who else will be jumping ship to android?
 

(I've played around with emulated android with the SDK, and written to practice apps for it, have played a lot with my bro's iPhone, and have had a Titan for 6 months)

The reason windows mobile isn't very good, is because it's roots are really old.
they've basically got a really old OS, and just tweaked it a little each year.

That's why Palm is struggling now, and why the iPhone is just so much better in many ways.
lets not argue about the faults of the iphone, or keyboard etc... It certainly has them. it is NOT the Jesus phone :)
the point is, the sheer quality/stability/ease of use etc.. is far beyond the WM6 or even the late to the game WM 6.1
Just use Safari, and then use pocket IE. It's a joke. Even Opera Mobile is a joke (until they finally release Mobile 9 at least)

Basically, I want a phone where stuff improves because new things are possible.
Think of what your email would be like if gmail hadn't come aboard.
We were living with 2 or 4MB inboxes. And why? not because storage was that expensive, but because WAY back in the day, it used to be enough, and they'd just kept their same roots and core mentality. Yahoo and Hotmail were fairly quick to compete with gmail's storage. Why is that? Because they were capable of doing it all along, but just had no reason to improve. People were used to rubbish, so few people complained.

Microsoft is just that way. They only made IE7 because firefox became popular.
You know what they said before? They said there was nothing left to improve with IE6 (what they really meant was that they no longer had a competitor, or reason to improve it-aka RIP netscape)

I want whatever OS i use to just improve when it can, not improve because it's forced to by the market, or because everyone else has surpassed it. (btw that's the reason i use linux).

Just look at what's happening with WM6. It's based on Windows CE 5 code. Win CE 6 is supposed to bring big improvements. But, because they had internal problems, they released an interim product, WM6 as a barely improved (and more memory hog) WM5.
They then promised WM7 to be the next big thing, but guess what, they have yet ANOTHER minor update (WM6.1) that's going to delay WM7.

Also, I don't want this to turn into arguments of all the apps available for WM etc... as this is not related to the stability/features of a platform. those apps will come.

All I can say is, To get a properly functioning alarm, I have to install an app.
to get a good calendar, I need an app
a good email program, buy an app.
I mean, FREAK, it's 2008, and there's no threaded messaging in Windows Mobile. I know people will say that it's coming soon. But seriously, it should have been out years ago. There's no excuse.
My point is, although the iPhone is locked down, the built in apps are actually worth using.
So, when I get android, it will actually have a decent alarm that plays mp3s, a decent email client etc... so i won't need to resort to all these 3rd party apps to just get a reasonable system.
If it wasn't for the amazing SERO plan I have, I'd have considered jumping already.

your thoughts?

Bullseye...Couldn't have said it better myself.

Android will be to Windows Mobile as Linux is to Windows.....

I played around with Familiar Linux (http://familiar.handhelds.org/) on a couple of my old (non-phone) iPAQs and loved it. The functionality was much greater than WM2002/2003. Unfortunately, the project became pretty stagnant over the past few years (due in part, I'm sure, to the increasing number of phone-enabled PDA devices). There are still people working with the various Compact Linux projects, and I know that work was being done toward enabling Linux functionality on the Apache (most of it was there EXCEPT for phone stuff). Really exciting, but these community things can be hit or miss.

However, with Android's backing, I'm very excited about it. With so many big groups backing it, something good is sure to come. I'm hoping that sometime in the future, people will port Android to the Mogul, just as the Familiar Linux users/lovers helped port that distribution to numerous hardware devices. I'm all for open-source operating systems and devices, and I agree with many of the statements made in the previous posts. I can't wait to see what Android brings, either directly or by forcing the competition to step up.

I thought that this was gonna be another I luv iphone, buy iphone instead of mogul because I love trolling thread but you had lots of points that I actually agreed with.

I haven't used an iphone and heard of it's flaws over and over again but I've also heard of it's great points and stability. I really agree with your take on wm6. I pave an old axim x30 and can't honestly see a diffenence between wm2003 and wm6. I hope that the iphone does great as competition is always good.

