T-Mobile Shadow Windows Mobile 6.0 to Windows Mobile 6.1 Upgrade
T-Mobile posted an update OS for the Shadow from Win Mobile 6.0 to Win Mobile 6.1. I backed up all pertinent info from my phone to a safe place (my 2GB MicroSD storage card of which I removed from the phone during the update!), downloaded the update and ran it.
The update itself was painless, but whenever you update your OS on a Win Mobile phone, all your non-default settings are nuked. So all my email accounts have to be set again, all my ring tones have to be added and reset again, and even my Fave 5 was refreshed. If you had any MS Docs, Xcel files, One Notes etc, all gone unless you backed them up.
Even all of my custom software like Yahoo's Go 2.0 and Google Maps have to be reinstalled. If you were smart enough to save the cab files onto your storage card then you won't have to download them again.
So the good the bad and the ugly.
The GOOD: I noticed a few things that I really liked. It seems to manage the power consumption better, it manages connecting to and using WiFi better, and there are some cool GUI enhancements; particularly when trying to type a symbol.
There are also some changes to the T9 which I think are mostly on the good side. It now capitalizes "I's" when the "I" is stand alone. But it no longer recognizes "don't" and instead thinks the word is "font". It is an algorithm thing of course, but "don't" is a word that is used FAR more than the word "font". I've personally never used the word "font" in a text message.
The over all use of the Shadow feels a little faster... to start. More on that in a bit.
The BAD: They added another GUI layer to the Fave 5 options screen. Now you can "circle" around to the various options for a Fave 5 person like, text, email, call, etc. of which all are now just icons. The interface is clunky and slow and takes too long to load. I'd just as soon use the drop down menu they had before because it was fast and you don't have to decipher the meaning of the icons.
The UGLY: There is a memory leak somewhere. Over time, when someone calls, I can no longer see who is calling because the screen becomes a blur of overlapping text and images. I can sometimes make out a name, but that name is sometimes the person that I last spoke to, instead of the person that is calling.This memory leak also causes the entire phone to slow down doing any function at all, even just locking the phone. It also causes the phone to forget the correct ring tones that it should be using. Soft resets do not work. I have to completely take the battery out and replace it and then turn the phone back on.
The memory leak takes about a day and half or less to be really annoying. Not sure how long I'll keep version 6.1 on my phone. This is a DEAL BREAKER.
Read the official comparison between the Windows Mobile versions if you like.