Jan 13 2010
Windows Mobile Smartphone
Posted by: CameraPhonesPlaza in Smartphone
Windows Mobile Smartphone Standard 6.0 from Microsoft is a powerful operating system for mobile smartphones. It is stable, fast and flexible. Many functions provided by the operating system are simple, or concealed. Hence, the dependence on 3rd-party software that some integrates well with operating system. For example, the operating system do not comes with copy and paste functions (although it has its own clipboard and can interpret the commands copy / paste).
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Of course, the applications package differs from manufacturer to manufacturer. For example, besides the base Windows Mobile Smartphone 6.0, HTC includes its own applications, and so does Samsung. Windows Mobile 6.0 comes with a more pleasant interface, more elegant compared to the previous versions.

Let us start with the Homescreen. It is the main screen. It is very flexible, a homescreen can absorb many interesting plugins (for example, you can see live weather on Homescreen with 3rdparty plugins). The Start menu is simple. You cannot change / move files / directories inside the menu. It must be used a file manager for this (go to \ Windows \ Start Menu \ where you can do whatever you want). The menu can be displayed in two modes: list and icons.
The Settings menu is very rich. Here you will find the settings for the calls (call deflection, call waiting, select networks, etc.), connections (WiFi, Infrared, Bluetooth, VPN, GPRS, Proxy, etc) homescreen, date and time settings, alarm, sounds, profiles, Power Management, Remove Programs, regional settings, system information and others.

Windows Mobile Smartphone 6.0 comes with standard PIM functions (Personal Information Management): calendar, address book, task links, call history, etc.. The search mode, called Smart Dial (or Smart Filter) - when you type a number in the Homescreen - is innovative. It will search by phone number written even in the name (the other fields as well) of the contacts. This smart search mode is used also to: Call History, Contacts, etc.. Unfortunately, not in the Calendar application. Each contact can be given several phone numbers, address, picture, ringtone and more. The Call History shows calls made and received. The limit of the list is somewhere around 300 calls.
The Calendar is very practical. You can create recurring calendar events, but is somewhat limited. For example, if I want to put an event to repeat every 2 weeks, I cannot do this using the calendar application provided by Microsoft. However, with 3rd-party applications, such as Agenda One, we can add recurring events (which can be "read" by the Calendar application).

Windows Mobile comes with a simple application for Tasks. It is weak, we cannot even write on several rows. However, again, can be added complex functions through 3rd-party applications. An example would be Oxios ToDo List.
A strong point of Windows Mobile is the messaging. At its base lies Outlook Mobile. It includes SMS, MMS, email (via POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, push mail, Exchange Server). I have personally used just the SMS and the POP3 e-mail. The search through the messages is very practical; it is made like the search of contacts. You can go quickly to the desired message. Another very interesting thing is having automatic settings. For example, I just had to write my email address from Gmail and my password, and the software dealt with the rest. Super, right? The e-mail client is capable of reading HTML messages with attachments.

The standard applications to play multimedia / photo content, that come with Windows Mobile, are weak, meaning that are not optimized and the loading takes much time, or consume a lot of RAM or are poorly on functions. However, Windows Media Player (WMP) can be praised in the streaming chapter: it is able to play wmv, asf, etc. content using HTTP and MMS protocol, and additionally through plugins and the RTPS. Windows Media Player can read more formats through codecs. In addition, Windows Media Player has a Smart Filter to search songs (in playlists). Windows Media can change skins too.
One of the great failures of its (Pocket) Internet Explorer is no support for uploading files. Otherwise, is a pretty good browser, it knows frames, Javascript (including Ajax from what I observed). Is capable of displaying full-screen desktop display (shows the page as a PC), key mapping, etc.. Another relatively annoying thing, Internet Explorer does not download files that have extensions that do not exist in the registry. To download an unknown extension, it must be entered manually. There are many 3rd-party applications.
Windows Mobile Smartphone 6.0 comes with three basic Office programs: Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile. These are simplistic, but OK for a non-touchscreen smartphone. Word Mobile and Excel Mobile have an editing mode. The mobile phone manufacturers include (in general) Adobe Reader for PDFs.
Other applications that come together with Windows Mobile Standard are file management applications (File Manager), connection manager (Wireless Manager), and probably something for the management of the programs loaded in RAM (Task Manager). Another interesting application is Internet Sharing, which is meant to share the Internet connection for a computer. On the PC you must have installed Active Sync 4.5 +. Once connected, the phone will be seen as a network card and the PC will have Internet automatically. Microsoft has included Windows Live and Windows Messenger for instant messaging with users from the Windows Live! network.

Windows Mobile is dependent on the registry. Here it keeps many settings / configurations. Many of these do not have GUI that means we do not have a menu to change them. An example would be selecting the font, the size. All registry information is saved to link extensions. Basically, you can associate any extension with any program (for editing / setting association I recommend Smart Explorer and Resco Explorer). The access to the registry is done using several applications, one of the best is Resco Registry Editor. Oh, and you can overclock the CPU instant, restarting is not necessary. For example, the SPV C600 which has an ARM OMAP 850 CPU at 200Mhz (which operates at 180MHz), can be increased to 264Mhz. And being based on drivers, Windows Mobile (5.0, 6.0) can improve in this direction. For example, you can improve sound quality by changing the audio driver.
Windows Mobile is a stable operating system. Withstand stress. No restarts out of nowhere, even if you run out of RAM (I have bad experiences with Symbian phones at this chapter). I did some tests, I wanted to see how it stands without restart. The result: Uptime: ~ 316 hours – that means 13 days and that is something. During this time, the phone was used as an MP3 player and surfing via IE, Opera Mini and Opera Mobile slightly. It was also used as a USB Mass Storage and more. The available RAM memory was somewhere around 18-19MB with the user programs closed.
What is interesting is that we can run on Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition (in this case WM 5 +) Pocket PC applications, there is an application (SPhelper) which emulates a cursor to navigate the menu. For example the taskmanager application is designed for the PPC. A very good file explorer is Resco Exlorer. Again an essential application is Right Menu. Moreover, let us not forget the WM5torage application that transforms the memory card in the phone as a USB Mass Storage.













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