Windows Mobile Smartphone – first impressions
Categories : Gadgets, Palm, Personal |
I’ll take advantage in a slight lull in the morning and start writing about my new phone.
For many years now I have been loyal to Palm, since my first m515 Palm Pilot, then a couple of Tungstens and finally the Treo 650. I liked the simplicity of Palm and the fact that it just worked well for all the tasks I wanted. Plus there seemed to be a lot more software available to download for Palms than for Pocket PC. I accumulated a number of useful programs for work and other uses – my most used were Agendus (a date-book/address book replacement), MyBible, a Pregnancy database program to keep track of my obstetric patients, and a prescription drug information database. As well as these key programs I had a myriad of other ones I used less often.
When my Treo 650 was gone 2 weeks ago it seemed the perfect opportunity to upgrade to a new Smartphone, and this time all the bells and whistles of the Windows Mobile versions were enough to persuade me to go over to the dark side. The current Treos (both Palm and WM versions) are still very nice units, but they lacked some of the features I was interested in such as Wi-Fi, better mobile network capabilities including 3G, a decent camera, a bigger screen etc.
And after researching a whole lot of different Windows Mobile PDAs I decided to go with the Dopod 838pro, which is the same as the imate JasJam, which is the same as the Softbank X01HT, which is the model I ended up getting from eBay – the advantage of this model is that it is running Windows Mobile 6, the latest operating system version, in contrast to the others which are still on WM5.
Overall I am quite happy with the unit. I runs well, is fast, and the various connectivity options work well. Very few crashes so far. The only glitch I have discovered is that MMS doesn’t seem to work, which seems to be an issue with this unit coming from Japan. Still searching for a solution to that. [EDIT : Googled again and found some more specific server settings for Optus, entered those in an obscure menu and Viola! MMS now works - it's all good 
]
Software : Aside from loyalty, one of the reasons I was sticking with Palm was that I had spent a lot purchasing different Bible add-ins for the MyBible software and didn’t want to have to pay all over again for Windows Mobile versions. This issue was dealt with last year when Laridian software made it possible to download Bibles that you had already purchased for multiple platforms. So I only had to pay $10 for the Pocket Bible reader and was able to download the 17 Bibles and various other commentaries and dictionaries etc that I had on my Palm. Plus I got the NRSV, which for some reason was never available on the Palm platform.
I also got Agendus for Windows Mobile. The native calendar and address book apps are extremely basic and being used to the enhanced functionality and better visualisation in Agendus for Palm I simply had to get the WM version. Fortunately they also had a deal where previous Palm customers could get the Windows version at a big discount. I simply don’t know how anyone manages with the native WM apps – Agendus for Windows is perhaps not quite as feature packed as the Palm version, but it’s still a vast improvement over what Windows offers. Essential software.
Other Palm apps I used were Avantgo, a newsreader service which flawlessly installed on the new phone. It updates my selected news and information channels each time I sync the phone or wirelessly. And I’ve been progressively reloading the various medical apps including my drug database. The one huge problem I have struck is that I simply cannot find an obstetric patient tracking software program for WM, even though there are about 5 different ones for Palm. I’ve compromised by setting up a HanDbase database, but even that won’t give me an accurate gestational age calculation based on the due date. The closest I have been able to get is a calculation for the number of weeks which gives an answer like 35.7, instead of 35 weeks + 5 days which is the format I really need. So still searching for a program that will do that or a database formula that will derive a gestational age from the due date and give it in a Weeks+Days format.
Anyway I’d better get back to work but there’s my first impressions. Overall the phone is great, but with a few snags. The WM6 operating system is nice, but it’s taking a little getting used to after using PalmOS for so long. It’s almost like starting to use a Windows PC after being a Mac person for many years.
