From Palm to Windows Phone to Android

I have been a hardcore Windows Phone user (formerly Windows Mobile, and CE) for several years, mainly because it was very easy to  synchronize directly with Outlook and Microsoft Exchange. The GUI has been pretty nice since the first releases and resembled Windows in a way.

Windows Phone let me transition from a Windows CE PDA (Toshiba E335) which was a great jump from the Palm m125; years 2006, 2003 and 2001 respectively. By the end of 2005 I wanted a true PDA/Phone that wasn’t as bulky as the HP iPaq. T-Mobile launched the SDA (HTC Torando) which to me was a godsend. It had Wi-Fi (WPA-PSK support) and bluetooth,  running Windows Mobile 5.0. It could play MP3s, Video and synchronize with Outlook/Exchange. The form factor was similar to a dumbphone. It was one of the best phones I have ever owned and prompted me to create a web page with streaming broadcasters posted here.

In early 2007 I bought a T-Mobile Dash (HTC Excalibur) and was able to live with it for 2 years running several cooked Roms (thanks to XDA forums). I had the opportunity to run Windows Mobile versions 5.0, 6.0, 6.1 and 6.5. The latest was the most stable one and the fastest considering the outdated hardware. Many people thought it was a Blackberry.

In 2009 I bought the HTC Touch Pro 2 (HTC Rhodium) Runing Windows Mobile 6.0. I wanted to keep it stock as much as I could for warranty purposes but  had problems with the clock and was never able to sync up properly. I decided to go ahead and install a cooked ROM. Since then It as been running different releases of the Energy Rom. I was happy about the capabilities of the phone but had too many OS reliability issues. A reboot every day was not out of the norm, and in some cases several of them on the same day.

Last week I decided to pursue the Android route; T-Mobile just delivered me a brand new HTC G2. The phone is by far the fastest and the most intuitive phone I have ever owned. It is running Android 2.2 and integrates seamlessly with Exchange, Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. There are tons of applications for Android and includes Text-to-Speech directions integrated within Google Maps. Android is light years ahead of Windows Phone 6.5.

I still will try a Windows Phone 7 device and have very high expectations about it.

Next post will be about the Android SDK and how to root the phone to push an application.