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Windows Mobile for Mobile Phones?!

I got all excited hearing that Windows Mobile 5.0 was going to be released.  Only for my hopes to be quashed once again by the likes of HTC and other mobile phone providers.  It seems that they have all clubbed together and decided that they will not be doing ROM upgrades from Windows Mobile 2003 SE to the latest and greatest because it is in their interest to make phone users buy the new phones just for the OS!!!!

This annoys developers such as myself because we want to play with this OS as well as develop software for it.  How can we do that when these companies get in our way.  Microsoft really hasn't helped by only providing the platform to the phone providers!  They should be providing it to the developers, after all we are the ones that will market their products for them if they are good and reliable!!! Give us a break and let us do our jobs!

posted @ Sunday, June 05, 2005 7:43 PM

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# re: Windows Mobile for Mobile Phones?!

Left by Kevin Daly at 6/5/2005 8:43 PM
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While many people regard me as a cynic (when actually I'm just an idealist who is often disappointed), I think you may be being a bit hard on HTC et al.
Windows Mobile 5 is in many ways a radical step forward, and the hardware desings that were suited for WM 2003 SE are not necessarily suited for WM 5...admittedly this is most obvious with Pocket PCs, where the new persistent storage feature inverts old assumptions about optimal ROM/RAM sizes, but both form factors would for instance benefit from additional software-mappable buttons to go with WM 5.
As for Microsoft releasing the OS directly to developers: my main criticism there would be that it was very hard to sign up for the beta program without being or pretending to be a corporation, which shows a lack of understanding of where mobile software really comes from (I eventually gave up signing up, for other reasons). That said, Windows Mobile releases are not like Windows XP that you can just install on any suitable spec'd machine: they are tweaked for each target device, which is another reason vendors may not leap to provide upgrades: it costs them a non-trivial amount of time and money to create a new configuration for an existing device, test it, and then deal with the support issues.

# re: Windows Mobile for Mobile Phones?!

Left by Sarah Blow at 6/6/2005 12:43 PM
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Thanks for your feedback Kevin. I don't entirely agree with everything that you are saying but you do have some valid points.

Fair enough a number of mobile devices don't have a big enough ROM to support the new platform so there will be no upgrade for these products. This does not mean that products that have had the development time put into them for installing Windows Mobile 2005 on devices that can be upgraded should be wasted by not allowing users to upgrade from the old versions. This to me seems to be an inappropriate response from the hardware vendors.

The upgrade for the XDAII has been completed but is never going to be released and this is because of HTC not releasing their upgrade software event though the time has been spent developing it. This has been tweaked and played with but no release due to the company thinking it can sell more products by working in this way. So companies now expect developers to fork out more money to get hold of the same device that they already have but with the new platform on it.

I suppose Ebay will be happy with this... they will get a load of old devices being sold on there where developers have got the new one and got rid of the old one!

As for the beta testing of this OS. Firstly yes the software should be released to the hardware vendors and feedback given to Microsoft. However at the same time software developers should get to try it out and give some feedback on it and be given the known hardware issues that the hardware vendors identify. This together will enable a platform to be stable with the features that the developers and the hardware vendors require. It also enables the developers to get a hand on the OS before it is released so that they can then provide software that runs on that platform.

Logic would suggest that this is a sensible route surely!

# re: Windows Mobile for Mobile Phones?!

Left by WallabyFan at 6/26/2005 6:19 PM
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Hi Sarah,

Bit of an update? I believe I have found a rom for the C500? drop me a line if you want?

Dave

# i can't connect...

Left by atya at 2/2/2006 4:59 AM
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after upgrade my XDAII with wm2k5 himalaya, i can't connect my device with activesync 4.1,do you know why?

# re: Windows Mobile for Mobile Phones?!

Left by Sarah at 2/2/2006 8:08 AM
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Do you know if it is an official or a beta version of the software for the Himalaya? If it is beta they are unlikely to have provided the ActiveSync connectivity. I've not heard of anyone else having this problem with an official release of the software. You could try putting the question to people on the Mobile Embedded community pages.

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