So, I used my Windows Mobile 5 phone for an additional 3 weeks after writing my last post. What I found was that there is a serious bug in Windows Mobile 5 where it would suddenly stop syncing for no particular reason. This seemed to be somewhat correlated to when it was plugged in or unplugged from USB (either computer or just power, didn’t matter), although it wasn’t an exact correlation.

The phone would work totally fine as a phone, and I could even browse the web on it, but it refused to sync (”Waiting for Network Connection” — liar). The only way to get it to sync again was to reboot the phone. The worst part was that the only way to know that it was no longer syncing was to go into the activesync application on the phone and check the status. Needless to say, this isn’t something you normally do, so essentially, your mail might just not work for, say, the whole weekend and you might not even know it.

I tried many different ways to solve this problem: Setting static DNS entries for my mail server, setting every possible combination of network settings, reflashing the phone’s firmware, upgrading the phone’s firmware. Nothing worked.

So, I’m back to my Blackberry for now. I know all the cliches with Microsoft products, but hey, they’re cliches for a reason. When the phone worked, it was very cool. But I can’t use a product that only works 70% of the time, and doesn’t even tell me when it’s not.