by Frank McPherson, author of How To Do Everything With Windows Mobile

 
You probably know by now that T-Mobile released the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for the T-Mobile Dash. I recently installed the upgrade on my Dash, and here are my notes that I took while performing the upgrade. Before getting in to the details, let me state up front that I think the upgrade is worthwhile. While the upgrade really doesn't justify a full version upgrade from Microsoft, it is worth installing if it becomes available mainly because of some of the improvements that have been added to make Messaging better.

The installation begins by putting the device in a USB bootloader, which you will recognize by Red, Blue, and Green horizontal stripes on the Dash's display. I ran the upgrade using a PC running Windows Vista, and when the Dash went into bootloader Vista had to re-recognize the Dash as a USB device. Vista successfully recognized the Dash as a "USB Smartphone," but the time it took Vista to do the recognization took longer than the upgrade's Setup program expected, resulting in the Setup failing.

Don't panic. All I did is re-run setup, click through all the options, and the ROM started updating. This is an important tip. In my experience there are several steps in the upgrade process that you may feel the setup is hung up or not working, be patient, the upgrade is working. For example, after the ROM was downloaded the Dash reboots and you get that initial white T-Mobile screen and the device sits there for a noticably long time. It would have been nice if T-Mobile or Microsoft had provided some feedback here because it feels like the device is hung. Eventually the screen will change and the Cold Boot Config, which installs all the initial software on the device, begins. After the config the Dash will reboot again, which again takes a bit longer than you normally expect.

I had set up the Dash to synchronize with my PC using Vista's Windows Mobile Device Center. After you upgrade the device you have to create a new partnership with the PC. Before you do that you might want to delete the partnership from Mobile Device Center if you want to keep the same name for your device, otherwise Device Center will create a new name for your device and not allow you to re-use the old name because it thinks that name is still in use. I am pretty sure this same scenario exists with ActiveSync 4.5.

This is it, over all the upgrade went smoothly except for some periods of time where I became nervous thinking that it may be hung up. If you own a Dash, I recommend that you go ahead and run the upgrade.

Labels: Windows Mobile 6

posted by Frank at 1:33 PM 

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