If anyone wants to be an early adopter or help spur on ideas head over to Mikes new site (Wideawake) it's projectgphone.com and is geared specifically at the Android OS and all the possibilities it may bring.

I'm all for competition though... keeps everyone on their toes...

Will it be possible to flash WM6 phones to Android? Anything's possible, and if anyone can pull it off it's Google...

Since we already have the ability to put custom rom images on our phones, I'd say that one of the big hurdles has already been passed. Now it's a waiting game till the hardware in our phones (processors, memory, input/output devices, radios, etc) are supported and a rom is built for our devices. I'd love to jump in and help, but I'm afraid reverse-engineering hardware and writing drivers is WAY beyond my knowledge. But once the hardware is supported, the floodgates should open up for new applications to be developed.

That would be simply the best. I'm thinking of jumping ship as well... and esp with Sprint's contract changes at the moment, I wouldn't have to pay an ETF....

I bought the Iphone and had it for about two months. There is nothing wrong with it if your needs are limited to it. It's great for watching movies. It's great for listening to music on (even though I hate Itunes). It's built in functions work as they are supposed to (Alarm, threaded SMS, etc).

And of course, there are even lots of free 3rd party programs if you have jailbroken yours.

But what it lacks in for me, are the deal breakers. It's inability to run a high speed network, makes the the amazing feeling you get when you see a full web page on safari turn into pure hatred as you sit there for 20 minutes loading large sites like IGN.

The built in keyboard function works great for people with smaller hands. So if you find yourself a texting whore like myself, it takes to long to really get anything out there.

It's lack of professional built applications at the moment. (If you want things as simple as check book balancers, document viewing and writing, detailed day planners, etc) It's not there in either the private department through jailbreak, or through apple themselves.

I know that you have to pay for these features to be useful on the PPC.. But you still have that option. With dev kits hitting soon for the iphone, this will change eventually. But right now, there is just far to much software that is out there. To much ability to customize and change, etc that goes with Windows mobile for me to consider going to anything like the iphone again.

Windows Mobile is far from perfect, but the last device I used was windows mobile 2003 (old IPAQ), and to me it has come a long way. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but a long way nonetheless.

This wasn't really meant to be a review of relatively new products such as the iPhone, or the unreleased Android.

the point was, if the iPhone is already this good, in its FIRST revision, shouldn't WM be amazing. After all, they've been at it for years.

Microsoft has a HUGE advantage. being there first, having the userbase having the most money etc.. yet, in many ways (not all) the new iPhone, is far superior.
and microsoft will probably take a long time before they release something comparable. maybe WM7 or 8, which are years away.

My main point was, apple and google innovate, microsoft reacts, and reacting always leaves you a year behind

Wow.....I couldn't agree more. Hell its true.

I have to agree with you. I wasn't sure where you were going at first, but you're absolutely right. Windows Mobile is drastically far behind, which is very unfortunate. Microsoft tends to react to something that's out there by first releasing a poor competitor, updating it with a passable competitor, and then surpassing it and taking over the market, but as soon as they kill the competition (let's face it, Palm's been DOA for a while now), they grow stagnant and have trouble repeating their previous success when a new challenger arrives. This happened with IE (IE7 was too little, too late), and so far it's happened with Windows Mobile.

I have hopes for them. I really do. The overall possibilities of WM are strong, and a good version of it that takes into account the design lessons being taught by the competitors is exciting. But for the moment they're been drastically outclassed by the iPhone, despite its major deal-breaking shortcomings. Nobody can put their hands on an iPhone for five minutes and not be impressed by its sheer usability and clean, [relatively] reliable interface. Now use it exclusively for a bit more than five minutes and, if you're like me, the limitations start rearing their ugly heads, but still, if Apple manages to iron those out (although a few will never be improved on because they're just Apple concepts), the iPhone will kill. Microsoft has a lot of work to do to respond to this and I'm not sure it's in them any time soon.

