Windows Mobile 5.0 is an operating system for the mobile devices. It is based on Windows CE version 5.0 and is a 32-bit operating system. Just like any other operating system, it performs many services like process management, file management, memory management and also power management. In this article, OSWeekly explores the memory architecture of Windows Mobile 5.0.
Memory Architecture of Windows Mobile 5.0 Explained
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’ve got a mobile with this on– Could we have an article explaining why this OS is so flaky, buggy and slow?
I have a phone running on this (at only 200 Mhz no less) and it’s not slow at all. It is not particularly buggy either, except when I stumbled on this:
http://eugenia.blogsome.com/2006/07/27/hard-resetting-the-pocketpc-…
Other than that, it has given me no problems and I am very happy with it for many months now.
I have it on my xv6700 and like it a lot. However, I have run into more than one 3rd party application that is just an utter mess.
windows mobile?
who cares!!!!!
it depends on your mobile device, MS hands the OS to the manufacturers wich later customize the OS and create the ROM to be released with V1 devices, in most cases they screw the OS with crappy 3rd party apps and configs and release them into the market without testing them, wich is nice because people will buy them anyway and happily change the mobile device 4 or 5 times until the OEM releases a stable ROM and the consumers get happpy.
During that time they act as free beta testers for HTC devices, and allowing HTC to profit as soon as the device exits the prototype stage, or sort of.
I hereby declare HTC guilty as charged. lol
Edited 2006-08-16 18:51
I have a Dell Axim X51v with an early ROM (A04, I think), and it’s not given me a bit of trouble. It does everything I need a handheld to do. However, I do realize that YMMV.
so far each windows version lacks some basic forms of memory management. for instance wm2003 lacks garbage collection, just like it’s big brothers.
it’s a bad excuse that your operating environment starts to become unstable when 3rd party applications are being installed.
MS has quite a way to go. WM2003 stops working on my v1.21 HP hw6515d. you cannot call this serius software.
I cannot take your opinion about Windows seriously when your name is “linux-it”, you do not use capital letters to start your sentences, and you spell “serious” as “serius”.
On the one hand, I suppose that needed to be said at some point.
On the other hand, your bio is simply “Linux is f***ing garbage”, which basically indicates that you’re being a hypocrite.
Over time, I’ve come to like CentOS as a server OS … but desktop Linux is still garbage. I’ll change that. 🙂
Tom, you probably don’t understand that there is a difference between typos and a spelling mistake. If I would have to correct native english speaking people on a daily basis, I would be short on time.
Judging on the use of capitals… oh well… if that’s the only thing you can say about it.
The WM2003 device here, crashes within 5 days. It just ends. It restarts, it forgets that it’s a phone. Stuff like that. At work we also have a MOI A701. Same story. And it’s slow compared to the WM2003. Just a few observations…
Google at WM5 slow and you will see a lot of ineresting comments, including MS itself by it’s bloggers.
Just the other day I was inquiring about my friend’s rather feature-packed WM2005 phone … he says it’s extremely reliable and is one of the best phone platforms he’s used.
So again, who do I trust more? My friend, whom I’ve known for 7 years, and owns such a phone, or a guy on the Internet named “linux-it”?
Well Windows Mobile 2003, was kinda junky. However, I am quite happy with Windows Mobile 5, though it is not flawless.
But as said, that can happen to you with every device. A friend of mine had bought an Symbian based phone that worked so bad that he stopped using it after a week. It kept crashing, obscuring data, hanging for minutes, was slow as hell and doing all that good even sucked the batterys dry in hours.
One thing i have to give linux-it is, that the very few linuxbased devices (an zarus and a phone i didn’t even knew that it was running linux) i ran around worked rather well.
A popular german saying goes: “if you don’t know what you are talking about, shut up for once.”
I guess that sentence was made for you. Linux doesn’t have garbage collection, neither does *BSD, Solaris, HPUX, IRIX, …
Does that mean those OSes are crap? I don’t thnk so.
edit: Almost forgot. It’s not third party apps making WinCE unstable. It is delivered in sourcecode to Vendors who have to fit it to their hardware. Many vendors doing a crap job at that, thats where unstable devices coming from and i bet they could fu** up linux either. The question is, why don’t they save the expenses and just use Linux instead. It’s not like they would do something that has to be kept trade secret and there should be more drivers for it around anyway, so i think that would cause more stable devices.
But i think we will see raising share in those merkets.
Edited 2006-08-16 23:14
It’s not only german, we dutch also say such stuff.
I didn’t say others have garbage collection but in the case of windows, this should be added _or_ the memory management system should be completely rewritten so that memory issues don’t kill the system so easy.
I would like to see more linux on PDAs as well, including the one I own as it makes you wonder what happens all the time if SMS is lost, your phone doesn’t ring, your PDA restarts all by itself etc etc etc.
Well, i’m not a fan of Windows Mobile, but garbage collection on OS-Level is a ridiculous demand for an os on very fast Hardware right now and the idea to hammer it into an embedded os is like “hey, i bet i could swim better if i’d hang ten tons of lead to my feet”.
What you fail to notice: you could cramp the best memory management into such a device that mankind can come up with and it would still happily crash, because the problem is the crappy drivers of manufactors. I have seen *very* unstable devices running WM and i have seen quite stable devices with WM. It is exactly the same situation with symbian and palm.
It is so convienient to point a finger, but that is too simple thinking and will not solve anything.
The reason i think linux would be supirior here is because there would have to be cooperation on driver developement when you simply have no choice but releasing your modifications. Phone manufactors simply seem to fail to recognize that they are selling phones, not operation systems.
well, the collection once in a while could be useful, especially when you’re starving to death.
For the rest, you got a point. For me, I do test that kind of stuff for manufacturers of hard- and software in the navigation area and we do see that linux keeps better it’s promise.
I have an MDA Pro with Windows Mobile 5, and it is terrible. Windows Mobile constantly crashes, it misses phone calls, crashes when you answer the phone…. this list goes on.
The device is by no means slow, it has a 500Mhz processor and enough memory. It is so bad that when I switch an alarm of, it goes of anyway, continually. grrrrrrrrr.
I have ran a buggy version of Linux on the device, and even that it is so much faster and more functional, just a pity the phone doesn’t work with it as I would of given Windows a boot along time ago
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