Apple Pie outside my Windows #2: A little bit of iPhone vs Windows Mobile!

Posted by: Ragart on Mar 31 2008

So in episode one of my little set of logs I talked about the reasons for leaving Windows Mobile. I chose Apple’s iPod Touch as the device to jump to, but after three weeks with the device I decided to return it. It was great, but after having had a TyTN for eight months I was spoiled on the idea of having a converged device. A media player and a phone. Luckily, Apple sells one of those, too. So now I own an 8GB iPhone and am quite pleased with it so far.

The change hasn’t been perfect though. I had reasons for leaving WM, but there were also a lot of things I loved (and still love) about the platform…or, rather, what was available on it. The SDK may change some of these things, but I thought it might be interesting to document some of the less-blogged-about (at least, I think so) aspects of the iPhone vs WM. It could be helpful if you’re considering taking a bite from the big metal fruit.

I am handing out free marshmallows after the jump (not true). So c’mon!

Instead of slamming you, dear reader, with a giant list of "oh god, I miss it" features, I’ve tried to divide some of this into some basic sections. Then I slam you with the list of missed features (it had to happen).

Phone 

Right to it then. One great thing about the iPhone so far is that it’s a fantastic phone. It’s a really, really fantastic phone for me. The only strange thing I find is that the "text message" button is all the way at the bottom of a contact. Why would I want to scroll past the address and notes of a contact just to send a text message? Beats me. Otherwise, I find I’m enjoying the experience of the phone a lot more with this device simply because it looks fantastic (huge caller ID!). But as great as this is, I still miss having:

• Easy ringtones — Apple wants me to pay $0.99 to buy a song and then pay another $0.99 just to convert it to a 30-second ringtone. Oh my God. They’re kidding me, right? I’m paying for a song twice over just so I can have a 30-second cut out of it when I get a call. Oh, please! I just cut an .mp3 file up in Audacity and then stuffed it on my TyTN in My Documents — presto! Instant ringtone!
• Auto profile switch — this wasn’t really a WM feature so much as an SBSH PhoneWeaver feature. I really loved this! I never, ever had to worry about my phone going off in class and embarrassing me during a lecture. It went into vibrate mode from 9-12 and then turned back to default after that. The iPhone has a silent mode  switch on the left side, but automatic silent mode is much, much cooler. It’s not too late to catch on, Apple!
• A Removable Battery — ok, even less of a ‘feature’ of the OS than the hardware. Fine. I also don’t miss it that much (this is getting more and more pointless — must finish quick!), but it would be great to know that I wouldn’t have to send this thing off to Apple should I have any problems with the battery. I’d love to just be able to replace the darn thing myself and move on.

 

PIM

I  have to say I’m quite impressed with the iPhone’s calendar program. It’s big, simple, and surprisingly functional. I do, however, miss my great WM vibrating alarms. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone does vibrate when you set a calendar event alarm, but it only does so once (for about a quarter of a second). That’s really not enough time! I’d like two vibrations spaced out nicely, and I want it as an option! Gooooood vibrations!

The notes program is also loads more useful than the Windows Mobile counterpart. I remember trying to take notes in first year university with the Notes on my x51v. What a big, big mistake. I drew diagrams from economics and every time I zoomed in or out the lines would all jumble together and I’d ended up blowing my own diagrams up. Gah. The notes files are also proprietary and can only be viewed in Outlook. The iPhone’s Notes program can e-mail your note as text in an e-mail. Awesome!

But, really, I’d gladly trade notes for some tasks. This is a very big omission here, especially if the iPhone is going to attack the Corporate zone like their SDK presentation said it would. Corporate people do things, lots of things, and wouldn’t it be great to support a to-do list for this purpose? I’m hoping it will come in some future release or from an SDK program, but I’ll live with having none for now. I realize there are online apps available for tasks, but I don’t have an edge plan, so that’s rather limited. I never thought I’d yearn for the deafult, craptastic Tasks app from WM though.

 

E-Mail/Internet

This is a pretty broad category, so take cover, here come the bullet points:

• No search or filter in Mail! — seriously? Safari has a fantastic search bar function up at the top of the page. Why can’t we just have something like that where we tap on a bar and search for basic criteria (subject/sender)? Scrolling down a list of 100 e-mails is a little inconvenient. The WM solution here is much more elegant. You simply type a name (could you do this for subjects too? I forget and have already wiped my accounts on TyTN) and the device immediately displays all messages from that person. Very handy!
• Saving Attachments — I’m grateful the iPhone can read attachments, play songs e-mailed to me, and display .pdfs, but I’d really love to be able to save these things somewhere for future reference. My work-around for this right now is to tag certain e-mails and put them in a "Saved" folder on my Gmail account. This way they’re easily accessible and won’t get flushed away as my inbox floods (iPhone’s Mail app shows a max of 200 messages in any folder). There might be some hope with SafariDL, but I still have to play with it more.
• Sending Attachments — You can’t. Tee hee. I mean, you can do it from the Photos application or the Notes application, but that’s about it. I just miss being able to load my important .docs onto my device and then being able to send them off to others if necessary.
• Weather detail — now I’m just being nitpicky, tee hee. The weather widget is gorgeous, but I’ve been spoiled by years of WeatherPanel and PocketWeather designs telling me the chance of precipitation. I know there are icons to show that, but I just like knowing these kinds of things. So for big weather info fans, you’re probably going to be using a Web App to get your forecasts, because the Yahoo! widget really won’t cut it for you folks.

Scroll Bars!

If you’re a WM user you’ve probably seen the surge of touch scrolling software for the platform since the release of the iPhone. I used Pocket Plus 4 on my TyTN to accomplish this and I really, really loved it. The momentum felt great and it made big lists fantastic to scroll through. I almost never used the scrollbars after getting touch scrolling, but what do ya know?! I kinda miss them!

Those big, juicy scrollbars (bad screenshot here, I made my scrollbars thinner) were so ugly and always in the way — but hey, they really made it easy to get to the bottom of things. Or to the top of things. Or the middle. You know what I mean. Touch scrolling is great, but scrolling a long list with absolutely no other UI gestures to help you out — not so great :(.

 

 

 

Anyhow, I know some of the other JAMM folks made jumps to the iPlatform. What do you guys miss from WM? What do you readers miss?

 

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