Dear Windows Mobile, I think we need some time apart...

It's not me, it's you. I've been loyal to you for a lot of years, but to be honest, that was only because I thought you were the only one who understood my Exchange mailbox. Now I've met others who can do Exchange Active Sync too, and to be honest, they browse the web better than you.

I know you've been trying to change, and I admit that 6.0 was in improvement over Windows Mobile 5, and 6.1 is even better, but I'm sorry to say this: the innovation just isn't coming quick enough. The iPhone changed the game, Android is changing it again, and even Palm, who appeared to be practically dead in the water, look to be coming out with something that frankly makes you look like a mobile OS that my ancestors might have used to plan the brontosaurus hunt!

In the past I've been impressed by your range of form factors from different manufacturers, even though the way that you've let mobile operators alter your features has made me sick and forced me to go out and buy more expensive offline models. Even though I'm using one of your premium devices (the SonyEricsson Xperia X1), it's still frustrating me. It's lovely to be able to plug some decent headphones into a 3.5mm jack, but that's no good if you're going to stop audio playback abruptly when you lose your 3G signal every few minutes while I'm on the train. Admittedly, it's not your fault that T-Mobile's coverage is patchy, but when that data signal is only being used for background tasks while I clearly want to listen to music, that's just not good enough. And don't tell me it'd be fine if I used Windows Media Player instead of the Xperia media player panel, because you know that your native media player is still a steaming pile of dung! The Zune has good software, so it's not like you have to look far to find some code to use!

I like that you have a huge software/developer ecosystem, but really these days it's all about the web, and while there's a range of browsers available now (I'm using Opera 9.5), there's still something lacking. Oh, and another thing - these days it just feels wrong having to use a stylus while I see other people interacting with their phones just fine with their fingers. Capacitive touchscreens may well be more expensive than resistive ones, but if Apple can make it cost effective, I'm sure you can too! And people have more than one finger for good reason - let us make use of them.

In fairness to you, I don't think it's all your fault. The other phones that are showing you up did start from a clean slate really quite recently, and I do understand why you've not felt you could just forget about your past and start again from scratch. I know you don't want to cut off all the apps that were developed for previous versions, just like your cousin on the desktop. The trouble is, you never had his dominance in the market and this is a more cut-throat world; you need to innovate or die.

This isn't unfixable, but I do think you're going to have to do some do some pretty hard-to-swallow things. The best thing that I think you can do to step back from this precepice is stop just producing an OS for OEMs/ODMs/whatever you want to call them. Make a device end to end in house.

iPhone and Zune both have 1st party hardware with end-to-end ecosystems and add functionality over time, which is a great way to increase the value of a device and build goodwill with customers. Under your current model, there's little incentive for device manufacturers or mobile networks to provide updated firmware to existing devices, which means you're losing value from the moment you arrive. As much as I'm not an iPhone fan, I tend to think that if I got one it would continue to improve over the time I'd have it (as far as the hardware is capable). That's a great selling point, and very rare in Windows Mobile devices.

As things stand, I very much doubt that my next device will run Windows Mobile (as my last 4 phones have). I like the idea of Android, and I think that it's going to be great in the future, but I don't see any hardware that I like right now. The choice is really between the Palm Pre and, yes, the iPhone. I've seen Windows Mobile 6.5, and the bits of info about WM7 that has appeared online, and while 6.5 is progress, you need 7 to be out this year to stay in the game as a serious competitor.

It sounds like the Pre will appear in the wild in April, and since it's a brand new platform I'll be waiting for the reviews. I was never interested in the 1st gen iPhone because it was lacking in a few areas. The 2nd gen device and the recently announced software update fix some of those issues, but I'm really waiting to see what the 3rd generation iPhone hardware brings. I like a physical keyboard, so at the moment the Pre is ahead, but the iPhone ecosystem is really compelling.

Irrespective of what I select as my next phone, the emergence of smartphones as mass market (rather than niche) devices, and the competition in the marketplace, is a good thing for everyone. I'd imagine that we're going to see a rapid move towards the masses using a mobile as their primary computing device over the coming years. I don't have a particular preference as to which platform is the market leader, but I do want to see Windows Mobile, Android, Palm's WebOS and iPhone all being successful and comtinuing to innovate.