I remember a friend who owned a MS phone (winphone?) around the time that iphone began. He was really happy that he could integrate exchange, use excel and word and do lots of other things with windows. After a month of living with the phone, he told me, "you won't believe how much I hate this thing." It kept crashing, freezing, and locking up on him and he returned it 3 times already. He said that if he had to return it again, he was going to get something else. Now he uses an Android phone and loves it.

> I remember a friend who owned a MS phone (winphone?) around the time that iphone began. ... It kept crashing, freezing, and locking up on him and he returned it 3 times already.

The problems with your friend's phone were probably caused by non-Microsoft code. And just like bluescreens on XP, Microsoft got all of the blame.

Around 2006, I had a Windows Mobile phone that was freezing up almost every other day, as it came configured from Cingular. After resetting to a clean copy of Windows Mobile, the phone would easily run for two months between reboots.

This could be done using a little-known trick: Hard-reset the phone, and wait for it to reflash with the OS. When "Installing customizations ..." comes up, immediately press the reset button. This cancelled the installation of all the "value added" components from the carrier. You ended up with a completely clean copy of Windows Mobile, as it was developed by Microsoft (plus OEM drivers and utilities).

It was essentially the phone equivalent of reinstalling Windows on a PC to eliminate all the OEM preloaded crap. The only difference was that it was the carriers who dictated the preloads on Windows Mobile -- whereas the OEM utilities were reasonably reliable.

The root cause is important to engineers and product managers, not consumers.