Following is a list of common complaints that I hear from Windows Mobile Phone owners over the years.
The phone is unstable.
This is pretty much the number one complaint, that the phone is unstable, constantly crashes, requires restarting, things don't work etc. etc. The first thing I ask people who voice out this complaint is Did you install everything on the phone yourself? Cause most people just take advantage of the special offer by the shopkeepers of free software support and tell them to just throw anything the shopkeepers find that is useful into the phone. This results in some weird system utilities that either alter how the phone is supposed to work, wasn't meant for the OS version of the phone (ie system utilities meant for older versions of Windows Mobile / Pocket PC than the one that the device has), and maybe a failed installed that results in functionality being farked up (ie. botched installation of Chinese Star would results in a blank read SMS view). The other question I'd ask is Did you perform any tweaks you found on the internet? While xda-developers is a treasure trove of information about WM devices including numerous registry tweaks and hacks, sometimes these tweaks come with a price, they might cause the device to consume more RAM, there might be a note further down the thread that mentions some stability issues that's caused by the tweak. Unfortunately sometimes people just don't read the notes, they just blindly apply tweak, after tweak after tweak. Not going into detail about what said tweak does, and what side effects there might be. If you're going to tweak your device, make sure you know what you're doing!
The phone's leaking memory
Another common complaint is that the phone's memory applet shows a memory usage of 70%~80% even though nothing seems to be running. And the user feels compelled drive that value down to as low as possible, and if it doesn't fall as low as they like then the phone is defective. High memory usage can sometimes be attributed to the reasons outlined in the above item, but also could just mean that there are programs running on the device that aren't showing up on the task manager or yes, memory leaks caused by bad programs.
My advice to those users are.. Stop worrying about the darn number! So what if task manager says that 85% of your memory is in use? Just keep using the phone as usual until some program actually starts complaining that it doesn't have enough memory, then you can try to do something about it. You can try to restart the program that was complaining cause it could be that when it was requesting memory from the OS it couldn't kill any high usage apps in time (I'm looking at you Opera 9!) If you want a more proactive way of freeing memory you can try out the Clean RAM app which does a pretty good job of flushing the memory. What I'm saying is don't keep an eye on the memory counter, just keep using the device until something actually complains then only do something about it.
The phone is not user friendly
I have to agree with this, the Windows Mobile UI has not seen a redesign in the user interface for a looooooong time. While the iPhone had the benefit of being designed in an age where every person on the street is capable of owning one. The WM UI was designed at a time where it was expected that only the tech savy would want to own such a device. So the WM UI could really use an overhaul, while the device producers like HTC are doing what they can to give the UI a more friendly look, it all comes down to MS to change the UI to meet the current age. And we'll see a little of that in WM6.5 and then in WM7.. we should be seeing something completely different!
The battery life sucks
Be thankful that you can actually get additional batteries and swap out dead ones, unlike the iPhone. But seriously though, you have a highly capable phone you'll be using it more often, doing more stuff than you would normally do on just a standard phone. Power consumption is dependant on a lot of factors, brightness of backlight, the CPU load of the programs you use, your network signal level (if you know you're going to be in a place where your network signal is completey lost.... say working inside a tunnel or underground, turn OFF your network radio cause in that situation your phone will be constantly polling to look for a network to attach to and it'll waste a lot of power in doing so), etc. etc. Some of these you can control, some of these you can't. My basic advice to get more mileage out of your phone's battery, not just on Windows Mobile phones but ANY 3G phone in general is SWITCH TO GSM ONLY IF YOU'RE NOT WAITING FOR A VIDEO CALL. A few reasons for this :-
- It takes more power during a 3G phone call, that's why you see in phone specs they mention 2 times for battery life, one for GSM, one for 3G
- If your phone is in 3G mode, and you're in a NON 3G area, your phone will spend extra effort and battery power to try to find and attach to a 3G signal.
- If you're on a call and you're moving around, the cell switching from 3G to GSM might disrupt your call anyway.
Personally my phone is on GSM only all the time, and I only switch over to 3G when I use my phone as a modem, or when I need to watch a video online or something.