Microsoft today at the Mobile World Congress officially previewed what Neowin has been showing you for weeks now, its new Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system for Windows phones. Windows Mobile 6.5 brings a handful of enhancements including an application store called Windows Marketplace for mobile and a backup and restore service called My Phone.
The mobile OS is not available until the second half of 2009. The new interface does look stylish and more finger friendly. This is a great welcoming change from Windows Mobile 6.1
Without any further delays, below are the screenshots for you to enjoy
The new lock screen
The new lock screen also shows other information like missed calls, voicemail, and new messages
The new Honeycomb Start Menu interface - This is the Start Menu that you get when you click the 'Start' button
You can also move and rearrange icons on the Honeycomb menu
The new dialer
The new Internet Explorer Mobile web browser along with a sliding scale to help zoom in/out of pages and also includes new tools for better page navigation and a breadcrumb features that shows you where you are on a Web page. The browser also supports Flash Lite.
With LG on board were going to have even more devices to choose from .
Brilliant
The new lock screen is very nice also. I wanna see more of the other apps and parts.
I agree, this looks beautiful. Personally, I will be choosing this over the iphone.
XDA-Developers will handle the rest
The 3G on the iphone on AT&T networks sucks. It's not that much faster and not reliable at all. I turn it off most of the time because it drains the battery very fast and its not much better then EDGE for email retrieval. The Iphone is not a business phone unless you like emails only. Office Documents, Complete Outlook Sync not just active exchange, etc.
I know with Windows Mobile 7 they will make many new friends in the Mobile Arena.
WinMo7 should have even more and newer UI changes but if that's all most people really care about (looks) that sucks.
It doesn't have to look the best just as long as it works well and does what I need really. On that note I like where 6.5 is going, and they still have a few more months to work on it more (April is the due date it seems).
I have to ask, though, why were these posted as GIFs? The banding that results detracts from the look of the UI.
Why doesn't MS make a superbar for this <3
I'm sure they hide when unused.
As I am running both 7 and 6.5 (alpha hybrid really) I really do not see much that could carry over to the other.
And the new start menu is a bit slow even on the ones on demo in Barcelona, though that will change. The home screen is like a Zune in ways, which if you look at Win 7's media center, the home screen has the same style.
MS is perpetually catching up, and then arriving late, then having to catch up even more.
And by that time . . . well, you know the story.
Dunno what crack you smoke mate, but XDA has working 6.5 builds for like 5 phones now...and more are made every week or so...
Its a huge challenge
Last edited by bob21 on 16 Feb 2009 - 19:57
It goes to show that you can have all the features you like, but if they're wrapped in a lousy UI with a poorly-implemented ecosystem, consumers will look elsewhere.
Seems the only people who really get excited about a WinMo device these days are hardcore Microsofties.
Windows mobile is on around 40 phones (from the craptastic to the half-decent) and god knows how many providers and it covers the globe. Yet it *barely* outsells the iPhone, which is only a *single* phone with an OS *exclusive to that one device*, sold at a premium, with a very limited number of carriers. And the iPhone has only been around for about 1 year and 8 months. And there were points in time since its release that the iPhone outsold WinMo.
Last edited by LTD on 16 Feb 2009 - 20:34
Windows mobile is on around 40 phones and god knows how many providers and it covers the globe. Yet it *barely* outsells the iPhone, which is only a *single* phone with an OS *exclusive to that one device*, with a very limited number of carriers. And the iPhone has only been around for about 1 year and 8 months. And there were points in time since its release that the iPhone outsold WinMo.
You just said above the only people who get WinMo are hardcore Microsofties >_> and they outsell the iPhone? Then who the hell buys iPhones, hardcore Apples?
And yet no one really seems to care. WM devices are flying off the shelves even more than IPhones , in fact id bet 5$ bet that the new Samsung Omnia outsells IPhones in 2009
I've never come across a dead Wal-Mart.
The iPhone sells at a premium.