But yes, Android does have this potential. Google has already taken over a lot of aspects of my life that were once run by Microsoft, and I'm far more willing to trust them than Apple. They seem to grasp both the needs for clean, simple, responsive designs while still providing genuine functionality, extensibility, personalization, open standards, and more. Android seems to me like it has the potential to be what the iPhone could have been if it wasn't made by Apple. If they can get that level of hardware quality (multi-touch and the capacitive touchscreen are important aspects of the iPhone experience) and get enough support for the Android I would consider switching, assuming my MS-exclusive needs (pretty much just access to Office documents and Exchange syncing) are met by it, as well.

As for the possibility of loading Android onto our phones, I doubt this will be impossible. HTC's designing Android hardware, and the whole OS is essentially open source. Google certainly will have no complaints with us doing it and will likely leave it wide open to do so, and since HTC's probably not scrapping their basic design concepts and starting fresh for Android, there should be enough similarities to give the good crackers a foothold to port it. I give it less than a month after Android phones hit the market before someone manages to get a barely-functioning version of Android on a Titan and six months before we can run it smoothly.

Now that having been said, by that point I expect some pretty sweet Android-native phones (details on the Dream are, if accurate, very impressive), so I may be more likely to just take the plunge and buy myself a real Android phone as long as the software's where I need it to be.

(To SyXbiT) AMEN BROTHER! You should email your post to some technology blogs as a "letter to the editor."

Reasonably stable,hideously difficult to properly configure for the typical user,poorly supported by commercial applications and confined mostly to the pocket protector crowd?
Actually,Linux has its place,its used for alot of scientific applications,but often your better off with a Mac if you need a unix box. I don't really know alot about Android,but it certainly will be interesting to see Google take on Microsoft. Certainly stiff competition will make phones better in general. Firefox vs IE is certainly a good example.

i had pretty much forgotten about the g-phone hype until reading this thread. so, naturally, i did a quick search (and yes, i used google, although dogpile is much better, lol) and found the sdk immediately (code.google.com).

if i can get my hands on a machine that can swing it, i think android will yield the motherload of sweetness. there're too many bright people that would really be able to whip up some pretty crazy programs. i mean, look at what we're holding in our hands, courtesy of some pretty bright people here and at xda-dev. imagine if we were actually encouraged and supported....

OT:
LOL I had forgotten all about Dogpile, yeah it is awesome. Given its nature, it should be.

I will concede that most WM6 devices, especially the Mogul, have tons of issues. However I don't think MS is to blame. I think much more of the blame lies with HTC and their hardware and drivers. IMO WM6 is pretty reliable, most of the problems arise from third party apps or crappy drivers for crappy hardware. Yes WM6 isn't as flashy but its a pretty decent OS. Does it need to be updated, heck yes. But thinking that a new OS will be more reliable? I'm not falling for that. The reason the Ipone works so well is that there are what, 5 or 6 apps on it? More stuff=more bugs, its that simple.

*facepalm*

wm hasn't changed since I had my casiopedia in 2001.. probably before that.

all the moguls problems lie with sprint and ms.. weve determined this numerous times.

htc's hardware is lightyears beyond the software made for it. wm is ancient and sprint overcomplicates things by crippling the basic functionality of the phone.

Question: Is Microsoft hindered by its large user base (especially business users) when it comes to rewriting things from scratch? When Apple re-wrote their OS to create OSX they did a great job. The jump from OS9 was huge and it was a step in the right direction. Still, they had a much smaller user base and therefore had less to lose if a few users had issues with their random 3rd party software not working on the new OS. With Windows, whether XP, Vista, Mobile, or whatever, it seems like it is much harder to do a total rewrite to bring things up to date. When the vast majority of businesses depend on compatibility with your OS, you don't want to risk backwards-incompatibility with all kinds of software packages. The PR backlash would be terrible if a new MS OS caused someone's internal software system or email server to stop working at a critical point in the business day.

