Are Windows Mobile Phones Underpowered?
Posted by Chris Leckness on 03/27/08 in Mobilitysite Polls, Pocket PC Phones, PocketPC, Smart Phones
Its been nearly 2 years since the Dell Axim X51 and the HP iPAQ 4700, but those two Pocket PCs are still regarded by many as the best Pocket PC out there. Well, there aren’t really that many standalone Pocket PCs being made anymore. Think about it though, has there been any advances in processors in the last two years? Not really. You can go buy the hottest Pocket PC Phone on the market and still get the same specs as the Dell Axim X51 from 2 years ago. Look at the AT&T Tilt… It has a 400mhz processor. Sure, we need to worry about battery life and using a slower clock speed helps there, but really, it’s been 2 years… where is the low powered, more beefed up chip of the future?
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Written by Chris Leckness · Filed Under Mobilitysite Polls, Pocket PC Phones, PocketPC, Smart Phones
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My complaint isn’t just about devices being underpowered processor wise, which is less of an issue to me than:
*The RAM on my Mogul is the same as my X30 that I bought over 4 years ago. But the OS uses up more of it.
*The flash memory that is built into most WM devices is laughable. Considering the price of flash, no WM device should come with less than 2gb built in, and 8gb devices should be common. Not with memory cards, which is the only external input the devices have.
(I’d like to be able to have a dedicated navigation card in while still having all my work related documents, video and audio files on the device at the same time).
However…
I think a dedicated PDA without the “internet anywhere” you get with converged devices was next to useless for me, more of a toy than a personal communication device, and having GPS increases that capability even more, without having to carry around additional devices and chargers. I needed a device that was my computer when I was away from a computer, not one that had all its functionality tethered to another computer somewhere.
I’m not unhappy, but I think the potential of our phone/PDAs is not anywhere near being met because of the lack of common storage and memory. You would have expected PDAs to increase in power at the same rate as desktop and laptop PCs instead of standing still in a time warp.
I don’t think the processors are necessarily underpowered so much as the OEMs are not taking full advantage of the hardware contained within the chips that they buy. The Tilt is an excellent example since it could really use the video acceleration hardware that exists within the chipset to augment the processor. WinMo is supposed to be a multitasking OS, but just try and run GPS software and answer a call smoothly…I realize that most GPS software is extremely resource hungry, but it still seems like I should be able to answer my phone without a lockup.
I think that we’re still focusing too much on Megahertz with these processors though, I’d like to see a quad-core 200Mhz phone processor :).
More power is always good. Lets you do more things well!
Along with X50(1)v and 4700 you keep forgetting LOOX 720.
Maybe the best of the three for many (what is certain is that 4700 comes third).
In any case I TOTTALY agree.
WM devices are sluggy. They were sluggy back then and they are sluggy now that WM is heavier than back then.
They should FINALLY start using mobile 3D accelerators, today’s mobile CPUs (because they mostly still use yesterday’s), more RAM (”64MB is enough for WM5″ BUHAHAHAHAHAHA!), MUCH smoother front-end interface (look at iPhone).
Yes, I agree that windows mobile devices are underpowered and have been like that since the ipaq 4700 devices in my opinion. I actually still have my ipaq 4700 because I cannot find a WM device which has at least a 4 inch screen with qwerty keyboard. True you have those 5inch and 7inch products from HTC but those are simply too big to fit into a pants pocket. The Nokia N810 does look like something which could replace my 4700 but unfortunately no WMobile on that.
I find it unfortunate though that the current devices are still using the same slow processor because from about 5 years ago, the handhelds were already slow.
seriously where is the MULTIcore goodness! why havent software manufactures realized that increasing the number of cores is going to be the staple of processor development for the next 6 years and developed an emulation layer that fakes a single core to the os! not only would this benifit the pc market, but every chip functioning device on the market. … just imagine how cool, low watt and otherwise phenominal a mobile multicore could be!
A lot of people believe that the iphone is either faster or more powerful. The truth is that the iphone has much more RAM 512 MB’s which allows apple to preload applications into memory obviating the need to load them on demand. Which gives the end user the impression that the program loaded instantly when in fact it was already running in the background.
speedy this is not true.
Check your data.
How big was you Dell Axim? There is a lot to be said for a shrinking form factor.
Most of the time speed issues do not occur on launching programs, at least for me.
1- The GUI is slow. That old Palm OS GUI is ten times faster than WM GUI.
2- Sometimes programs stop responding. It is not easy to guess the cause of the problem, it just seems to be random. You just paste that paragraph into Word Mobile and that little “wait icon” never goes away.
3- IE Mobile is very slow. Access NetFront is better at loading pages, but it makes whole device very sluggish.
I don’t believe that Microsoft or its hardware partners will ever produce a great product. I switched from Palm to WM because WM was more powerful. It was capable of doing more. Today, like a lot of people, I am seriously considering to switch to iPhone.
I recently “upgraded” from my hx4700 to an hp 210. The processor is, indeed, only the slightest of improvements. WiFi g makes a difference. So does SDHC support. (I now have 48GB of storage on my handheld: 32GB CF + 16GB SCHC. W?BIC! :))
I’m pretty much in agreement with frankenbike. I’d like to see more processing power, but, if the desktops are any indication, more power means more power draw and more heat dissapation. I can stand a fan and monster heat-sink on my desktop, but not on my handheld. Besides, for most of what I do with it, the processor isn’t the issue. Browsing could be a lot better, but it’s the software, not the hardware. Even if the software were better, we’d still need more RAM for decent caching.
Still WM is underpowered. The OS lacks printing capabilities (because Microsoft doesn’t want it competing with desktop Windows). Most applications haven’t significantly improved in the last four years.
But the iPhone has no pull as far as I’m concerned. It’s too proprietary and even more limited in some key functionalities.
I’ve flirted several times with Linux because it seems to do better in a smaller memory models. I dropped that because of software I wanted to run. (For example, there’s nothing like Pocket Informant, even on full-OS handtops.) I have some hope for Mobile Ubuntu. If they can do what they did with their desktop OS and could replace WM on existing units, I’m there.
Ummm. I can print via bluetooth.
in a word…, “shaaaaaaa!”
Chris G. and I have been debating this for MONTHS over at GearDiary. Most of the mobile devices out there are way under speced. They don’t have enough punch or RAM to get the job done well. the ETEN X800 is a great example. Its got a 500mHz processor, but so much unoptimized bloatware that all nearly all 64MB of RAM are exhausted after a soft reset. No RAM, no punch for your more powerful processor…