When will WM2005 start appearing in the new X50v

[mrcaze]

Why they are not able to keep such things in secret? It would be such a nice surprise to download A09 and find out that it is WM2005 :)

Did I joke?

I wonder how WM 5.0 is going to handle memory on the 50v. Is the entire OS going into BIS? Will that leave us all the RAM free for running programs?

[medevo]

I wonder how WM 5.0 is going to handle memory on the 50v. Is the entire OS going into BIS? Will that leave us all the RAM free for running programs?

This is exactly the memory model that WM5 is aiming for. (BIS includes flash cards as well)

The current system of "splitting" ram between active tasks and stored programs, while providing excellent speed to programs in ram, but leaves the system low on RAM most of the time. The new system will be good, as it will provide:
1) The ability to "Totally" shut down safely, if all the battery power runs down, including no data loss, and no reinstallation of programs.
2) Lots of memory open to programs allowing for multitasking/memory hungry apps (and with the new Directx, I am willing to bet games development will explode on the PDA)

A possible consequence of this system are that we will likely see a lot of "resident programs" or "launcher apps" that are attempting to reserve parts of the ram for particular programs.

Overall, its a step forward for the PDA to a more "regular computer" memory setup, that will work very well when we start to have hard drives or much larger ROM chips in PDA's.

Medevo

[cnycompguy]

no, OS and programs go in rom, leaving all ram free for programs to use it, Like jack-flash for palm os, only built in to the os. or at least thats how i understood things, seeing as how they said it would take a bit longer to install programs but you no longer had to worry about loosing them when the battery went flat.


EDIT- If everything were going to be put into BIS, which is just a 128m flash chip, why would they bother having a 128M ROM chip, when the rest of WM2003 devices get by just fine on 64M ROM chips. Nearly doubling the cost of a chip that by your account would be obsoleted by the new os doesnt make sense for an engineering POV.

[nix50v]

I like the idea of the new OS working as a normal pc, BIS for installation and RAM acting only as it should. But as the BIS is so slow, wont load times be affected a great deal? even now i have a today plugin saved in BIS and it takes ages to load. how about loading a whole OS?

[cnycompguy]

The New System

Persistent memory storage means that future handhelds will use RAM and ROM very differently.

Pocket PCs running Windows Mobile 5.0 will use RAM only for currently running applications, and nothing else.

All storage of applications and files will be done in ROM.

I think you can see the advantages of this. If your device runs out of power, you don't lose your applications and files, or the contents of your address book and calendar.

Also, with RAM no longer being used for storage, your current device will have a lot more space for running applications. It's going to be like getting a big RAM upgrade.

I've read some doomsayers predicting that constantly having to pull things out of ROM will really slow future Pocket PCs down. I'd like to point out that current Windows Mobile smartphones already handle RAM and ROM in this way, and they aren't unusably slow.

-quoted from brighthand

[nix50v]

Yeah but how about booting time of the OS? you can see in a thread in aximsite that the BIS is terribly slow. i wasnt talking about the actual OS if it will be faster, im talking about loading time performance specifically. any other opinions?

[medevo]

Flash memory on chips is pretty cheap nowadays, especially in the smaller sizes

For an example, here is an $18USD chip that is 1Gb

http://www.digikey.com/scripts/DkSea...492680&Site=US

The flash memory used is a specialized Intel chip, that is designed to work with the processor and the graphics card, and more expensive then this, but still the difference between 64Mb and 128Mb. All of the devices that current use 64Mb flash likely used any cost saving to buy the bigger RAM chip.

From a cost point of view, the value added in WM2003 adding a battery loss proof file store is significant.

Medevo

[cnycompguy]

I understand that the difference between RAM chip sizes is a few bucks. Added up over half a million units it's quite expensive, not to mention the fact that we're not talking about flash ram chips, but flash rom, just a tad different. If youre still confused as to my explination as to how it really works, read this.
http://www.brighthand.com/article/Pe..._WM05?site=PPC


EDIT-Forgot to add that while flash ROM has slow write speeds, hence the slower install comment, it has excelent read speeds, which is what is used during boot up or a soft reset. The new Hard reset will take slightly longer, because it will have to reflash the ROM with a stored, protected backup of the OS, removing all other software. expect around 5 min for a hard reset. soft reset should haul.