Windows Mobile 6 on your Dell Axim - UPDATE

[malvolio]

Who wants me to start a WM6(.1) rom for X50(mid) and X50(low) once I get done with the WM5 A03 rom?

That would be amazing and I would be grateful.

[Voodoo3]

Hp offered upgrades from mobile 2003se to mobile 5.0 back in 2005:


News release

HP to Offer Handheld Customers Upgrade Program to Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 10, 2005


HP today announced an upgrade program to Microsoft Windows® Mobile 5.0 for customers with select HP iPAQ handhelds as well as plans to support the new version of the software platform in its future mobile offerings.

HP iPAQ handhelds with Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 will provide customers with enhanced mobile communication, entertainment and productivity through simpler navigation and access to data, an improved Mobile Office suite, along with a more powerful, integrated multimedia experience.

"Since the introduction of the Windows Mobile platform more than five years ago, HP and Microsoft have worked together to offer customers innovative mobile tools to further improve their mobile experience," said Eric Kilponen, director of product marketing, handheld division, HP. "With Windows Mobile 5.0 for HP's award-winning iPAQ line, customers will benefit from 'persistent memory storage' that ensures that devices will retain all their business data, even when the battery is depleted. Further, customers can increase productivity through faster access to information and updates to familiar business applications, such as Outlook and Office."

HP will offer Windows Mobile 5.0 upgrades for the HP iPAQ hx2100, hx2400, hx2700 and hx4700 series of handhelds. These software upgrades are expected to be available this summer and can be purchased directly from HP.

Launched in November 2004, the versatile HP iPAQ hx2000 series offers device and data protection and provides optimal combinations of performance, connectivity(1) and expandability options vital to businesses. Strong security features delivered via HP ProtectTools software across the hx2000 series and integrated biometric fingerprint reader on the HP iPAQ hx2700 help keep both device and data protected from unauthorized access.

The powerful HP iPAQ hx4700 series is designed for mobile professionals to effectively carry on business in or out of the office.(1,2) A visually stunning 4-inch VGA color display allows customers to conveniently view business documents or slides without having to modify them to fit the screen.

The Intel® PXA270 624-megahertz processor(3) raises productivity by helping users work faster and smarter and an integrated touchpad with a mouse-like cursor enables easier navigation. The HP iPAQ hx4700 series has been recognized with superior reviews and industry accolades. These include: PC Magazine's Best of 2004, Government Computer News' Best Products of 2004 and CNET's Best Pocket PC Handheld for Business.

About HP

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended Jan. 31, 2005, HP revenue totaled $81.8 billion. More information about HP is available at HP United States - Computers, Laptops, Servers, Printers and more.

[Julie]

Hp offered a free upgrades from mobile 2003se to mobile 5.0 back in 2005

The free upgrade that HP offered only applied to new devices that were bought in the last quarter before WM5.0 was rolled out - new devices had a coupon for a free upgrade in the box (I got one). Everyone else had to purchase the update for $49. The update was only available for the hx4700 and the hx2000.

Since then, HP has not even provided OS updates to any existing lines of IPAQs. I guess they found the update to WM5.0, which was really a big mess in my opinion, to be too much trouble and too costly.

[bbz_Ghost]

Nice to see that the discussion for WM6 has been opened up. I doubt it'll attract as much attention as the threads at the XDA-Developer's forum as that's the "home" of the entire project as it is, but even so, discussion can be a good thing.

I just yesterday acquired a Dell Axim x50v quite literally brand new - the original owner purchased it, the extended battery w/cover, the car power cord, the Holux CF GPS unit w/external antenna and maps/software, kept everything as though he just got it delivered today and opened the box - for the steal price of $150 cash. I got lucky, I realize that, but as I haven't owned a PocketPC device in a few years (my last was my diehard iPAQ 2215 that I still miss), and so far I'm having a blast learning the ins and outs of this unit.

I didn't spend much time wasted getting off WM2003SE and getting to finding out how bad the WM5 update really was. I purchased it from someone I know and didn't really see much difference in reality. I'm still not quite what the big deal is between WM2003SE, WM5, and WM6 with a possible 6.1 ROMset coming at some point. It's nice to see new life being breathed back into these now relatively "old" devices. With things like PointUI also bringing some spark back, it's pretty cool to see something going on in the Axim community as well as other PDAs also based on the PocketPC standard.

