Windows Mobile 6.5 and why I do love my phone

author Andy Dawson calendar Feb 16, 2010 · 4 min read · Uncategorised  ·
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This is something of a follow-up to Richard’s post about phones last month.

I have an HTC Touch Pro 2 which came equipped with Windows Mobile 6.1.  I used to have an HTC P3600 (or whatever it was called from Orange at the time) running Windows Mobile 5 which did me quite happily for a couple of years, but I found it frustrating taking notes while using it (which I did try a few times), so was happy to upgrade to something with a proper hardware keypad.

I’ve also recently made the upgrade jump to Windows Mobile 6.5, which has, to me at least, made quite a big difference to the everyday usability of the phone.  I was impressed with the upgrade process, which was quick and relatively painless, although obviously I did have to back up the contents of my phone first.

My Phone

An awful lot of what is on my phone comes directly from our Exchange server, so I didn’t have to worry about that as I’d already got a sync partnership set up which would put my e-mails, contacts etc back onto the phone post-upgrade, but there didn’t seem to be any easy way for me to backup items such as my SMS messages.  After a bit of a search I found Microsoft My Phone (currently free for most features, a small charge applies for ‘premium’ features), which seemed to do the job rather nicely. My Phone will not duplicate the content already being looked after by Exchange, and told me so during the setup and connection, however everything else it looked after almost seamlessly and in addition, allows me to log in to the My Phone site to see the content I’ve synchronised there. One of the other features that I was impressed to see is that as long as I have a data connection (be that standard mobile network, wi-fi, Bluetooth, or USB) and an automatic synchronisation schedule setup, My Phone will keep the contents synced automatically for me.

Windows Mobile 6.5 comes pre-installed with My Phone, although when I first made the connection post-upgrade a small update was required, Windows Mobile 6.1 required that I install it after downloading it from the My Phone site.

So, what’s to like?

There’s a lot I like about my phone:

  • Battery life (over a week during the Christmas break without a recharge for example)
  • Internet connection sharing (via USB or Bluetooth and without any extra charges)
  • Complete lack of reboots (I’ve not had to reset the phone once since I got it)
  • Excellent speakerphone and general voice quality (much better than my previous phone)
  • It just works, without fuss, all the time

What could be better?

Despite the fact that there’s lots to like about my phone, there are still a few things I’d like to see improved:

  • The interface isn’t as consistent as I’d like.
  • The TouchFLO interface sometimes gets confused and selects items when I actually want it to scroll further down the list (this might be a function of the sort of touch screen employed rather than the phone software)
  • Some stylus related quirks remain in the interface (although these tend to be fairly few and far between)
  • My Phone storage is only 200Mb.  How about using my Mesh or Skydrive storage to store my phone files?
  • My Phone didn’t correctly back up my MMS messages.  Luckily I’d stored the photos separately anyway, so it didn’t matter that much.

The final verdict for me is that yes, I do love my phone. It does everything I need it to and without any fuss or complaint, which for me is how it should be!

[Bootnote] I notice that a number of articles have started appearing discussing Windows Phone 7 Series. I suspect unfortunately that I won’t be able to upgrade my phone when Windows Phone 7 Series becomes available, which is a shame as it looks very, very promising from what I’ve seen so far.