I cannot find away to adjust more storage to program memory, since I can always gain more storage using the microSD.

If you want to know about large documents, you'll have to give me time to hunt one down to load onto here. I believe it handles it pretty well. Overall, the device is a pretty well built HTC device. I hardly consider the "blue" exterior something "hip". I actually prefer it to all the fake metal colored plastic. BTW, the slide mechanism on this is the smoothest I've ever had in a phone. The battery life is also rather impressive. I spent nearly two days without charging it. Two days that including heavy talk time (probably close to 2 hrs) and large amounts of data usage with both EDGE and 802.11. I would give it a pretty good ranking overall and have to say it is a good replacement for an MDA. The Sidekick is not in the same league, since the Sidekick was obviously made for texting, this is designed to be a heck of a lot more.

For a fair comparison of WM5 to WM6, I would really need to review both systems on the SAME device. It seems to me you would have a hard time comparing WM5 to WM6 in terms of performance across two different platforms.

Re:

[The Evil Couch]

The article's Slashdotted, but that it calls the Wing a Sidekick replacement tells me about all I need to know about it. It's not a Sidekick replacement. It's an MDA replacement. Piss poor attention to detail. That T-Mobile's still offering SEVERAL Sidekicks, but that the MDA vanished from their stores and sites the same day the Wing came out *should* give a clue to that.

The review itself is pretty worthless and looks basically like they're just regurgitating the features sheet instead of actually trying

MDA vs. WING

[mr.sean.r]

Let me start by saying that I have owned a Blackberry 7100 and a Pearl, the MDA, and the new Wing...

Of all of these devices, I prefer the Wing.

I was excited when I bought the MDA: WM5, miniSD, WMP, and a phone...

I was quick to test all of the features, half of them I never looked at again. I'm not a huge fan of bluetooth, T-Mobile locked the MDA so bluetooth was headsets only. The WMP was garbage: I ripped a movie that I owned down onto my 2 GB miniSD card, and to my suprise - it didn't play well,

Re:

[The Evil Couch]

Thank you. It sounds like a fun toy. When my MDA gets a little older, I'll probably make the switch.

Where's the hardware spec?

[simong]

My guess is that it's just underpowered for Windows Mobile 6. Hmm, it takes a while to find information - HTC Atlas:

Microprocessor
CPU: 32bit Texas Instruments OMAP 850
CPU Clock: 201 MHz
Memory, Storage capacity
ROM capacity: 128 MB (accessible: 41.42MB)
RAM capacity: 64 MB (accessible: 43.8MB)
Hard Disk capacity: Not supported
Display
Display Type: color transflective TFT , 65536 scales
Display Resolution: 240 x 320
Display Diagonal: 2.8 "

That doesn't seem particularily powerful or have a great memory capacity. In fact I had a HTC Blue Angel (in its Orange MPV2000 guise) that was more powerful than that two years ago. I'm sure Windows Mobile adheres to Moore's Law in the same way as every other version of Windows does so it is going to be disappointing.

64MB Is crap

[cheekyboy]

is ram that expensive?

Surely even 128m or 256 would only be $10 more. We had 400mhz ARM cpus in 2002 for gods sake, after FOUR YEARS, all we can do is 200mhz?
Have a 400mhz arm , that throttles down to 200mhz when used just for menus.

Or, star writing better code/apis for visual GUIs on embedded devices, none of this 18 stack layer apis, even a 16mzh 286 did FAST GUIS in DOS
320x240 in pascal in 1990.

If todays engineers/programmers cannot do a fast GUI/system in 16mhz/4megram in pascal code, then they are hope

Re:

[westyx]

Damn young engineers should get off my lawn! *shakes fist at 'em*

Re:

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

fyi, the 64's main cpu was 93.75mhz VR4300. audio and graphics were handled by the 62.5mhz SGI RCP.

Re:

[Threni]

And the Amiga was full of hardware too. And it had f*** all ram (by todays standards).

Re:

[Anaerin]

The Amiga also didn't run a TCP stack

AmiTCP [faqs.org], TermiteTCP [aminet.net], MiamiTCP [archive.org], GENESiS [haage-partner.de]...

Wireless connectivity drivers

Like prism2.device [aminet.net]?

and software or a whole raft of other features that are expected to be standard nowadays.

Like VoIP [aminet.net] (Not SIP, but considering it was made back in '96 that's hardly surprising), Fax/Voice/Voicemail [aminet.net], Photography [aminet.net], Games (Where to start with links there), Applications...