So I did the WM2003SE A05 update, then WM5 update A01, then the A02 update and messed around for a bit, and the I set my sights on the WM6 A02 RTM build from Maglite. Was nice for the short time I ran it, but the image I saw of the A03 beta 1 release was too tempting, and gorgeous black too - green just ain't my color. :)

Aside from the filesys.exe issues that everyone and his little brother, cousin, three times removed, and that cousin's little sister has had and continues to have even with all the work that's been done by coders like shsmith, this thing works great. I haven't had any issues of note aside from the occasional slowdowns common to PocketPCs anyway - aside from the filesys.exe ones - and I may hexedit the necessary file(s) to get the 0MB pagepool set up and see if that makes any difference whatsoever.

So far I'm happy that I lucked out, now even happier that this x50v works so well. And True VGA mode (courtesy of MvRTrueVGA) is...

ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS in case you haven't really used VGA mode. I love it, love it, love it, and even though the majority of the interface is on the tiny side even with adjusted fonts, it's still infinitely superior to the QVGA limitations. Browsing, reading, etc, it all benefits from that huge amount of increased space and resolution and I don't plan on going back to QVGA mode unless I have to. The Wife, of course, prefers the "big look" so we can always do the switch and soft-reset necessary to change the modes.

Did I say I'm happy with this x50v? I think I did...

So congrats to Aximsite for making the leap and allowing some discussion to occur. I believe it's a step in the right direction. Discussion isn't illegal, it never should be, that's flat out censorship which (uh oh, personal opinion coming, step aside) is always wrong, period.

But I do understand how some "people" just can't stand the idea that someone else has something they want to say, regardless. To paraphrase a popular saying from the movie, "Gladiator":

"To those about to discuss... I salute you..."

:approve:

[lennysh]

Sounds great. I bought my X51v lil less than a month after it was released, and have had absolutely no problems with it at all!! Best buy I ever did!! Especially now with WM6.1! I hope your device lasts for a good long time! You take care of it, and it will fo sho take care of you... :approve:

[wino_man]

Don't even think of bringing action against Dell...

I tried to do the class action thing against Dell. Not for the money but for the job they did testing WM5 on 50v before releasing. I worked for years in software QA and this really pissed me off! Well, remember Dell is a Texas company. Texas seems to be in the favor of corporations over the end users. My class action was only valid for the state in which I reside. And Dell would supply the number of registered users that would be a part of the class action. It would be up to the users if they wanted to be included. So in the end, my lawyers and I decided (from Dell's report of the number of users) it was not worth it to continue. Dell gave me enough to buy a new 51v (they were still available on Dell's site...gone the next day!). So now my 50v is "retired" and my 51v w/6.1 is wonderful!

[crash613]

.. beta 1 release was too tempting, and gorgeous black too - green just ain't my color. :)


:approve:

if you decide that wm6 isn't for you I made a theme for pc2003se using that black background... i loved it too, but the slowdowns in certain programs were too much for me to take.

[bbz_Ghost]

Well, to be honest, the A02 RTM I was using did get a bit bogged down - the dreaded filesys.exe issue, nothing really to be done I guess. I dropped back to 2003SE a few days ago, did a ton of more reading and research, then happened upon a 0 pagepool mod of A02 RTM by Zeus_Alex. Installed that, and haven't looked back since, and it's been about 3 days now. This x50v is fast now, very responsive, does what I want/need, without issues. The filesys.exe is there - it will always be there - but the performance hit is very tiny now when it happens, and it's much shorter in duration than on any other ROM I've attempted to use in the few days that I've owned this x50v.

So that's my ROM of choice now...

And the A02 has the black theme, also.

[leex50]

I also have WM6 (maglite) version on my x50v with the 0 pagepool mod. This setup for about three months. the ONLY issue I have has is that the battery will go completely dead sitting over the weekend(turned off). But not every time, I completely charge the battery(reset the clock) and all works well for ?? time until it does it again. Any Clues?

[Harry Muscle]

Who wants me to start a WM6(.1) rom for X50(mid) and X50(low) once I get done with the WM5 A03 rom?

Any chance of making a rom for a X51 (low)? I would absolutely love to see that.

Thanks,
Harry

[crash613]

Well, to be honest, the A02 RTM I was using did get a bit bogged down - the dreaded filesys.exe issue, nothing really to be done I guess. I dropped back to 2003SE a few days ago, did a ton of more reading and research, then happened upon a 0 pagepool mod of A02 RTM by Zeus_Alex. Installed that, and haven't looked back since, and it's been about 3 days now. This x50v is fast now, very responsive, does what I want/need, without issues. The filesys.exe is there - it will always be there - but the performance hit is very tiny now when it happens, and it's much shorter in duration than on any other ROM I've attempted to use in the few days that I've owned this x50v.

