Smart Phone. Stupid Software.
Stephen Manes, 11.28.05, 12:00 AM ET

A new Sprint phone gives you just about every way to connect you could want. Too bad it runs on a sad new version of Windows Mobile. Sprint's new combo device seems as promising as a smartphone could be. The $450 PPC-6700 includes just about everything you could possibly want, right down to a good-looking screen and an attractive slide-open thumbboard.

How do you want to connect? There's Wi-Fi for cafes and hotels, Bluetooth for headsets. Sprint's new high-speed Power Vision mobile data network gets you 400 to 700 kilobits per second; where that's not available, you get the slower Vision service. A 1.3-megapixel camera and a voice recorder are built in, and you can add memory with a MiniSD Card.

The 6700 is the first U.S. device powered by Microsoft's long-awaited new operating system, Windows Mobile 5.0, already announced as underpinning both PalmOne's next Treo phone and Motorola's would-be BlackBerry-slayer, the Moto Q. The new OSdoes a better job of handling a five-way rocker control, and when the keyboard is open and the screen automatically switches to horizontal mode, the Web browser seems much improved.

The new Mobile versions of Office applications do a far better job than their predecessors of retaining documents' formatting after editing, though many elements still won't survive the round-trip. The new Mobile PowerPoint doesn't have that problem, since you can't edit presentations--all you can do is look at them.

That's fine, but there's one unfortunate problem with Windows Mobile 5.0 in its current incarnation: faulty plumbing. ActiveSync, the program that synchronizes the device with a PC, has been totally reworked using Internet protocols instead of the proprietary system of yore. But though the old system was no prize, the new one is so bad that Microsoft offers a long, long Web page devoted to things you may need to try on your PC (ready to "un-bind NDIS Intermediate Drivers?") if you want ActiveSync to work. A software fix is due on the Web, but there are plenty of problems it won't resolve.

Example: Turns out it's a bad idea to have the 6700 connected while the computer boots. When I accidentally did that--easy enough, considering that the synch cradle is where you would normally leave the device to charge after you turn your PC off at night--ActiveSync went into an endless loop of futility. When I plucked the device from the cradle, it was no longer able to use data functions at all. Only a reboot and a resynch saved me.

Then there was the time I tried to surf the Web and the 6700 kept demanding a nonexistent password. That kept me from even making phone calls, let alone sending mail. Repairing that required a "hard reset," wiping every scrap of info in the phone and forcing it to restart from scratch--and forcing me to wait and wait while ActiveSync trickled hundreds of contacts back into the phone. In theory, you can use the phone as a modem with Sprint's high-speed data service, but Icouldn't make it work because key software appeared to be missing from the package.

The 6700 includes a version of Windows Media Player for music and video. But glitches in ActiveSync make Microsoft's already awkward PC media transfer software even worse. Eventually I was able to play unprotected Windows Media Files on the device, but transferring protected subscription content from the Real Rhapsody service worked with only two of about fifty tracks I tried--and when played on the device, they exhibited annoying stutters.

Apart from the synch problems, the 6700 is not as clever as it initially appears. The slide-out keyboard does have wide keys but also has odd key placement and poor contrast between letters and background. It gets really tiresome having to open the phone and hold it sideways to type in a contact you want to dial.

Trying to replicate the Windows user interface on a small screen was always a Procrustean idea; the new version offers only token improvements. You're never sure quite what's running at any given moment, and nobody seemed to revamp even basic applications like the contacts list to work better when you use the phone horizontally.

Microsoft's customary shoddiness no longer has the ability to astonish--just to sadden. With Windows Mobile 5.0, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chief software architect, has delivered yet another edifice built for instant collapse--but at least it will fit in your pocket.