I did a number of different things over the next couple hours in hopes that it would break out of this state, but I had no luck. The device responded to the power button, but nothing else. I even called the phone in hopes that it would kick the device out of this state. The phone did update the screen to show the incoming call, but it didn’t respond to me pressing the answer or hang up buttons. After 51 days, I had to pull the battery out if I hoped to continue to use my phone.

I’m happy that I managed to last 51 days, but at the same time, I know that it could have been better. I have no idea what went wrong to cause this. I haven’t changed or added any software to the device. I haven’t been browsing any new sites – It’s the same standard sites that I read on a regular basis.

I want to try this again, but before I do, I want to update my phone to the official Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM from AT&T and Samsung. I’ll try and do that over the next day or so. I’ll post again and let you know when I’m ready to start again.

I had a close call on rebooting last week, the worst part is, it wasn’t intentional. I was slipping the phone into my pocket and I wasn’t paying too much attention to what I was doing. I ended up missing my pocket and the phone fell towards the ceramic tile floor. Luckily, it bounced off my shoe and came to rest gently, or somewhat gently, on the floor. When I picked it up, the battery door had slipped pen, but not enough to fall off and allow the battery to escape. Needless to say, I have been much more careful about the handling of my device since this event.

My recent trip to New York also presented a little problem (besides the thumb issue). Typically I would swap SIMs from my Canadian Fido SIM to my US AT&T SIM. For obvious reasons, this just wasn’t an option. So instead, I just dropped my AT&T SIM into a spare phone and used that instead. I put my regular phone into flight mode and locked the keypad until I returned to Canada. Disaster adverted.

I started this challenge over a month ago (August 19th) and to-date I haven’t had a single issue with the memory management of my Windows Mobile 6.1 device. No reboots, no crashes, no odd behaviour. It’s pretty clear to me that Windows Mobile is and can be a stable OS. 1 Month down, and many more to go.

Now down to the details; It’s been 15 days since I started this challenge (August 19th) and so far things have been smooth sailing. Cellular reception has been top notch, there’s been no weird missed calls, and no abnormal behaviour from any applications – aside from IE Mobile using 25MB. Thankfully it’s down to a reasonable 5.6MB. Windows Mobile has actually done very well at closing applications that are left open in memory. I regularly use the Task Manager to switch between applications and I have noticed that Windows Mobile will shutdown applications that haven’t been used in a while if it starts to get concerned about memory usage.

The phone was put into flight mode over the long weekend. My wife and I took the kids to the cottage and there’s no cell reception unless I put my feet into the lake and hold the phone just so. Instead of leaving the phone radio on and hunting for signal, I simply dropped it into flight mode and left it on the kitchen table. When we left the cottage I turned the radio back on and it picked up a signal pretty quickly and everything returned to normal. As a quick aside, when I did this a couple years back with a 2003 SE device, it didn’t come out of flight mode as easily. Something has changed over the years, and for the better too!

With everything running so smoothly, I think the only thing that could knock me off course is Samsung releasing Windows Mobile 6.1 for the BlackJack II. Oh, and lookie here – they just did. D’OH! Must resist…

And for those keeping count; my first update was made to the original post. From now on I think I will just make a new post on the site. It makes it easier for everyone to follow along in their RSS clients.

Ultimately, it would be best if the OS protected us from unsafe and instable applications. But the truth is that we are dealing with a mobile OS and there just isn’t the resources to handle this correctly. Heck, the full blown desktop OS still doesn’t do an amazing job at this. Although, it’s getting better but there’s a long way to go.

And just to be clear, I didn’t mean to imply that all 3rd party applications are bad. In fact, the reason I selected a few apps to install is because I wanted to show that there are good developers and that you can find good products that won’t compromise the stability of your device. IMHO, Ilium is one of those companies that I know I can trust to build a solid app.

Head over the Ilium’s blog and read what Marc has to say. Be sure to come back and share your comments here with us!

To get the ball started on the right foot, I’m going to hard reset my device so I can be sure that there’s nothing weird hanging around in there. I’m doing this on a Samsung BlackJack II with a near final build of Windows Mobile 6.1. From what I’ve been told, this is what will be shipped on upcoming BlackJack II’s from AT&T. If you’re following along and taking the challenge with me, it doesn’t really matter what version of Windows Mobile you have on your device. I just ask that it’s the production ROM and not something that’s been cooked up and downloaded from the internet. The changes added into those illegal ROMs could easily be a source of instability.

