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Mobile Software Choice Is Clear

Sprint's Hero, top, lives up to its name with Google's open-source Android software. And then there's Windows Mobile, found on AT& T's Pure, at bottom.
Sprint's Hero, top, lives up to its name with Google's open-source Android software. And then there's Windows Mobile, found on AT& T's Pure, at bottom. (The Washington Post)
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Likewise, its Internet Explorer browser no longer gags on desktop sites but stalls out when loading or redrawing a page and can't open more than one page at a time.

Windows Mobile 6.5's new on-screen keyboard seems designed for a shrunken species of human, to judge from its tiny buttons. And its menus often reveals cramped dialogs unchanged from older versions of Windows Mobile that required using a stylus.

As before, synchronizing Windows Mobile 6.5's contacts list, calendar, to-do list and notes requires that you own Windows XP or Vista and Microsoft's Outlook. Otherwise, you can sync the phone's e-mail and contacts, but not calendar or notes, to the free Windows Live service.

A separate, new My Phone backup service provides Web access to the phone's data, plus a basic "find your lost phone" tool.

Another new Microsoft service, Windows Marketplace, finally allows one-tap loading of extra software. But it carries only 246 applications out of some 20,000 available through the old, woefully complicated installation routine.

AT&T's Pure ($199.99 before a $50 mail-in rebate for new or renewing customers, with service starting at $69.99 a month) features an FM radio, a 5-megapixel video/still camera that took sharper photos than the Hero, better battery life than its HTC sibling, and a flashy TouchFlo home screen that displaces a smarter Microsoft interface apparently modeled after its Zune media players. But this carrier repeats the worst habits of PC vendors by cluttering the phone with irrelevant extra software (though the Opera Mobile browser works better than IE). And even though this phone requires headphones with a proprietary HTC connector, AT&T doesn't include a pair.

With all these issues, it can be difficult to see many people wanting a Windows Mobile phone now. It's even harder to imagine how long phone manufacturers will keep paying Microsoft for this software when Android is not only better but also free.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at robp@washpost.com. Read more at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward.


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