F-S Pocket LOOX 600 upgrade to Windows Mobile 2003

It took longer that I had expected but I was eventually able to get hold of a LOOX with the new version of the operating system for thorough examination. I wrote a review of the device almost a year ago. Before talking about the upgrade, let me correct myself a little: The review was quite negative because of a low-quality display which flickered, trembled - simply was far from ideal. The two devices I was able to use for review purposes this time showed no such problems. It is hard to tell if the problem was fixed by updating the display driver or using a different type of display, nevertheless, I considered it important to mention the improvement. I'd like to thank Fujitsu-Siemens Czech for providing an upgraded device and Sunnysoft for the old version.

PLEASE NOTE: If you would like to update your device, visit this page to learn more about availability and pricing. The upgrade was not available when I was writing the review and the F-S offer only a registration form.

Now, onto the tests. First, let's talk about the differences on the bundled software, like we did in the case of iPAQ. I believe you are familiar with the changes made by Microsoft, if not, take a look at the article What's new in Pocket PC 2003?.

Upgrade step by step

I have to skip this part for the time being, because I could not get the executable. If by any chance anybody has a set of screenshots from the installation process, I will gladly post them here.

Visible differences

When I started comparing the two LOOXes, there seemed to be quite a lot of differences. But as I found out, the original LOOX had perhaps the oldest ROM version available, so I upgraded to 1.29. A subsequent comparison showed that the only difference between PPC2002 and PPC 2003 is in the version of FSC Backup, but the two apps look the same. There are no other changes or at least I could not find them.

Benchmarks

A benchmark is a program that performs the same operations on different devices, measures execution time and compares the results. This is probably the only method to compare performance objectively. I used the excellent Spb Benchmark to test this LOOX. This benchmarking program will test the device thoroughly in all respects. The devices were tested under the same conditions, immediately after a hard reset when the only application installed was Spb Benchmark. If you try the same, you should get similar results.

Each chart gives three values. One test was performed on a Pocket PC 2003 device and two on Pocket PC 2002 (each with different ROM version). I wondered if I should include the results for an upgraded iPAQ, but I'll leave a comparison until I have results of more upgraded devices. You can find the results of benchmark tests of Compaq iPAQ h3970 in this article. And here is what I found out:

In the overall system test, you gain 15% or 8% performance boost, respectively. The result is relatively insignificant as is in the case of iPAQ, but tests of individual parts of the system show better results but a few exceptions.

The biggest part of the performance boost falls on an increase in computing power due to optimisation for the new ARM processors including XScale. Like in the case of iPAQ, the increase is around 50 %, which you can see not only in the chart but also in real life.

The test shows that working slowed down as compared with previous versions, but it is due to one single test - displaying the contents of a folder with 2000 files. The benchmark showed the same result for iPAQ, so the problem can be in the system itself.

The performance of the grahic subsystem of LOOX with Pocket PC 2002 was excellent. However, it dropped to a half with WM2003! The performance is not bad, yet the degradation seems quite strange. Given the fact that I tested two different LOOXes, the problem could be in the hardware.

File transfer over ActiveSync is 50 % faster as compared with Pocket PC 2002.

The second overall test suggests that you gain a 30% performance boost after upgrading to Windows Mobile 2003. That's a good reason for upgrading, don't you think?

This table gives a complete overview of all the tests.

Conclusion

The results do not speak so clearly in favour of an upgrade unlike in iPAQ as a decrease in performance in comparison with Pocket PC 2002 occurred in more tests. To sum it up, you lose a great deal in the graphics performance, on the other hand, computing power will increase significantly. Other subsystems show increases in performance by tens of percent. Except for one. The upgrade does not bring any new versions of bonus applications, such as FSC SpeedMenu and Control Panel applets. I do not use LOOX myself and have not extensive personal experience to be able to tell if the difference is really worth it. So, I have to leave it up to you to decide.

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