I think I’ve laid out my qualifications and experience with Windows Mobile extensively on my blog. I could use some better reader statistics, so if you don’t believe me, go back through my archives.
I’ve been meaning to post for a while about my new phone. My wife has had trouble with AT&T since we jumped from the old AT&T Wireless to Cingular in 2005 to be bought back to AT&T a few months later. She’s been through 5 phones and still kept having problems. Since we reached a point of both being eligible for an upgrade, and I was near the breaking point with my iPaq 6945 and the total instability of Windows Mobile 5 and HP’s and HTC’s implementation of WM5, I gave my wife an idea. I told her that her problems *could* have been caused by always going with the cheapest phone possible. My Pocket PC phone had enough problems, but those weren’t AT&T network; they had to do with being a Windows Mobile product that was implemented by HTC for HP branding. I find the faults to lie with all three companies. In any case, I told her we could spend the money to get halfway decent phones, and if her problems persist, we can return the phones, sit out our contract, and jump to Verizon or T-mobile. I never really saw the point to Sprint.
While I did drool over the iPhone 3G, my wife picked out the Samsung BlackJack II, which impressed me also so we went with it. I found out a Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade was available for both phones, so I upgraded them the first day. All along, I was impressed with the BlackJack II. After all of the Windows Mobile devices I’ve had over the years, this was the most stable, powerful, and easy to use I’ve ever had. Sure, it had an issue or two, like for some reason I can’t sync it with my work laptop, but I was able to overlook that.
Then yesterday hit. Suddenly, I couldn’t send email through my gmail account. I couldn’t tell at the time if the problem resided with Windows Mobile, AT&T, Google, or some combination of the three and their associated applications and services. Since the cat woke me up early this morning, I decided to search on Google before I left for work, and found out that Windows Mobile 6 (including 6.1) has a KNOWN bug dealing with SMTP. For those not educated, smtp stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Exactly, it’s very simple and should be the staple service of any device calling itself a “smart-phone.” Not being able to send email through an smtp service is not very smart.
I tried a few hacks that I found around, but none worked. I deleted and recreated my account several times. I was able to send two or three emails at the most before my email sends started to error out. I installed Windows Live Mobile in and effort to use my MSN email account for sending, but that developed a problem.
At this point, I’m giving serious consideration to taking the BlackJack II back to AT&T and getting an iPhone. Sure, the iPhone doesn't natively handle Outlook tasks, which is going to suck because I use them heavily. I'll have to buy yet another licence for Pocket Informant (had to buy a cross-grade license when I switched from WM Pro to Standard). On the other hand, even though an iPhone won't do as much, at least I won't have to spend endless hours hacking on it to get it to perform a basic function like sending email.
I’ve been meaning to post for a while about my new phone. My wife has had trouble with AT&T since we jumped from the old AT&T Wireless to Cingular in 2005 to be bought back to AT&T a few months later. She’s been through 5 phones and still kept having problems. Since we reached a point of both being eligible for an upgrade, and I was near the breaking point with my iPaq 6945 and the total instability of Windows Mobile 5 and HP’s and HTC’s implementation of WM5, I gave my wife an idea. I told her that her problems *could* have been caused by always going with the cheapest phone possible. My Pocket PC phone had enough problems, but those weren’t AT&T network; they had to do with being a Windows Mobile product that was implemented by HTC for HP branding. I find the faults to lie with all three companies. In any case, I told her we could spend the money to get halfway decent phones, and if her problems persist, we can return the phones, sit out our contract, and jump to Verizon or T-mobile. I never really saw the point to Sprint.
While I did drool over the iPhone 3G, my wife picked out the Samsung BlackJack II, which impressed me also so we went with it. I found out a Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade was available for both phones, so I upgraded them the first day. All along, I was impressed with the BlackJack II. After all of the Windows Mobile devices I’ve had over the years, this was the most stable, powerful, and easy to use I’ve ever had. Sure, it had an issue or two, like for some reason I can’t sync it with my work laptop, but I was able to overlook that.
Then yesterday hit. Suddenly, I couldn’t send email through my gmail account. I couldn’t tell at the time if the problem resided with Windows Mobile, AT&T, Google, or some combination of the three and their associated applications and services. Since the cat woke me up early this morning, I decided to search on Google before I left for work, and found out that Windows Mobile 6 (including 6.1) has a KNOWN bug dealing with SMTP. For those not educated, smtp stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Exactly, it’s very simple and should be the staple service of any device calling itself a “smart-phone.” Not being able to send email through an smtp service is not very smart.
I tried a few hacks that I found around, but none worked. I deleted and recreated my account several times. I was able to send two or three emails at the most before my email sends started to error out. I installed Windows Live Mobile in and effort to use my MSN email account for sending, but that developed a problem.
At this point, I’m giving serious consideration to taking the BlackJack II back to AT&T and getting an iPhone. Sure, the iPhone doesn't natively handle Outlook tasks, which is going to suck because I use them heavily. I'll have to buy yet another licence for Pocket Informant (had to buy a cross-grade license when I switched from WM Pro to Standard). On the other hand, even though an iPhone won't do as much, at least I won't have to spend endless hours hacking on it to get it to perform a basic function like sending email.
No comments:
Post a Comment