Neowin.net

Yeah, i have to agree...

DO NOT WANT! Too old

But really, I'm still waiting for Win Mo 7. On Tegra. Sigh its a feature phone for me 'till then.

I remember fooling around with my ipaq. It was great at the time, but winmo hasn't moved on since 5 years ago. Microsoft dropped the ball, just like Palm did. They had momentum, they got loads of markes share, and then they both stopped innovating. Weird, like they they both just lost interest.

You know, if the iPhone never came out, you wouldn't be comparing every damn thing to it like its the standard.

There is life after Apple, please stop bashing every goddamn electronic device in the world because it doesn't do something or do something as well as an Apple product.

Don't be such a tool.

But that is the thing mate, the iPhone has pushed the phone market to a new level. Forcing the release of new Windows mobile releases.
Smart phones seem to be the now, but iPhone made it so simple to use it is really hard not to admit that.

Similar to how OSX and Linux have forced Microsoft to push on with there Desktop OS.

Healthy competition will in the long run make the market better. As for windows mobile. Once it catches up I have know doubt that it will be good.
Once the interface is fixed that is. I do think they have much harder and more complicated task than apple. As Win mobile supports so many different handsets compared to apples 3 almost identical handsets.

perhaps they are thinking of competing with this:
http://www.sizlopedia.com/2009/01/09/nimbl...oid-desk-phone/

But then again, it is better than the previous versions of Windows Mobile.

Winmo is not always going to look like this. This is just going to be here till Windows Mobile 7 comes out.

The interface looks like arse.
BTW they are copying Linux with the home button, ah!

That's really cool. I would definitely get a phone running some form of Windows for the office. The possibilities would be amazing.

http://thewingster.com/energyromwarhawkstandard.aspx

That's what you can have on your Windows Mobile phone.

No...it's just you, seeing as looks are subjective. The main background isn't all that great but you can change it .

Looks beautiful, at WQVGA resolution. It doesn't look ugly, it's just the hideous background screen they picked.

Look at a sexy version of WinMo: http://thewingster.com/energyromwarhawkstandard.aspx

You must have never used a phone with a 24bit 16 million color screen because those screens also look ugly. Like I said Winmo has a limitation of a 65,000 color screens so you can't get much better than that washed out cartoony look.

That is the sexy version? I mean, sure it is better than the photos above, but still. I guess Bill doesn't do sexy very well, who would have thought?

Washed out cartoony look? Excuse me? What, you really need that many colors?

You are right, you don't need that many colors on a phone, but it does make everything look better.

For phones with cameras, yes.

For a phone that can play videos and photos the more color the better but 65K is too low. My Mp3 player that I bought 5 years ago has a 262K color screen and videos and photos look decent enough on it. Winmo only has 65K because they never really updated it. Maybe back then that was the standard.

T-Mobile has the Touch Pro 2, which is a WinMo device. So what if they call it "Mobile" instead of just "Windows", LOL. But they have the phone, that's all that matters.

So what? You can get full-fledged Office suites on the iPhone and the BlackBerry, both of which are miles ahead of Windows Mobile in terms of business adoption and user friendliness!

This upgrade is too little, too late for Microsoft. They should have had WM7 by now.

if they are "always on the move" they likely have a portable computer anyway so being able to look at power point slides probably isn't that big a deal really.

Things like exchange support ect would mean more to me if I was in those shoes. I wouldnt want to edit a presentation on a phone even if I had the software I imagine.

Yeah, not to mention all the iPhone, Palm, and Blackberry sales either. My previous 2 phones were Windows Mobile and they were actually pretty good for their time. I had seamless behind the scenes Exchange sync so my calendar and email was always in my pocket. I had apps that didn't yet exist on many other platforms such as WMWifi which turned my phone into a portable hotspot like the more expensive MiFi. I could put all kinds of software and make all kinds of tweaks to get the thing running exactly how I wanted it.

Unfortunately they let themselves fall way behind in the GUI department and while that is not my primary concern, once devices came out with the core functionality in place as well as a nice UI, I found it hard to stick around. I've since moved on to the Palm Pre and am very happy with it. Exchange/Google/Facebook sync is even simpler than on WM. The device is nice and open and it's easy to install from all of the official or homebrew apps (a little over 175 last time I checked) and it adds the smooth GUI.

I would love to see them bust out something like those old Tegra demos or a slider version of the new Zune HD with 3g/4g/gps/etc. radios. If they can get it together I would gladly buy WM again. I just wonder how well they can pull it off with the competition so far ahead. They would really have to have some game changing developments in the works for WM7 that wow the consumer the way the iPhone did when it first came out. I had hoped for some kind of tie in with Windows 7 but that obviously ain't happening. I just hope they have got some good things under development now so that in a year they can come out and re-set the bar. A good competition by big, talented companies like Apple and Microsoft can only benefit the users.

I also love my Palm Pre coming from a winmo phone. You are right....the UI on Winmo is really not that good when you compare it to these new phones like the Palm Pre.

