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Informal survey..iPhone VS Windows Mobile..

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Coming from support, I have seen many different causes for crashes and hangs, memory leaks and BSOD’s. Of course, again I am colored by my experiences and it reflects in the title of my blog “When things go wrong.. “ I only see the bad side of things. But, I have long held the opinion that Windows is a stable OS for the most part, and I know for a fact that many many root causes of cases I saw were 3rd party applications and drivers.

Anyway, to the point. I was rebooting my Samsung Epix ( again ) the other day and was quite frustrated with the experience. I started to think, maybe I have too many applications running.

But isn’t that part of the reason for me getting the WinMobile phones?
 

 I love the fact that I can RDP to my desktop, watch a ripped DVD , chat on IRC and play games or listen to podcasts all on the same device. I run CORE media player, RDP desktop client, have any number of games and 3 different mobile browsers on my phone. Is the cost for this flexibility, the stability of my phone? If I cannot use it for its core function, a phone, but it works great as a ‘mini computer’ -- Am I OK with that?

Here are my specs – and the apps which are on almost all the time.

· Samsung Epix – WinMo 6.5

· AE button plus ( runs in background )

· Audio Notes

· Google Maps

· CorePlayer

· Live Mesh

· Newsbreak

· Pocket IE

· SkyFire

· Pocket Outlook

· ActiveSync

· BlueTooth on for headset ( runs in background )

· Voice Command On ( runs in background )

 

Now, I keep hearing about this Apple App store with bajillions of apps – forget the recent report that said no one uses them after the first week or so.

I asked a few co-workers if their iPhones needed to be rebooted and if so, how often. Most of them said almost never – then the follow up questions “ How many 3rd party apps do you run?” Almost none.

 

So does an iPhone suffer from the same dilemma? How often do you iPhone lovers users have to reboot your phone? Are you a heavy app user or more of a core system user?

Do you feel that you can ( or should have to ) sacrifice stability for extensibility?

random thoughts on a snowy Sunday afternoon...

 

Spat

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2009
    PingBack from http://www.clickandsolve.com/?p=19952

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2009
    You can put the word 'lover' back when referring to me and my iPhone.   Here's a little background: I tried two of latest and greatest Windows phones from HTC and Samsung respectively and although the hardware was attractive, well built and used a form-factor to my liking, the OS itself (and a couple of stupid ideas on the manfuacturer's part) that led me to conclude Windows-phones are not yet for me.  Here's a few of the 'whys' -

  1. interface too small, not finger-friendly
  2. crashed (a lot)
  3. too many notions ported straight from the desktop experience that simply don't apply on a device of their size
  4. the touch-screen thought I was providing input with my ear when making calls
  5. the phone is an appliance, if I hit 'Start' then start something, don't give me more choices.  If my microwave did that, I'd return it ... there's more but I'm starting to irritate myself.  The iPhone certainly has its flaws but, in general, it's a purpose-built device with a usability model that's on-point with my requirements.  Of course, there are a few exceptions but that's exactly what they - the exception, not the rule.

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2009
    So - you never need to reboot? Do you run a lot of 3rd pary apps?

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2009
    Case in point: On my HTC WinMo phone, opening settings takes 3-5 seconds. All to show an incredibly sparse UI made up of a series of comboboxes. On the iPhone, a beautiful UI opens almost instantaneously, with a beautiful transition. On my HTC, I have to use my thumbnail to click many UI items. Really, MS? Who OK's the release of that? I'm still not at all convinced MS takes mobile anywhere nearly as serious as it should. WinMo looks like the product of a skeleton crew running on a constantly shrinking budget. And I was a WinMo developer.

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2009
    OK - so I was talking to some folks and see that iPhone can only run one app at a time. I guess that helps in enforcing some level of stability but IMO it would stink to have to be watching my  movie, and then need to check my GPS as I drive down the road and now I have to restart my movie at the next stop light... Bah. spat

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2009
    I run WinMo on my ATT Fuze (HTC Touch Pro), and I gotta say, the performance is less than stellar.  I do run 3rd party apps, since TouchFlo is running on top of the mobile shell. All in all, I have to reboot the phone, as with every Windows mobile phone I've had, almost daily, or every other day.  I'm not sure if this is an issue with AT&T or the OS, but I lose connectivity to the network when trying to browse the Internet.  Interestingly enough, e-mail will continue to flow (possibly because of direct push?) I am a former iPhone user, and it's still in my locker.  I'm using the Windows Mobile device, and can't wait for the 6.5 to release to see if that changes any behavior.  I will say that with the iPhone, no background services can run, so this does help out with performance, but no cut and paste! My 2 cents Scooter

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2009
    Part of the problem is the way the OEMs ship the phones.  A clean build HTC Touch Pro using HTC's standard ROM runs lickety-split.  Take the same phone, load the carrier's settings on top of it (Now it's an ATT Fuze) and it crawls. Comparing iPhones to WM devices is apples and oranges.  Apple controls the platform from start to finish whereas MSFT ships an OS to an OEM who puts it on their platform and ships it off to a carrier who adds more third party applications.  I understand this is a business decision made at the onset of WM and actually applied to Windows as well.  MSFT makes the OS and someone else makes the hardware and the device drivers. Should MSFT make a phone on their hardware using their OS in a manner that the Zune is a single source platform?  That's an intriguing thought and one worth exploring. Will it happen?

  • Anonymous
    May 08, 2014
    The comment has been removed