Remember Windows Mobile 6.5–Unfortunately I do

Having just read Richard Tubb’s post called Remember Windows Mobile 6.5? I felt compelled to write this. You should probably go and read Richard’s post first….go on, I’ll still be here when you’re done.

In summary, Richard has a HTC HD2 running Windows Mobile 6.5. He loves the device and HTC use their HTC Sense software to hide a lot of the Windows Mobile 6.5 side of things, so much so that when his contract runs out he has no plans to upgrade it yet.

I remember feeling very envious of Richard’s HTC HD2 when he first showed it to me. I’d only had my HTC Touch 2 a few weeks and when I spoke to my operator (T-Mobile) for my handset upgrade I was told the HTC Touch 2 was the only Windows Mobile 6.5 they had and there were no plans in the pipeline for any more in the near future…the HTC HD2 was announced by T-Mobile a few weeks later – how annoyed was I?

My contract is also coming around to upgrade time and I’ll be honest I can’t wait.

See my phone doesn’t come with HTC Sense. It has something called HTC TouchFlo which is basically a today screen plugin which is useful in some respects but lacks the integration of Facebook, Twitter, mail, texts and contacts that HTC Sense has.

This means I have to interact with Windows Mobile 6.5 a lot more which I’ve just had enough of.

6.5 was very much an upgrade from 6 meaning there are some areas of the operating system which really are still suited to a stylus and while the phone comes with one I don’t want to keep switching between that and my finger so generally end up selecting the wrong option and spending ten minutes on a text message trying to use the on screen keyboard.

If I steal copy use Richard’s list for inspiration

• My Touch2 isn’t particularly fast and it frequently will grid to a halt. Whether is down to the device or the software is probably open to debate.
• The camera is ok, but not good enough that I use it a lot.
• Battery life is one of the plus sides. I can get a day’s heavy use out of it quite easily and if i turn off wireless, bluetooth and direct push when I’m not using them I’ll get three or four days use easily.
• E-Mail works great with Exchange and GoogleMail and Hotmail (with an additional Microsoft application installed)
• GPS – The specs list an internal GPS antenna but it’s never worked when I’ve needed it.
• Social Media is only available through apps or a web browser. I’ve not found a Facebook app that works well. m.twitter.com was my default option until recently but something has changed which means my browser frequently locks up on the site so I’m now using the excellent moTweets.
• You can’t switch from portrait to landscape mode easily (that I can tell!). Sometimes when I’m reading some text it would be easier to have it in landscape.

I’ve also had some weird things going on with the phone recently.

The big one is that it’s been losing time. I noticed that it was about ten minutes slow so reset the clock. Within a couple of days it had fallen behind again and it’s been a feature ever since. This is a pain in the neck, especially since I rely on it for the time (I haven’t worn a watch on a daily basis since I started carrying a mobile phone)

Text messages have been arriving in batches. My phone will beep and I’ll notice two or three that have been sent over the last hour. I had a situation recently why Mrs P sent me a text while I was still in the office asking me to pick something up on the way home. I didn’t actually get the text until I’d arrived home. This isn’t helpful when your married to someone who relies on text messages.

When opening a text sometimes it will half open and then lock up and I end up frustratingly stabbing at screen with my finger and when i finally catches

Sometimes if I miss a call the phone doesn’t become useable for a few minutes as the caller display seems to hang.

You probably get the point….

Based on experiences with my previous Windows Mobile I probably need to reload and start from scratch.

So which handset should I go for?

I really don’t know if I’m honest.

I don’t particularly want an iPhone (the reasons for which are long enough for their own blog post). As Richard also said I’m also not that interested in a Blackberry which means the choice is either an Android or Windows Mobile 7.

The other thing is that I find it really hard to get excited about mobile phones in the same way as I would other gadgets. I remember when Windows Phone 7 was launched, one of their Facebook status updates asked who’d be queuing up to get one. Straight away I thought “not me, I’ve got another twelve months left on my contract!”

I don’t know how it works in other countries but the norm here is that your handset is subsidised by the network so we’re just not used to buying devices. This means if I sign up for a contract (which has gone up from 12 month to 18 months to 2 years now) that’s the device I’ve got work with unless I want to buy another device myself. Some people do this by selling their first device to fund the new device but I can’t be bothered with that!

This means when Apple, or Nokia or Microsoft or whoever release their latest and greatest I just can’t get excited as it’s only applicable to me for a very short period of time. It means I can only be interested in what’s available when I’m in a position to upgrade.