Google has the potential to rewrite things because they aren't responsible for maintaining backwards compatibility with any existing software. Like Gmail, they can afford to keep it in perpetual beta while the service improves in a much more linux-like approach.

but, as I mentioned in that previous post, microsoft is essentially forcing us to add lots of 3rd party apps, as the built in ones don't measure up. yes, the iPhone is currently locked, but the built in apps
safari > IE
iCal > WM calendar
iTunes > media player

Is it our fault we put on potentially unstable 3rd party apps?
I don't think so

well, just look at vista :)

Uh, do you have an iphone or ipod touch? I do.

safari > IE - true (mostly, but no flash on safari, and not all javascript sites work, so maybe not so much - more pretty? You betcha. More functional? After 10 minutes, not so much.)

iCal > WM calendar (wow... can I get some of what you're smoking? This is really really really not even close to true)

iTunes > media player (There is no "iTunes" - there is "music" and "videos", and they're just about as crappy overall as windows media player. Mortplayer kicks both their asses as an audio player, and tcpmp supports a lot more codecs then WMP and the apple video player... sigh)

I'm no WM fanboy, nor am I an iWhatever fanboy. They all suck in different ways, and are good in different ways. For example, if you need to cut and past (anything) you want to stay away from the iWhatevers until 1.1.3 is released (rumored to have the magical cut and past feature from 1962 implemented. Ah, the great leap forward has begun!)

No doubt android will suck in completely new ways. The most interesting things about it have everything to do with it being an open platform. The Java-sdk is disappointing (oh wow, a java phone. How very Nokia 2003) but sooner or later a native sdk will come out - by then the Apple native sdk should be out, and of course the WM native SDK and PalmOS and Symbian SDKs have been around for more then a decade. So at least there will be lots of choices, and HTC can lower the handset price by $30 since they won't have to pay palm/ms/symbian a license fee for the OS.

So the fact that bluetooth was great on my Wing, and is supposedly great on the Touch is microsoft's fault? How about the microsd problems the wing has? Also how is microsoft to blame for the crappy volume on the Mougl?

if you'd read my post, i was talking about 1st party, not 3rd party apps.
my point was that, with WM6, you're basically forced to get opera (or pie), a calendar program, TCMP, a better alarm program etc..
that was all. I wasn't claiming that 3rd party software on WM sucked

I wouldn't really say the Iphone works "so well". It has plenty of issues with the lesser functionality that it has compared to other phones.

Even if you agree that it does work well, the number of apps doesn't really have anything to do with it. If that were true it would be impossible to make a phone run better with 3rd party apps than you can stock default. If you know what you are doing you can get a Palm OS 5 device running stable with easily 100 1st+3rd party apps.

Yes, 3rd party apps can cause instability or conflict, but it's not as simple as "less apps = phone works better". Apps are designed to make a phone "work better" than it does default.

So wait. with an iWhatever you get support for 1 video format, and 2 audio formats, and a very anemic calendar.

With WM you get support for 2 audio (wma/mpg3) and 2 video (wmv + mpeg4) codecs, and a better calendar. You don't need any 3rd party apps to suck slightly less then iWhatever does.

With android, you get nothing - it's all 3rd party apps. So wait, what was your argument again?

I will definitely be all over android! Google is awesome.

(off topic, my ipod touch is rock solid and has 31 apps on it :) )

My friend has an iPhone. While I don't see it as usable as my Mogul, it is definitely more user friendly.

Also, Safari on the iPhone is WAY more functional and usable than pocket IE. I dread going online with PIE, and sadly it is about the most usable browser on Windows Mobile too.

Anyway, I heard Google was using the Mogul as one of it's test devices, so one can hope Andriod will run easily on a Mogul later on down the line. I'd install it.

I really don't get the logic in the OP post. It argues with itself.

There is nothing great about the iPhone. There is nothing inovative about it. Having messed around with it. The iPhone is AOL to the internet. Aol designed the walledgarden and dummed down the internet. They restricted their users to their domain. It was very smart of them b the way and it made them great. Same thing with the iPhone, its a dummed down version of a smartphone, a handicapped smartphone at that.

