T Mobile Wing
Friday, September 14th, 2007It has taken a bit of tweaking but I have my Wing phone working just fine now.
My company is using an Exchange Server which is great because all my e-mails, contacts, calendar dates and tasks are all stored on the remote server and synchronized with my desktop, laptap and phone. I add a contact on my desktop Outlook, it appears on my phone within minutes. I add an appointment on my phone and my laptop is automatically updated.
One thing I have really liked about these “smartphones” is that they are full of settings that allow the user to customize the device to meet their particular application. Sometimes the settings are not enough to meet the needs of the user however. In this situation the user can usually down load an additional piece of software or a patch for the current software that will allow them to use the device as they require.
However, I found that as I added more software to the Treo to get it to do what I wanted it to do, the more that software began to interfere with the operating system of the phone and the more problems that I had. The Treo 650 operated on the Palm Operating System and I think this O/S is going the way of the dodo. The proof of this is the fact that Palm is using the Windows Mobile O/S on a number of their new phones.
So why did I go with the T-Mobile Wing over the Treo 750? Because my contract is with T-Mobile so I got this thing for $300 versus $650 buying an unlocked Treo. Plus the keyboard and the screen was bigger on the Wing.
The only thing I have not liked about the Wing has been the processor speed. 200MHz out of the box has seemed kind of slow but a few modifications have solved that problem.
The first thing to go was the Windows Mobile Today Screen (above left) in favor of the new HTC Home screen (above right). HTC is the company that actually makes the Wing device for T Mobile and they have created this Home screen to integrate with the Windows Mobile O/S. While the standard Windows Today screen was full of information that was available at a glance, navigating around the screen required the use of the stylus less I accidently hit the wrong section of the screen with my big fingers. The HTC Home screen has big icons on the screen that will fire up the software, check weather or make the phone call you want. Much quicker and easier to navigate.
Next to go was the standard Windows Mobile dial pad (above left) in favor of the new HTC Touch dial pad (above right). Bigger number buttons on the HTC Touch means less mistakes that I make when dialing.
I also changed the standard Windows Mobile Comm Manager screen (above left) to the HTC Touch (above right). Again, bigger buttons. It seems like the whole user interface for Windows Mobile was designed to be used with the stylus. I don’t have time to pull that thing out, I want to just use my finger tips.
I made a few changes that affected the performance of the device. The first was to install a piece of software that lets me “over clock” the processor to run faster when I want it to. It’s basically a toggle to move back and forth between the standard 201MHz and an optional 250MHz. Driving the processor harder like this does run down the battery quicker so I only use the faster processor option when I want to temporarily speed up the device to meet a particular objective.
I also changed the registry so that files saved to the device when I use the built in web browser would be saved my 1GB memory card instead of the devices internal memory. This, along with frequently running the memory cleaning software MemMaid, keeps as much internal memory open as possible assuring the best performance.
XDA Developers is an invaluable site in researching ways to improve the performance of HTC devices such as the Wing.
I have added some additional software on this thing since I purchased it including a voice recorder, Google Maps for mobile devices, an instant messenger software for using GoogleTalk on the road, and Skype for mobile devices.
All in all I am very pleased with the performance of this device and all my previous misgivings about Windows Mobile have been laid to rest.
