All Articles Tagged windows mobile 6.5

Microsoft today takes the wrappers off their latest generation of mobile software and services, and our good friend George Ponder from sibling site WMExpert.com gives us the details in his complete Windows Mobile 6.5 review. The pre-amble sums things up well from an iPhone point of view:

For some, the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 may very well be a non-event. But it marks the beginning of a journey for Windows Mobile and a new approach to mobile computing with the Windows Phone.

Rumor has it even Microsoft doesn’t believe WinMo 6.5 is competitive with the iPhone — that’s be next year’s Windows Mobile 7, which even Steve Ballmer thinks is way late to the party. It’s a refresh of a refresh of a refresh. But it does show which direction Microsoft is going, and how the “one OS, multiple handset vendors” strategy is shaping up or them.

Along with Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft is also launching Windows Marketplace for Mobile (think App Store) and the previously-in-beta My Phone online service (think Mobile Me, with backups, and also now with “Find my iPhone” er… “Find my Windows Phone” features!).

WMExperts will be live-blogging all the Windows Mobile 6.5 festivities starting at 10am EDT, so head on over there if you want to join in the fun.

While TiPb is still waiting for an iPhone 3.1.1 bug-fix update, not to mention iPhone 3.2 betas to start dropping, it looks like the competition is getting their OS on this week:

• Palm webOS 1.2 didn’t re-enable the iTunes hack (kudos Palm!) but did bring some nifty new features including Amazon MP3 downloads over 3G, the foundations for paid apps in the App Catalog, improved cut and paste, and much more.
• Android 1.6 Donut is expected to hit now’ish as well. A new Android Market is coming with it, but not multi-touch — at least not yet.
• BlackBerry OS 5.0 still doesn’t seem to be official, but is leaking out all over the place (would that Apple had such porous pipes!). It’ll make your Berry more Berry, though it doesn’t seem to integrate a real browser yet, despite what the commercials say…
• Windows Mobile 6.5 might be on 30 Windows Phones by 2010, though even Ballmer is finally admitting Windows Mobile 7 should have been out this year. Bottom-line, it’s a skin-job, and even though it looks hawt’er than a old style centurion, it’s still a machine on the inside.

What does that mean for the iPhone? Even if RIM looks locked in stasis, Palm and Microsoft appear to have up-hill battles re-gaining their traction, and Android is still slowly ramping up, Apple can’t afford to coast. A new OS from RIM, a Palm-style rebirth from Microsoft, and webOS and Android gaining marketshare are all possibilities. Many of these updates have interesting new features that hopefully Apple is looking at and working their own magic on.

So, let’s get on with the 3.2… and 4.0. March is only 6 months away, after all, and Apple needs something else to wow Smartphone buyers with at the next SDK event…

So the Zune HD is out, Windows Mobile 6.5 is starting to come out, Windows Mobile 7 will come out end of next year, and all of this relates to project Pink and new rumors of device code-names Pure and Turtle, and a Surface-related tablet just how exactly?

Sigh. Microsoft is like that cousin that we just know could be great but somehow keeps getting turned around, lost, and otherwise just not-quite delivering on it’s amazing potential. Imagine if they had one division, making one platform, and all that effort and integration went into delivering a killer XboxPhone in time for the holidays this year? And don’t hate on us for saying that, even our sibling site WMExperts is pounding the integration drum.

Back in the real world, however, Microsoft is said to be using a 2-prong strategy, Windows Mobile 6.5 now to compete with Android, and Windows Mobile 7 next year to compete with the iPhone (which, if Apple keeps up with their own roadmap, will be on its 4th hardware revision and running iPhone OS 4.0 — a moving target indeed).

The Zune HD meanwhile is positioned somewhere between the original and current iPod touch.

Microsoft is also rumored to be working on a tablet, based on their big-@$$ Surface table, to market against Apple’s still unannounced iTablet/iPad. Surface uses infrared camera technology, and required a huge basin to house all that hardware, so no doubt this will be Surface in name only (because who wants a 4 foot thick tablet, right?)