Windows Mobile is the best right now. Why? Android is a rip-off of Windows Mobile.

Windows Mobile aka Windows CE is a building block. Windows Mobile is just the GUI. Microsoft allows the user to customize WM anyway they like. Without WM Handango and feloow others would never have existed. Sure Palm may have ruled the world before the PPC/PPCPE but MS opened the market. The idea of having a today screen that is comprised of plug-ins was ingenious.

MS could have designed a phone like the iPHone, locked down and restricted to only MS apps but they opened it up to cariers to do as they wish, all they provide are the building blocks. And what is Android, no more open source than Windows Mobile.

It's the same thing with MACS and PC's. Apple makes ll their hardware and almost all software. Don't get me wrong, I applaud apple for their smart business model. Dumming down technology for the average Joe. However, I'd take the customizability of a Windows Mobile phone over an iPhone or Android any day.

My first smartphone was the palm Kyocera QCP-6035 and my first PPCPE was the T-Mobile XDA. I've been there from the beginning and I can confidently say that the PPC has come a long way.

Furthermore, without WM, fanboi sites and developer sites like PPCGEEKS or XDA-devs wouldnt exist.

hopefully the mogul's 64MB of ram will be sufficient for android, cause it sure isn't on WM6 :(
just try loading up a site like slickdeals.net on opera mobile.
even though you have a great EVDO connection, the phone crawls, as it runs out of memory.

Again, its got nothing to do with being there first. Windows Mobile is geared towards an open minded and set of people/consumers who demand power and control. The iphone, like I stated in an earlier post is a walledgarden. It's designed for people who don't ask questions or need power they just want things to work for them. If you showed an iPhone user what your WM device could do with 3rd party apps, they'd be impressed but then they'd say" I don't really feel like going through all that"

I'm sorry Alabij but you're crazy. And you're trying to pass off your OPINION as if its some kind of fact.

If there was truly nothign "great" about the iPhone there wouldn't be multiple skins and programs trying to replicate its launcher, nor programs trying to replicate its contacts menu or unlocker, nor skins to replicate its phone system. At the very least that shows that there is at least some good things about the device or there wouldn't be copy cats.

There is a number of "innovations". To begin, show me a mass marketed US PDA focused on non-stylus, touch screen access? The Touch and Voyager now, both banking off the iPhone's success.

As well, Apple took one of the long stated good things about the Palm OS...its simple and easy to use application launcher...and did improved it in ways that Palm hadn't probably imagined. They made it much more appealing to the eye asthetically, which is a huge thing when you're talking about a consumer market.

As well, what's the "killer feature" that every mobile browser is trying for now? Full page view + area Zoom.

Completely subjective, though I happen to agree. With that said, being the best doesn't mean its great, nor perfect, nor unable to improve.

Your reasoning is EXACTLY the reason Palm is no longer king of the mountain. Palm was "The best right now" for a good long time. I still remember WinCE for PPC 1.0, which was ATTROCIOUS. But PPC kept improving little by little, and ended up actually over coming Palm as they were very, very slow to adopt the good things PPC was doing while keeping the things they did well.

"Why do we need to be able to run more than one program at a time, there's no use for that".

A common thing said by Palm enthusists 5+ years ago. They were kicking themselves sometime later. This seems to be the same attitude some WM users have in regards to some of the things the iPhone does well.

Palm wasn't kind of the world UNTIL PPC came into existance. They were kind of the world for much of the early and even middle days of the PPC's existance. PocketPC really didn't start whooping up on Palm until smart phones really began to gain more prominence.

Windows Mobile does do some great things. I love the today screen and what you can do with it. That doesn't mean that it can't learn to do some things better or take from what others do well and intigrate it. If you think the today screen is as good as it can be you're, imho, crazy.

OR MS could have designed a phone like the iPhone and kept it open.