I agree. I like my Windows Mobile phone, but it is definitely behind the curve here. They were really slow to adapt to the advent of touch screen phones as well, there are numerous areas in the WinMo UI where you NEED a stylus in order to salvage your sanity. So far I see some nice improvements in 6.5, but it's definitely not enough. I'm hoping we'll see something about 7 soon, and that it will be amazing. Right now Microsoft really does need "amazing" to come out of their mobile division, because the other OS's are even beginning to eat up Microsoft's core Business customers. I really do look forward to seeing what's to come though. The Zune OS looks pretty nice, and Microsoft is clearly working on touch with Surface, so hopefully they can meld these various technologies together for Windows Mobile 7.

Well I'll be damned. Microsoft, learning from its mistakes, and taking a long time to fully complete its OS projects. Somehow, I vaguely remember hearing a lot about them doing something JUST like that in the past few months.

Agreed, flashing the Dash (HTC Excalibur) to WM6.5 makes it a brand new device again. But... those were community ROMS with the essentials very little bloat compared to what T-Mobile and the rest do to them.

Sadly, a lot of idiots out there don't know how SIMPLE it really is to unlock a WinMo phone and slap a new ROM on it, or better yet, cook your own.

This isn't factual, funny, or interesting at all. Yea.

That was really ****ing stupid.

I agree, but I bet if he said the same thing about the iPhone you guys would be rolling around on the floor laughing. This sort of base humor has become standard for neowin.

No, a minor upgrade. 7 will be the big upgrade, this just changes a few things.

He said decent, not major.

yes. I use an app called spreadsheets that will read and write in the .xls format on my iPhone. I haven't tried anything too fancy with it (.vb script will probably not work for instance). Where iphone fails is the lack of an accessable file structure. You basically have to email stuff back and forth unless the app has some sync capabilities built in. Apple released their iDisk app a few weeks ago which is somewhat of a joke. You can login and see that you have files but can't really do anything with them, lol. They need iDisk integration so that I can access
y iDisk from apps that work on files. They also need a basic file system accessable to the user and through the computer via USB.

Excel Mobile sucks to the extreme. It doesn't have any formatting enabled. I installed an app called Softmaker 2008: PlanMaker, and it was much better. With PlanMaker, I could format a spreadsheet on the computer, and it will be exactly the same when opened in PlanMaker. Attempting the same with Excel really messed it up.

Seeing the trend with the number 7 coming from Microsoft, I'd say it should be really nice

well they've been reporting I believe a second half 2010 release for a while now so there wasn't much point waiting really.

They are no doubt testing something along those very lines. The Zune HD uses the new nVidia Tegra chipset which gives it all kinds of swanky battery life and graphical processing upgrades. I would imagine WM7 is being developed to work on the same type of modern hardware. The hardware upgrades to WM phones have pretty much been incremental for a while now (CPU speeds creeping up, RAM increasing but no big changes to architecture).

HTC stated that Diamond II And Touch Pro II will be upgradeable to WM6.5; I do not know if ti will be for free and when it will be available but I run WM 6.5.1. on my Touch Pro and it is much better, in spite of the bugs, than 6.5.

Oh, O.K., thanks. I have a friend that is getting an HTC Ozone, so I figured I would ask about that. I look forward to seeing how Microsoft handles the updates to 6.5 and 7. Samsung hasn't been able to tell me how they plan on handling the updates, which strikes me as a bit odd, but whatever. LOL

It is VERY much free if you know where to go.

Oh, thanks, becasue you invented piracy and nobody has ever heard or thought of it at all.

Ever.

You're a revolutionary. A true visionary.

No, he meant legally.

Yes, I meant legally. Samsung just released an update to the Omnia, but of course this wasn't Windows Mobile 6.5... LOL With the Omnia 2 already announced and allegedly shipping with Windows Mobile 6.1 as well, I'm kind of scratching my head about their plans there. HTC it seems is pushing Windows Mobile 6.5, which is really great. I'm glad to see that. I don't know if the Ozone will get the update though (That's what my friend is getting).

Thanks for your responses.

In short, proprietary beats generic?

I have news for you, WinMo could run on BlackBerrys (at minimum, the Curve and the Storm, and possibly the Tour as well). It's not just the GD Sectera (the BB clone in use all over the government) either, though that proved that a Windows Phone-type BB is possible.

Besides, with BES for Exchange, BB and Windows Phone can co-exist in the enterprise right now (which is generally more than can be said for the iPhone).

Coolness is all well and good; however, at the end of the day, a smartphone (any smartphone) must fit in with as little disruptive influence as possible.

My iPhone works just fine with Exchange. Support push, calendar, and contacts. My work exchange stuff shows up in red, my personal MobileMe account shows up in blue. I can send out invites for appointments. Extended exchange support is available through 3rd party apps, but I haven't seen a reason to grab them.

I don't think hardware support is WM's problem in the slightest. The problem is the user interface and surrounding ecosystem isn't as seamless as something like the iPhone. The UI reeks of elements designed to be used with a stylus, not to mention elements taken from a desktop OS that don't transition well to a phone such as the start menu ect.

MS need to, and will with WM 7, make the UI a lot more friendly for general users as well as having their store set up for consumers to get apps ect. Up until now it's really been a business OS for all intents...they have to slim and stream line it if they are to succeed in the consumer space.

are there examples of this being done posted online? i'm interested to know...