I’ve installed a firmware update on my Omnia this week which has significantly improved a number of areas of the phone (better finger interface support, better battery life, gprs/3g don’t try to override an established wireless connection – basic stuff).

One major annoyance I still have is that Windows Mobile won’t sync with the new built-in calendar and contacts of Windows Vista. How stupid is that? If Microsoft are serious about trying to get people to move over to Vista, don’t add software and then leave out features that would make it useful! I get the feeling that Microsoft have given up trying with Vista and are hoping try again with Windows 7. If I could have bought my laptop with XP, I would have, but now it feels like Microsoft have forced Vista on me and are going to leave me to put up with its problems.

Anyway, that’s for another time. I could sync my laptop contacts and calendar to my phone but only if I use Outlook (which I have a cd for but it’s at my parents’ and I’ve never needed it on my laptop before). I suppose until recently most Windows Mobile devices were used in the business world where everyone’s got an Exchange server or at least got Office on their desktop but if these new consumer WM phones are going to compete with the iPhone they’re going to have to start thinking about the needs of the average consumer.

I ended up finding quite a nifty solution – I uploaded my contacts (as a .csv) to Windows Live (the new name for hotmail/messenger etc) and then used the Windows Live app that came with the phone to download them to my contacts list. In the end this is quite a nice solution as my contacts are all now stored online and accessible from anywhere and will sync between the phone and internet automatically.

The downside is that although there is a very slick calendar web-app as part of Windows Live, there isn’t yet a way to sync that information with the calendar on my phone. I expect as Microsoft try to catch up with Apple (and Google) they will add support for this but for now I’m wondering how much a hosted Exchange solution might cost.