I mentioned on Facebook earlier about one my favourite phones from years gone by…the Nokia 7110.

I’ve still got it, maybe I should just use that instead?

My Windows Phone – HTC Touch 2 and Mobile Madness

Let’s get something out of the way – I don’t want an iPhone :-p

No that’s out the way back to the post…

Our mobile contract recently expired so I try to approach this in a reasonably simple manner

1) Is the price plan fitting our needs? If it is then I don’t really want to pay anymore per month, if anything I’d rather pay less

2) The less we have to pay for devices the better! Windows Mobile is our first preference.

So even after our recent “billing issues” with T-Mobile we went to them first to give them the chance to keep our business. I told them our preferences and asked to see what they could do

What was really frustrating here was the first person I spoke to didn’t really know exactly what they were selling. I was told that our price plan didn’t exist anymore and if we wanted Windows mobile we had a choice of two devices, one we could get as a free upgrade and one we’d have to pay for. The price plan choices were also confusing and it wasn’t clear how much data we’d be getting (which is important!)

Annoyed I left it and decided to come back as Windows Mobile 6.5 had just been announced so I wanted to see how quickly the devices would filter through

I then went to look at the competition and looked through their offerings on the websites first and initially I found

Three don’t appear to sell any Windows Mobile based devices

02 and Orange have price plans that are higher than what we’re paying now and it was very very unclear about data allowances

Vodafone had price plans that were slightly more than we were currently paying with less minutes, texts and data but had a greater variety of devices

I then spotted the HTC Touch 2 Pro which I liked the look of so spoke to Vodafone’s small business team. The upshot of it was that i was correct in that we’d be paying slightly more per month for less features on our package and would have to pay for each device

So I went back to T-Mobile see what they were doing on the Windows Mobile 6.5 front

I spoke to three different people and not one of them was 100% sure about the devices they sold! The good news was that our price plan does still exist and we don’t under or over use it so it’s the correct plan for us

So if we were going to stay where we are it was just a matter of trying to pick a device

There are two on the website, and like the other experiences I’ve had with the other mobile providers trying to get clear and concise information wasn’t easy

By the time I’d been backwards and forwards and tried to figure out who actually knew what they were doing I didn’t care about the version of Windows Mobile!

It then transpires that T-Mobile have recently started to stock the HTC Touch 2 (though it was no where to be found on their website) which does run Windows Mobile 6.5 (again the staff on the phone weren’t entirely sure of this!) so that is what I went with

It arrived a couple of days later (no thanks to the Royal Mail postal strike!!)

So after all that…the phone!

Image from HTC.com

Compared to my HTC TyTn II the phone weighs nothing at all! That keyboard makes all the difference.

When going for this phone my one worry was the lack of keyboard and was the reason the Touch 2 Pro caught my eye as I used it quite a lot. A week in and I’m just about getting used to it

The touch screen is nice and responsive and the few people I’ve shown it to said they liked how the device looked. It also has an FM radio built-in, I’ve never had a phone with the capability and haven’t had the chance to try it out yet. I’ve put an 8GB micro SD in though so was planning on using MP3s more than listen to the radio

The quality of the calls I’ve made have been decent and it plays nicely with my hands free kit

I’m not going to do a full blown review of Windows Mobile 6.5 (Windows phone!) as there are plenty of other people who will do a far better job but just some thoughts

• The new start menu is very nice. On my old 6.0 device using the start menu with anything other than the stylus or the device navigation buttons was a no go
• The threaded conversations for text messages is interesting. I’m still getting used to it but it’s keeping my inbox a lot neater
• The new onscreen keyboard is pretty cool, now i’m getting used to it I haven’t been anywhere near the stylus
• Internet Explorer is nice. Though I’m currently testing Opera mobile that came bundled with it as it just too many good features (tabs and password management are my current favourites)
• While it’s generally more “finger friendly” there are still some areas that very obviously are the same as in previous versions of Windows Mobile so i think this is more of an incremental upgrade.

I’ll need to read the manual for the TouchFlo stuff though. The areas on the front screen for text messages and emails have changed since the day i turned the phone on. I may be misunderstanding it’s use though

Overall I’m really pleased with the phone. At the moment I don’t have any immediate regrets for ignoring the Touch 2 Pro. I do wish we could do away with the version madness though

When you buy an iPhone that’s exactly what you get. Regardless which generation of handset you buy you always get updates so you can take advantage of the latest features. No such thing with Windows Mobile as you are at the mercy of the handset manufacturer and the mobile provider. It was immensely frustrating dealing with the sales staff who just didn’t know their products