Just because the Amiga could live up to low low expectations of the past don't mean shit.

Live up to? At the time, the Amiga exceeded all expectations.In it's day, the Amiga was the finest machine, for the price, bar none. It's just that Commodore couldn't market their way out of a paper bag, and "killed" the Amiga through neglect. Being passed from pillar to

Re:

[tehcyder]

is ram that expensive?

Only if you're foolish enough to want more than 640K.

Re:

[Vo1t]

Well, remember that MS is promoting use of Compact .NET. Garbage collecting and stuff. Slooow. I think that the flaw is with OS design from start. Skip the .NET, enforce C/C++ - as in Symbian, which runs on slower processors with similar performance and a bit smaller feature set and there you go.
Programmers just use the tools and guidelines provided.
My first "computer" was ATARI 800XL. We used it at home for some engineering calculations, drawing/plotting, etc. Yes, I agree that today, most of available

Re:

[ergo98]

Hell, even the amiga at 7mhz achieved better results than anything today at 200mhz

I share the sentiment.

I have a Moto Q, based upon Windows Mobile 5, running on a 312 MHz Intel XScale PXA270: This thing is a dream supercomputer compared to the Atari ST (8Mhz, 512KB RAM, no storage beyond the 360KB floppy disk drive) that I used and abused back in the late 80s. Yet somehow basic operations often have extraordinary delays, and the general set of functionality is just...unimpressive. I try to keep things in pr

Not Surprised

[segedunum]

With that said, Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 is a disappointment. Working with a number of applications or "heavy" documents was painful. The delay was too much, especially in Word and PowerPoint files that it wasn't possible for us to work with the device without messing up somewhere and not realizing it in the end. This lag is present across a number of other scenarios as well.

No shock there. I really don't know why Microsoft persists in believing that Windows is the fountain of all knowledge, and that

Re:

[schlichte]

"I really don't know why Microsoft persists in believing that Windows is the fountain of all knowledge..."

There was a group of guys at work bragging about their latest version of Windows with 100s of GB HDs, 2gb+ of Ram, dual core processors, raid, nic, modems, just spewing technical jargon left and right like they were at a hardware symposium or whatever... Anyway... in the middle of all of this at a key quiet moment after everyone in the circle had their turn at bragging rights, the next guy in the circ

Windows XP Embedded will kill WMobile

[cheekyboy]

As mini cpus get better and low power, such as .9W 600mhz style x86 based CPUs, with ram over 100mhz and 128meg being cheap, its no
sweat to have XP EMbedded, which actually still runs quite nicely on 333mhz Geode CPUs using 128meg ram at 33mhz on 1998 style busses.

This style setup would work well on a phone, and give better results. As creating your own XP embedded allows you to choose which
services/apps to include to make it as small as possible.

Windows Mobile RIP 2007, XPE to the future.

Re:

[TSDMK]

Actually I think the parent has a point. I've used (and still use) Windows Mobile devices, and while they work fine for the most part, they do look and feel more like Windows 9x than Vista in terms of stability and UI prettiness. I'm still waiting for Microsoft to throw out the old CE codebase and come up with something more akin to Windows XP than ME.

One can only hope.

Re:

[bonknasty]

That's not going to happen as long as XPe only runs on x86-based platforms. Any phone running on an OMAP or Qualcomm chipset needs an OS that runs on ARM. XP was designed as a series of components and XPe is one product of that.

Re:

[wikinerd]

Both Windows Mobile and XP are not user-friendly and make the life of the users difficult. The future is Linux. The advantage of Linux is that is is open and users's wishes make it into the codebase very quickly. In fact, I find a GNOME or KDE desktop easier to use than Windows XP in many respects. The only problem that makes Linux difficult for new users is the non-cooperation of hardware makers, thus causing unavailability of drivers. Had we had drivers for every device, we could very easily create s

Trustworthy?

[youthoftoday]

This certainly isn't a large organisation -- http://www.cooltechzone.com/contact/Authors/ [cooltechzone.com]

Could easily be `run from a bedroom'...

Productivity

[thetagger]

though we wouldn't recommend it for productivity hounds that are looking to do reports and presentations

Since when is doing reports and presentations "productive"? These are bureaucracy-feeding tasks, not productivity tasks.

Re:

[e2d2]

And who the fuck writes reports and presentations on their phone? Please point them out and I will slap them.

Ive got to say...

[schlichte]

from TFA, right out of the gate "After the success of T-Mobile's Sidekick series..."

I owned a sidekick3, 2 of them to be exact, and both of them met a violent demise. One took a trip off the 4th floor into a concrete wash, the other, stomped into oblivion in the parking lot after work.

