Windows Mobile 6.5 *Not* officially launching May 11th

Posted at 4:25 pm April 17, 2009 by

winmo65

While I myself am far from a Windows Mobile fan, I can appreciate the enthusiasm and devotion the WinMo crowd have for their workhorse OS.  Even though many if not most of the mobile world has already moved on from 6.5 and is now focused on Windows Mobile 7, we’ll take what we can get as WinMo isn’t a platform known for speedy or frequent updates.  If you are a WinMo follower and devoted fan for life, May 11th is your day to shine…kind of.  After Microsoft releases it on the 11th of May, it is then up to manufacturers and carriers to push the update love down to us inviduals.  Hopefully they don’t wait too long or else we’ll be celebrating the release of 6.5 from the carriers and manufacturers as we start talking about WinMo 7′s launch date.

*Update*

The info that the May 11th release date was based off of was “misinterpruted” according to Microsoft.  Sorry guys, May 11th won’t be anything special after all.

Source: Engadget, Electronista, *Image Source: Phone Mag*

   
  • http://techtips.timlaytonllc.com Tim Layton

    Windows Mobile 6.5 will have a lot of new apps, features and technologies that will be included and introduced. Just to name a few: internet explorer mobile, live mesh for mobile, silverlight 2 for mobile, windows media player mobile, windows mobile marketplace,.NET compact framework, .NET mobile, compact framework, and SQL server compact. The Windows Mobile contact list will get a huge visual boost and be more touch-friendly as well, with larger menu items and an updated look. Microsoft has officially confirmed a new web browser for Windows Mobile, Internet Explorer 6. The hottest new features and apps include: My Phone–a backup and recovery service for contacts, photos and other data stored on a mobile device. My Phone will also be available for phones running Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1. The new Windows Marketplace for Mobile is a centralized place to buy increasingly popular mobile applications. Windows Mobile 6.5 features a new user interface and “honeycomb”. A customizable start screen with hexagonal tiles for each program that are designed to be easier to use on touch-screen phones. The Windows Mobile start menu can be customized with Internet applications like weather or stock reports, that are automatically updated. The new Windows Mobile 6.5 user interface is designed to be more “finger friendly,” You can also move icons up or down in the new layout. In addition, the new Windows Mobile Home screen will support special widgets, which will give status information like missed calls, new messages, etc. Another new feature of Windows Mobile 6.5 allows people to go directly to waiting voice mail, text messages or other information when unlocking their phones. Microsoft Recite, came out of the company’s research group. It allows people to record voice notes or other audio files on Windows Mobile phones and then search for keywords using their voice. LG is set to launch 50 new Windows Mobile devices over the next 4 years. And to boot you will get widgets in windows mobile 6.5. The widgets will appear to function just as full applications do, and will have their own icons in Windows Mobile menus and access to web content. The widgets will be powered, in part, by the new Mobile Internet Explorer 6, which will give them access to Flash and ActiveX controls. The widgets will also have control of the SK menu bar. According to Microsoft, the widgets can be written with standard web technologies, such as HTML, CSS, AJAX, and JavaScript.

    • Mike

      Thank you for that complete run down. While I don’t doubt many of the under-the-hood improvements will make mobile web usage and other web based task much easier, the whole OS as a whole is still outdated looking even with their new “themes” which so far just look like some new wallpaper and a few new color gradients. Feature wise, it will have some in the bag that other popular players such as Android, Mobile OS X, and Blackberry still don’t have. However, even after everything mentioned above, I still wound’t want a WinMo device. The whole package still feels unfinished and a work in progress to me.

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