So that's my ROM of choice now...

And the A02 has the black theme, also.

How about the battery drain? is it bad as Leex50 reports in the Maglite version? Haven't tried that one, but would check it out if that is not an issue.

BTW i had the beta 3 installed on my X50v and it sat for an entire week (8 days) while i was on vacation and came back to a 80% battery.

[schleeb]

Ditto... I haven't been here in ages. Basically since upgrading to WM6. This whole ban thing was senseless. People go where they can get what they want or need. I'm still not sure I'll permanently return due to the trememdous support on other sites regarding WM6. Really unfortunate that this policy stayed in place as long as it did. Nice to be back but its the content that counts... I may stay, I might not.

[bbz_Ghost]

How about the battery drain? is it bad as Leex50 reports in the Maglite version? Haven't tried that one, but would check it out if that is not an issue.

BTW i had the beta 3 installed on my X50v and it sat for an entire week (8 days) while i was on vacation and came back to a 80% battery.

Just for the record, this is the MagLite A02 RTM WM6 ROM I'm using, it's just had one additional mod to it: the pagepool has been set to a default of 0, and the mod was done by Zeus_Alex.

I haven't had a single issue of any kind with the A02 RTM 0 pagepool modded ROM I'm using, and it's been a couple of days now. I put a DivX movie rip I'd made on a 1GB SD card earlier today, a full 698MB file - movie is 2 hours and 5 mins long - and on the extended 2200 mAh battery (fully charged of course), I played the entire movie, half brightness, about 75% volume with TCPMP .72 off just the battery. CPU usage was set on Auto but never went over 48% according to TodayWarrior (great Today screen plugin).

After the movie ended, battery life was down to 65%, playback happened without any issues, dropouts, glitches, etc. One of the coolest things about these Axims with the Intel 2700 video chip in 'em and using TCPMP for video playback is the fact that I don't have to waste hours re-encoding my DVDs to some goofball MPEG4 or h.264/x264 ridiculous format. Honestly, I had ripped that movie to play back at 640x480 landscape, and so it did - without a single frame lost.

These things truly are amazing compared to most other devices out there. I have like 75 DVDs full of FLAC files that I keep around for encoding to other formats, and when I drop them down to Ogg Vorbis at about 192 Kbps encoding rate, good lord this x50v sounds absolutely fantastic.

But, I contacted Dell earlier today since this x50v I just got has about 23 days left on the 3 year warranty. I explained that I was dissatisfied with the performance of the WM5 upgrade I had (the original owner of this Axim never bothered to upgrade to WM5 but included the CD in my purchase last week). And I wasn't lying: as soon as I got it home I went through the WM5 update and was dismayed at the slow performance compared to 2003SE, and since I am now the legal owner of this Axim, and I've transferred the warranty to my name, as the "new" owner I was within my rights to register a complaint about the lackluster performance and the shoddy marketing behind the entire "WM5 capable" fiasco.

So anyway, after just 3 emails - I'm not going to sit on a phone to speak to someone, and I'm not going to sit at my PC waiting for a CSR either - the rep assigned to me said the following:

With your permission,we would go ahead and replace the Axim for you."

Now the interesting thing is what that means, as he hasn't responded to my reply yet. I made a point of stating I wasn't interested in a replacement since this x50v works perfectly with 2003SE, but that I was disappointed (said that many times) in the WM5 performance, that I had recently purchased some WM5-or-higher software and some peripherals (true) and that I simply was not interested in a replacement x50v because I'd be in exactly the same situation after I received the "new" one.

So hopefully they'll escalate this and just offer the x51v as the replacement, if they even have some left. I'm sure they do, but it remains to be seen what's going to happen.

Will be interesting, regardless. Either way I'm happy with the purchase I made even if I get "stuck" with this x50v. With the 0 pagepool ROM on it, it's freakin' fast, it works great, and I have no complaints.

Getting Dell to swap it for a proper and fully functional x51v would just be icing on the proverbial cake...

[DJUnreal]

The X51v will be a nice replacement if you can blag it, but they probably won't, on the grounds that it still runs WM5 according to them ;)

If you manage it though, wanna send me your X50v? They won't get you to send it straight back, they'll then call you in 3 months and say "did you send it back?" and you just say "yes". Then they shut up!!!

[leex50]

How about the battery drain? is it bad as Leex50 reports in the Maglite version? Haven't tried that one, but would check it out if that is not an issue.

I think my issue is a battery going bad just need a little more time to determine.
But at this point I wouldn't trade my WM6 for anything.