I smell bias , Of course these devices ARE NOT cheep hell the Omnia has twice the screen resolution of the IPhone so that trashes another one of your rubbish claims
If 14.5 Million is a good yearly figure for Apples devices you have to use the exact same logic and say 20 Million is an even better yearly figure for Windows devices .
Last edited by bob21 on 16 Feb 2009 - 20:46
You should have gotten this latest iteration of WinMo in 2006, if MS knew what the hell they were doing. But that's their problem. They're never really "first" in anything. Not so much not first in "innovation", but not even in effective implementation. It's a yawnfest. There's no thunder because it's already been stolen. Again.
If I were an MS fan I'd be pretty ****ed about always getting the table scraps when I should have gotten cake the first time around.
The smartphone market is growing so much that the numbers almost mean nothing. A sale of an iPhone doesn't mean it is a lost sale of a WM or Palm device. That smartphone market is so small, 13% of cell phone shipment worldwide, that everyone has room to grow immensely. Once the numbers get to around 90% of cell phone shipments we can see who is causing some attrition and directly competing.
Also, the iPhone is young. It it is impossible to say at this stage if the device will survive the test of time. Its one carrier + monthly royalties concept makes it less likely it will command any major marketshare long term.
It will probably become an exclusive device for people who want to show it off as an exclusive item, as it is now. It will be similar to those $75K cell phones. Not everyone can get one so it they are popular in that respect.
Would that be "table scraps" or "cake"?
Just two examples that immediately popped up in my mind was that the first screenshot is unnecessarily wordy and provokes "tl;dr" feelings. Since MS isn't specific about what's synchronized anyway ("other documents"? what's that?), they could just as well replace "your contacts, calendar, tasks, messages, music, photos, videos, and other documents" with "your mobile device" or "your information". After all -- MS doesn't give a single example of anything that's not synchronized, especially with their "other documents" fine print.
In the honeycomb display, they're also wildly mixing abstract concepts like searching the device with applications. Immediately below Messenger, you have ActiveSync, a completely unrelated application. There are no categories, and it consumes a lot of space to top it off. Put the icons in a traditional list instead, with the text to the right of the icons, and they could fit more here with preserved icon size, possibly being more informative and also able to group the tasks by category.
I can't see this improving without major revisions, and I don't think MS will do major revisions at this point... At the same time, I'm not really surprised. I find it so common to see feature creep clutter Microsoft's interfaces, and this is even right in the honeycomb menu -- a menu designed for simplicity and to be a good overview.
Last edited by Jugalator on 16 Feb 2009 - 20:18
It still has the old Messenger icon though
I mean, it makes no sense to click "Start" in order to shutdown. It's the worst interface idea ever.
It makes a lot of sense I think on Windows Mobile...
They are trying to make Windows consistent across platforms, whether that is mobile or computer operating systems, so surely, the way you access the main menu should be consistent?
Is there anything wrong with just putting the Windows logo where it says "Start"? People will now-a-days know that means the 'start' menu. They got used to it on Windows Vista, right?
"Shutdown" is a process for a PC. "Windows is Shutting down". Like everything else on a computer you START the SHUTDOWN PROCESS.
How does this simple concept not make sense?
But you can't really judge by a few screenshots either plus most manufacturers customize the crap out of it. Hope HTC makes something nice looking and more user friendly. The OS/platform is very good IMO but the user interface even though a bit better overall than WM6.1 is still not good.
Last edited by darkmanx21 on 17 Feb 2009 - 00:52
Looks good, I'll be looking forward to this when it comes out.
Other then that, the new interface looks very sweet. I hope that I can get this update since my cell phone is a recent one.
Other then that, the new interface looks very sweet. I hope that I can get this update since my cell phone is a recent one.
Actually, you can change the phone's settings so that the "X" button really does close programs.
Another silly illogical post curtacy of LTD , Now run , run little flame monkey just like you awalys do when your nonsense is proven wrong
Last edited by bob21 on 18 Feb 2009 - 10:36
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