Before the upgrade (which it nagged you ever 5 mins of the day to do with no option to opt out) I had ZERO problems... first day into the upgrade, that son of a bitch would freeze up in the middle of summer on the equator(

*Great* review..

[Lisandro]

With that said, Microsofts Windows Mobile 6 is a disappointment. Working with a number of applications or "heavy" documents was painful. The delay was too much, especially in Word and PowerPoint files that it wasnt possible for us to work with the device without messing up somewhere and not realizing it in the end. This lag is present across a number of other scenarios as well.

...followed by...

If nothing else, its an interesting gadget for the young and hip crowd, though we wouldnt recommend it fo

"it's going to be awkward making phone calls"

[dpbsmith]

From the article: "Basically, it's going to be awkward making phone calls with the Wing."

Might as well end the review right there.

I don't know whether the iPhone will be any better, but Steve Jobs was dead on when he said "The killer app is... making calls."

I have a Swiss Army knife, and while I find the magnifying glass, scissors, and Phillips screwdrivers to be very useful, I use it mostly as a knife. If the knife blades weren't sturdy, sharp, and easy to open, I wouldn't carry one... not even if it included a microscope, pinking shears, and a full set of Torx bits.

yet another phone on the market

[hansoloaf]

How many is Tmobile offering? 50? 100?

When will these phone companies start to think about simplfying their phone product line. Make it at most 5 phones
That way they can focus on support, better quality phones, etc.

buhhhhhhhh

[dreemkill]

what do you expect? its the hardware at fault, not just the software. the wing is nothing more than a glorified MDA (that they released 2-3 years ago)
same CPU, same RAM, same display, different keyboard/housing.
they install a full, bloated WM6 install with all the applications running on the desktop.

i have an MDA (overclocked to a whopping 273MHz) running WM6 that runs perfectly fine, and fast enough for daily use.

its like a bad review of Vista.........running on a Pentium Pro 200 box. duh.

im a sucker for punishment

[yodleboy]

after 3 buggy windows mobile phones, locked to the point of uselessness by att/cingular i just got a blackberry pearl a couple of weeks ago. the only other phone that just worked this well was a sony-ericsson i had a couple of years back. the difference between my 6 month old WM5.0 phone and the blackberry is night and day. the blackberry is just more responsive, the interface is easier to use. i cant put my finger on it, or maybe i can, but i had this phone figured out in 10 minutes, it just makes SENSE

Low Microsoft Expectations

[Doc Ruby]

How many companies can compete by introducing so many products that are so disappointing for so long? Is there even a single MS product (outside the Xbox) released in the past 10 years that hasn't been disappointing? Where do these expectations of good quality come from? And how come consistently low quality doesn't lower them?

The expectation - delivery = disappointment formula is reversed for Microsoft success. That is the surest measure of a monopoly's PR power.

Re:

[Vancorps]

Probably because you have things like Exchange 2003-2007, Windows Server 2003 including IIS6, MOM 2005, SQL 2005, SMS 2003 and a bunch of other products which despite what you seem to think weren't disappointments. Windows CE through Windows Mobile 5.0 have all been rather consistently high quality. Real PDAs actually work and work well unlike these smart phones which the carriers seem to screw up again and again. Why does my $400 iPaq work a lot better than my smart phone? Twice the ram you say? Twice the

Re:

[Doc Ruby]

I said introduced. All the examples you cited are the nth versions of those products. Released after a series of failures, including the launch, that all disappointed moderately high expectations. We're talking about the "Mobile 6-Based 'Wing'", which is an introduction of a new product, even though it's based on the 6th version of an MS platform.

You want to talk about fact and FUD, start with debating the actual point I made, not some strawman you (and Microsoft's marketing department) would prefer to talk

Comparison reviews...

[Mondoz]

I'd like to see someone make a comparison review between the Wing and HTC's TyTn.
They look pretty similar, but the TyTn looks to be a bit more robust in the processor department.

I saw this a few days ago...

[josepha48]

... on crave. It looked like a pretty good phone. Nice sized screen, 2mp camera ( which is only now becoming 'in fashon' in the us ), and all the other things that make a good multi-user phone. Of course if you do not like multi-use phones, then this phone is not for you. If you are like me, though it is a nice phone.

The only issue is that it is an MS phone, so if you do not like MS mobile phones then this would not be good for you.

In any case, crave ( http://crave.cnet.com/8300-1_105-1.html?search=ht [cnet.com]