And on top of that, Microsoft is still working on Project Pink, which is a giant unknown, except it might be using Danger (makers of the Sidekick, bought out by Microsoft), and might be a Microsoft phone (though Microsoft swears they aren’t making a phone — just like Steve Jobs said no one wanted video on an iPod).

Pure and Turtle would then be these Danger-developed, Sidekick-like handsets running Windows Mobile 7, with on-board Zune software to handle the media layer?

Yeah, we don’t know either. Would that — Sidekick hardware running WinMo7 and Zune HD interface — be competitive with an 4th gen iPhone running iPhone 4.0?

We’re only a year away from knowing….

[Via WMExperts via 9to5mac]

Microsoft has officially announced that the next skin point release for their handheld operating system, Windows Mobile 6.5, will launch on Oct. 6 and include App Store Windows Marketplace for Mobile (catchy!) and MobileMe MyPhone services. WMExperts asks the impertinent question:

Will Windows Mobile 6.5 be available for any phones on that date? Will we see new phones released with WinMo 6.5?

We shrug in sympathy. Typically it takes a while to go from release to manufacturers to release to consumers. What benefits the split platform strategy has in consumer choice, it lacks in speed to consumer market.

When it does arrive, WinMo 6.5 will support both physical and virtual keyboards, no-touch and touch screens (resistive only?!), GPS, accelerometer, high res cameras, and likely spinning, multihued beechball wheels of wait (our Macs sympathize).

That the same company can ship the Zune HD before Windows Mobile 6.5, however, still puzzles us. That they’re arguably shipping both years too late to be competitive… well, that just frustrates us no end.

Throw a couple billion at Windows Mobile 7, would you please, and get her out asap?

Check out the video over at WMExperts (via PocketNow). Never mind that it’s Windows Mobile 6.5 rather than the still-in-the-desert Windows Mobile 7 — that words like “finger-friendlier” are being used in 2009 sends us into sympathetic collective apoplexy. Yet our ever brave sibling site holds to hope and we wish them well, ’cause we might see iPhone 4.0 sneak-previewed by the time this ships…

What do you think, enough to stem the bleeding, or too little too late?

One of these things is just like the other; one of these things is exactly the same…

Wow, we just got through listing the various ways Micrsoft is iCloning our beloved iPhone and its services, and now this? Bad enough they’ve taken the old hex grid from our AD&D days, but the iPhone Phone App, all green and rounded and gradient like?

We’ve got to think this is some customized icon, like a contact photo or something, because there’s no way Microsoft includes it in even an official beta build, is there? Still, having Apple’s graphics highlighting the latest viral Windows Mobile 6.5 leaks can’t be good for anybody. Ugh.

Speaking of ugh, bonus points to anyone who can tell us what that background picture is before it hatches baby aliens and begins consuming us all…

Welcome to 2009, where Microsoft will — at some point later this year or next — release versions of what Apple released in 2008!

Our frenemies over at WMExperts have the details, and we have the snide remarks:

• SkyMarket looks to be the App Store done Microsoft’s way. Does that mean each app will ship in Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Really Professional, Ultimate, and 8 more server SKU’s?

• SkyBox, which if MobileMe is “Exchange for the rest of us”, makes SkyBox “MobileMe for the same of you?”. We can only guess it’s a repackaging of Hosted Exchange and Live! services, so join in on the Sync Toy/Live Sync/Live Mesh/Azuze MPD-brandfusion. It will, reportedly, run on non-WinMo devices (which is actually a Very Nice Thing).

• SkyLine, either a business version of SkyBox(!) or a Mobile clone of iDisk, depending on who’s reading the tea leaves.

Microsoft, like RIM, Google, and Palm have to go in this direction. Apple opened a floodgate with the AppStore, no doubt about it, so while we poke some friendly fun, we also hope this gives Apple more competition, like the new Palm Pre, so that Apple has to up their game and give us iPhone faithful more functionality faster than we might otherwise get.

Anyone racing to pick up an HTC FUZE and try it out?