Back to Windows Mobile After Using the iPhone
Posted on 31 March 2008, at 5:58 pm, by Jenneth Orantia
I’ve been using an iPhone exclusively for just a little over a month. Do I miss Windows Mobile? No, although in the early days of using it, I missed having a full-fledged PIM manager like Pocket Informant to keep track of my calendar and tasks in one place.
But because I like to shake things up every now and then, I fired up an old smartphone over the weekend - the HTC Artemis - and decided to see if I could possibly go back to using Windows Mobile after having sucked at the teat of Apple. Read on for my findings!
The Artemis I have still runs Windows Mobile 5, so the first thing I did was drop by the friendly ROM-cookers at XDA Developers to check whether they had a Windows Mobile 6 ROM for it. Better - they had 6.1, with all sorts of other goodies baked into it like threaded SMS, the HTC Home Plug, and the TouchFlo cube launcher from the HTC Touch series. Sweet!
Just a little bit of background on the Artemis, it’s similar to the iPhone in that it has EDGE and Wi-Fi, but trumps it by having built-in GPS (I’ve installed TomTom 6 on it but haven’t yet given it a try). The Artemis doesn’t have much built-in memory, but with the cooked ROM it supports an 8GB microSDHC card, which I’ve slipped in. One of the cool things about the Artemis are the navigation buttons, which consist of a roller ball in the middle (which operates like an inverted mouse) and a scrollwheel around it that glows blue.
Pocket Informant was the first thing I installed, and it’s soooo good to have after relying on discrete applications for calendar and tasks on the iPhone. But the big test would be Web browsing, which is what I use the iPhone for most these days. I remembered using Internet Explorer and even Opera Mobile with a lot of trepidation, and I figured that my flirtation with Windows Mobile would end there.
I pressed the dedicated Internet Explorer hardware button on the Artemis, and was surprised to see that it launched Opera Mini rather than the tired old browser we love to hate. I’ve never actually tried Opera Mini - which runs on Java - on Windows Mobile before, although most WM smartphones have built-in Java clients for running applets.
I tell you what folks - Opera Mini is almost as good as the web browser on the iPhone. It can render full web pages and hone in on particular paragraphs when you tap them on the screen and it’s super duper fast. Best of all, it’s FREE. I don’t know why anyone would bother paying $30 for the bloated Opera Mobile when most Windows Mobile devices are capable of running Opera Mini.
For now, I’m back to using Windows Mobile thanks to this awesome web browser. I can’t praise it enough - if you have a Windows Mobile device, install it. NOW. Are there any other new must-have apps that I should try before being lured back to the iPhone?
March 31st, 2008 at 6:49 pm
I’ll take $20 on Nokia as Jenneth’s next phone love…can I win more if I name the month when this affair peters out and the new one starts?
March 31st, 2008 at 6:50 pm
SPB mobile shell2 is a must try if you are used to the finger friendly iPhone. It doesn’t works as smoothly as the iphone ui, but it’s so much easier to navigate without the stylus.
I don’t mind opera mini, but in my eyes the enire problem with WM is not having enough devices with screen resolution that equals or exceeds the iphone. The ability to view web pages as they are displayed on a desktop doesn’t do me any good on a 320×240 display if I can’t even tell what each paragraph contains and whether I want to zoom in on it or not.
I am enticed by the iphone, and can’t say that I wouldn’t like to own one, but I’m not willing to give up my SERO plan to end up paying more than twice as much for cellular service just to have one.
I have been a WM die-hard for 9 years, and I want to continue down that road but the lack of innovation on the WM front is going to end up driving many away from it.
Sorry for the rant…. but give Mobile Shell a try, you won’t regret it.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:53 pm
@nosmohtac - I have the SERO plan too. I keep it around since it’s probably he best deal going.
About 6 months ago I picked up the iPhone.
If you want to see what it’s like — grab an iPod Touch - very nearly the same thing (minus the phone). That’s what sold me. Within 30 days of owning a Touch I headed down to Apple and bought the iPhone.
I use the browser on the iPhone all the time — it’s the first truly usable phone browser I’ve ever seen.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:04 pm
He he Wayne, that’s a darn good prediction! I wouldn’t mind myself some Nokia N96 ‘alone-time’ as soon as it comes out.
@nosmohtac: I’ve tried SPB Mobile Shell 2 on the TyTN II and I found it to be okay. I don’t know, seems to over-complicate things though. That’s a fair call re screen resolution - it’s not something that really bothers me as I do most of my web browsing through Google Reader, which formats all the pages for a mobile-optimised view.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:14 pm
@Wayne,
I know what you mean. I went to Best Buy and played around with the iPod Touch and fell in love with the browser. I even tried out WMWiFiRouter on my Mogul to use my data connection to try out the browser on the iPod. It was nothing short of amazing. I almost bought one right then and there. I had planned on carrying the iPod for music video and web browsing, but I came to my senses and realized that now that I have a converged device I would be taking a step backward by carrying a separate device for the same things that my mogul does now.
The iPod touch does most of those things much better and I could get an iPhone to take care of the converged issue, but I don’t have at&t service in my area.
I am looking to move to an area that does have at&t service, but $80 a month vs. 30$/mo is not enticing enough for a great browser.
Besides, even if I lived there, I would be roaming on a partner network more often than on ATT’s and one of my co-workers recently had ATT drop them for too much roaming.
If a CDMA iPod ever emerges (that is, one that has a user replaceable battery), I’ll likely buy one if Sprint snags it, but I doubt they’d allow the iPhone on SERO anyway since Apple doesn’t seem too likely to allow the phone on any network without grabbing a share of each subscription.
I’ll save my rant on a phone manufacturer, in this day and age, releasing a phone without a user replaceable battery for another day.
April 1st, 2008 at 9:30 am
Has anyone gone from the iPhone keyboard to/from a Treo keyboard? I’m considering getting the upcoming Treo 800w, or the iPhone. Both platforms are good and strong in my opinion, but e-mail’s very important to me. Hence… anyone?