Indeed, and MS should take note of the blatant theft of some ideas for Vista that was present in OSX and do the same with windows mobile. Take what works well and blend it with what you do well instead of goign "Bah, people that like their way are stupid, ours is better".

You know what I'd take any day? The customizability of Windows Mobile with the philosophy behind the iPhone's interface.

HAHAHA. The "beginning"? PPC has come a long way...from the point where the PDA's used to actually have a start menu, on the bottom, that was cascading and looked like a mini-desktop. Back on the old Compaq Aero's, HP Jornada series, and Casiopeia. The jump from the old Handheld PC interface to what became PocketPC was a HUUUUGE jump. There has not been a jump that large since the inception of the PocketPC and the OS badly needs such a jump again.

And where was the OP saying that Windows Mobile shouldn't exist? The problem with windows mobile is its taken for granted its grown base and stopped innovating. It was innovation that originally made PocketPC have such a devoted base...its innovation in philosophy and use that has made the iPhone have such a devoted base...and its lack of innovation which is spurring discontent by many long time PPC users.

I agree with that statement as well. Microsoft isn't stupid. They know what people what out of their mobile devices and they realize Windows Mobile is not perfect, things just take time. Consider this forum community here, we represent a very small fraction of mobile "power users" in the world but mobile/handheld technology really still is in its infancy. We're just so spoiled by it all and always want more... it's the nature of the beast. The "beast" being us.

Every other day or so, I troll these forums to see if there is anything new/cool that I can do on my Mogul just to keep myself feeling like I'm one of the few to have the coolest gadget. But the fact of the matter is, I have all that I need on my Mogul that fits my needs and that's the bottom line.

I'm sure Microsoft has something up their sleeves...

MagicCap? Anyone?
Newton? Anyone?
USRobotics Pilot?
Pegasus?

Yep, way back in the old days, we were there. Back in the days of 1mb storage cards and 300 baud modems. Take a look at some of those Newton screenshots in wikipedia. Might look somewhat familiar. Of course, that was a funky OS with an even funkier programming language, and back then having a network connection of any kind on a pda was not only just a dream, it wasn't even close to anywhere near possible in the power budget.

The iWhatever is a far better first attempt then I really realized until I got my hands on one, cracked it open, looked at the full blown darwin/*nix OS under the stupid cartoon interface, and realized (like I can only assume much of the MS Mobile, Symbian, and Palm teams) that Apple just deployed a bombshell that was only going to get better. You cannot really appreciate the device playing with it in an apple store. You have to break the locks and get inside (today - very soon not even that) to see what they've actually done.

Really, at this point, the only competition is going to be android, and only because its open source and will run on HTC hardware - HTC being the only ones left standing who can make decent hardware. Microsoft wasted a 7 year head start with no domestic completion other then Palm, and they are going to be in serious catchup mode from now on. They've got Apple sucking up all the "screw this, I just want to use the damn thing... oh and if it were cool that would be nice too" market, and android sucking up all the "anything but Microsoft, oh and we hate Apple too" geeks. That leaves the fortune 500 suits. Good thing there are a lot of those, and they have budgets for this kinda stuff ;)

Don't forget about RIM...all the suits I support use Blackberries. The network admin at my company & I use Windows Mobile devices, some of the web people have iPhones, but nearly every "suit" carries a blackberry. I'd be willing to bet that's more competition to MS than any of the other groups, if nothing more than for the fact that Blackberries can be made to work quite well with an exchange server.

are you using your storage card to store the internet files? and do you have opera installed on your storage card? using the storage card for both has worked for me.

Yeah, RIM is very popular because it's a true business oriented device. No matter what label they slap on the Mogul, it's more of a geeks toy then a serious business tool. Blackberries offer a less shiny but more functional interface then the iPhone without the do it yourself feel of Windows Mobile. Things work well out of the box :p

I think if android wasn't coming soon, I'd switch out to a perl 8130. best choice on sero right now IMHO. I just have to be patient :)