WM6 upgrade sucks - don't bother

[Guest Dark Horse]

For anyone duped into thinking WM6 offers a significant upgrade benefit for the i600, don't bother. I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about and wished I hadn't now, WM6 is a pile of crap! Among the long list of stupid changes and "enhancements" are the following:

1. SMS and MMS has been merged into a single folder for some dumb reason. I want to keep my bread separate from my cheese, not have everything munged together into a single mouldy cheese sandwich. And why is the default compose new message menu item now MMS? I mean really, who the hell sends MMS these days?

2. The softkey has changed for creating a new text message. Before, the left software used to be "New" for a new SMS so it was just one click. The left softkey is now the far less useful "Delete" which means to create a new SMS, you have to click Menu - New and then scroll down for SMS because the default is MMS (see point 1 above).

3. I counted precisely zero improvements to performance despite Micro$oft claiming "thousands" of under-the-hood enhancements to increase both speed and stability. The phone takes the same time to boot, the same time to shut, menu's are no quicker and clicking any icon on the start grid still takes a few seconds to action. This is no speed demon by any means.

4. There is a bug whereby if you lock the keypad, the battery indicator disappears. Unlocking the keypad, shows the battery indicator as normal. Seems to be sporadic and the battery indicator only disappears after several hours of having your keypad locked.

5. Lots of programs crashing which worked absolutely fine in WM5. CorePlayer for example *always* crashes if you open a video file and then either try to change the file or close CorePlayer, reopen and change it that way. Only a reboot seems to clear it and allow you to change video files.

6. Opera Mobile doesn't work with WM6. Installs fine but starting it results in an error message that says "Opera failed to reserve heap, closing." Don't know whether to smack Opera or Microsoft over this!

7. Windows Live is a mess. Once you start Messenger for the first time, it dumps all your messenger contacts, complete with silly names, into your contacts list which is now this single list for SIM, Outlook (address) and Messenger contacts. This business of a single repository for everything sucks, I want my lists to be completely separate. If I want to see Live Messenger contacts, I'll go to my Live Messenger app not fire up my address book FFS.

8. Email integration is much tighter which is great and it even shows you the indicator on the home screen but the speed of email is dreadful. If you have any email accounts with more than several messages, synching over wifi is deadly slow. You'd be better off firing up a browser (if it worked) and browsing through a web page which defeats the whole point of integrated email.

9. IE was cack in WM5 and I'm unsurprised to report that not only is it still cack in WM6, it's actually gotten worse which you would have thought impossible. Over wifi, the browser loads just the first page you enter and then refuses to load anything else after that, preferring instead to return some cryptic error message consisting of what looks like memory addresses.

For the purpose of balance, here's what I thought was good with the new upgrade.

1. The calendar is much better. You can finally change the default view, something that should have been available back with WM 2003.

2. Integrated Email is great (even though it's slow) and setup is a cinch. You simply enter your email address and password and WM6 goes away and setups up all your accounts. There is even a new email counter on the home screen to show unread emails.

3. Might just be me but I reckon battery life is improved.

4. The new Call History is very nice, it shows you a full list of all the dates and times that a call was sent/received. In WM5, it only ever showed you the last date and time a call was sent/received.

5. Umm, the token changes to icons are nicer than the old version. I like the new Windows Basic home theme which uses a new colour scheme, will see if I can use this on WM5.

In short, my advice is don't bother upgrading to WM6, I've downgraded mine back to WM5 that does everything just fine for me. In particular, that whole business with combined SMS and MMS and comprising a new message is just unacceptable.

Edited August 23, 2010 by Dark Horse

[Guest sosmb]

I really understand your frustation. The device is rather slow, but very practical! I prefer WM6 over WM5 on it though, for many reasons and I don't have that issues you refer... And one should not confuse changes in software with improvements or tastes with flaws! Best regards...

[Guest jlabramoff]

Hi. I read your posts with interest, and even though I have been considering trying to upgrade my i600 to WM6, what you wrote makes me think even more.

I have had trouble with the Pocket MSN application on the i600. It won't accept my valid login information for Hotmail/Messenger. Any tips? Also, and more importantly, a couple of months ago, it stopped logging in successfully to my (only) POP email account. The login information works fine from other POP email clients.

Finally, is it true that it can only synch with Outlook? I recently bought a laptop, which has Windows 7 and the Windows Live suite, and I would rather not have to buy Outlook (or any other Office product) just yet.

Any help would be appreciated.