After hard resetting the device, I need to ActiveSync it with my laptop to get all my Contacts, calendar, etc.. synced to it. Also, there are a couple applications that I can’t do without. So I’ve installed the following: Ilium’s eWallet, Sling Media’s SlingPlayer Mobile, Modaco’s Smartphone GPS Utility, and Microsoft’s Live Search. I use these applications on an almost daily basis and can’t imagine being without those. I also need to add my the data settings for my network so I can actually use data on the device. The last thing to do is configure email on the device. I’ve added 2 email accounts and both are set to pull email from the last 3 days and will do that every 60 minutes.

That’s it – that’s all the changes / additions I’ve made to the default configuration of this device. From now on I won’t reboot the device or close programs. I’ll be making updates to this post on a regular basis over the coming weeks reporting on how things are going. The success of my mobility is in the hands of Microsoft.

UPDATE (August 20 @ 10:10pm) – Everything has been going very well so far. I always forget how much there is to setup and configure on a freshly reset device. I went to use my JawBone Bluetooth headset only to learn that it hasn’t been paired with the phone since it was reset. Not a big deal, but it does make it a little hard to use. I also noticed that my mobile favorites had not synced back to the device. If I recall, this is a bug with the Windows Mobile Device Center. Annoying, but again, not the end of the world.

I’ve included a screen shot of the task manager so you can see what applications are running on the device. The items that are below the fold are Ilium’s Screen Capture tool and the Task Manager itself.

Those words are pretty strong and perhaps a little harsh. Do people actually believe that Microsoft’s mobile operating system is that bad in managing memory? I would like to think that it’s not true. Every day I deal with customers who are managing hundreds or thousands of Windows Mobile devices and on a regular basis people ask me how they can force a reboot of the device on a given schedule. Most people that ask for this are looking to force the reboot in the middle of the night, or every Tuesday / Thursday / Sunday, or some other schedule that they’ve come to believe will magically fix all of their problems.

The real question is: why do they need to do this? I don’t question that they might be having problems with stability. In fact, I’m certain that a reboot will help them out. Most feel that Windows Mobile can’t cut it and requires the reboot just to clean up leaks in memory and whatnot. Ultimately allowing them to run their applications without crashes and hangs that they were experiencing before the reboot.

Is scheduling a reboot for the device really the best approach? Perhaps trying to determine the source of the problem and correcting it would be a better. While I do get request about forcing a reboot, there are plenty of other customers that never reboot their devices and almost never run into problems. What’s the difference? Why are some able to run for days/weeks/months without ever having to reboot the device. While others can’t seem to make it a couple days without the need to reboot. Is it the device? Perhaps one hardware manufacturer has done a better job than another? Possible, but unlikely. From the talks I’ve had with customers, the reboot crowd are not all running one type or make of device. It doesn’t matter if the device is a rugged device from Motorola, Intermec, or Honeywell, or if it’s a consumer device from HTC, Samsung, or Motorola.

Could it be Microsoft? While it’s certainly is possible, I find this option to be highly unlikely as well. If they had a serious memory leak or instability, I would like to think that it’s been addressed at some point over the years and versions that have rolled by. I’m not saying that Windows Mobile is perfect and that you’ll never find a bug in it. I am saying that major issues are going to be addressed from release to release.

The reality is that 3rd party applications are the single biggest source of instability and memory leaks on Windows Mobile. If you find that you need to reboot your device on a daily or weekly schedule, the best thing you can do is to hard reset the device and start fresh. Don’t install any 3rd party applications and see how things go from there. I’m certain that you will find a reboot is not required. Slowly over time you can install your applications and watch to see at what point in time things start to fail. If you hard reset and install all the same junk again right away, then you’re no better than you were before the reset.

I’m not saying that all 3rd party applications will cause instability on your device. However, you need to stop and think about the applications you are installing and where you got them from. Some developers don’t take care in what they are doing and don’t properly clean up after themselves. Could Microsoft have built a better OS that better protects the user from poorly written 3rd party applications by isolating each application to its own memory space? Sure, but at what cost? These are mobile devices, and while the memory footprint maybe substantially more than it was just a couple years ago, that doesn’t mean you should be running a full featured OS on your phone. Besides, many applications require the interaction with other applications to run. The best thing you can do is to be careful and thoughtful about the applications you install and where you got it from.

Apple’s iPhone is a prime example of this. Everyone praised the first generation iPhone for its stability. All that changed when the second generation, iPhone 3G was released. It now appears that everyone is screaming about the instability of the iPhone. The biggest change is the addition of Apple’s software store allowing 3rd party applications to be purchased installed on the iPhone. Some jail broke their first generation iPhone and installed applications, but it wasn’t a very common occurrence and the people that did that are more technical and understanding of the crashes and hang-ups that come with tinkering under the hood.

Stability can be found on your mobile device, and as I’ve already stated, the trick is to keep yourself from installing questionable applications. If you are having problems, hard reset and don’t install that application again. Give it a try and see for yourself.