Windows Mobile 6 on the Samsung SGH-i600
It has been a good while I have been using my SGH-i600. A full year. A year is a long time for a high - tech gadget in the hands of a gadget lover. And guess what... recently I have even tried to find a better phone... and I have found none... I the Samsung perfect? Not at all, but it has one of the best set of features that suit my needs. It is slim, fits nicely in my pocket. It has all the 3G goodies - HSDPA data and video calls. And it has a number one must - to - have feature - the Activesync, letting me stay fully synchronized with our company Exchange server - email (including "push"), contacts and calendar fully synchronized both ways. All that running Windows Mobile 5.Two weeks ago Asia went through the Mobile 5 -> Mobile 6 upgrade process with the SGH-i600. The entire process is precisely documented here (in Polish, if there is a need for a translation, let me know, I think I can handle that:). And finally having a little spare time yesterday, I dived in too. All in all it took me almost three hours to have it all done (including re-syncing with the company servers and putting back all the ringtones and other local settings). And I have really been amazed how virtually all the annoyances of the "5" version went away with the upgrade. Definitely seems like Windows Mobile has not yet got to the rotten level of its bigger Vista sister...
So what exactly is better? Here is my top list:
- The email application finally fully handles HTML messages. I should not be bringing this to the top, as it is really a shame it took Microsoft 6 major releases to put in what should have been there since the beginning... but anyway... HTML mail is here finally :)
- The system can finally import and install PFX certificates containing private keys. This is essential for reading encrypted messages. Before - it was possible to install personal certificates only with some third party software and for some reason I could not make the Personal Certificate Import Utility do the job. I succeeded with it only once, but on a different hardware (HTC TyTN). PFX import in Mobile 6 is native. Just click on the *.pfx file, enter a password and it is done, finally :)
- Bluetooth rocks. Finally :). Mobile 5 introduced A2DP profile (stereo Bluetooth) with one of its service releases. And it worked most of the time. But there was a noticeable lag when Media Player was operated via AVRCP (the protocol for controlling the media player remotely from a Bluetooth headset). In Mobile 6 the actions are immediate. Play / pause works instantly. The SGH-i600 running Mobile 5 also had one very annoying bug. When paired with more than one handsfree devices (like a headphone and car handsfree) it failed to connect automatically to the active one. I was using a headphone this fantastic retro one at work and then driving back home I had to manually enter the wireless manager application and in second level submenu had to select the car's handsfree as the active one. Too complicated to use on every occasion... Now it just works without a touch. Start the ignition and the car is coupled with the phone. Little things that make people happy. But wait - there is more :) With Mobile 5, when the phone's keyboard was locked (as it usually was when the phone was in my pocket) I could not use the otherwise fantastic IHF-1000 with all its voice recognition gadgetry. It was simply failing to dial the spoken numbers or contact names, requiring unlocking the keyboard which was not that easy provided the phone was usually sitting in my trouser's pocket. Now it works even with the keyboard locked (as it should...).
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