Engadget's Take on Windows Mobile 6.5

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/06/windows-mobile-6-5-review/' target='_blank'>http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/06/...ile-6-5-review/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"It's widely acknowledged by users, media, and even Steve Ballmer himself that Windows Mobile is in dire need of a ground-up revamp, and it's happening -- but not quite yet. That's Windows Mobile 7 you're looking for, and realistically, it's not going to be in your pocket for at least another year. That leaves Microsoft in a bit of a pickle: how do you facelift version 6.1 -- which is already a facelift of 6, which in turn was a facelift of 5 -- just enough to eke another year or two of life out of it? Is it even possible? Let's have a look."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/ppct/auto/1254864602.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Engadget has put together their review of Windows Mobile 6.5, and it's more balanced than the previously linked-to reviews from Gizmodo and Crunchgrear. By "more balanced" I mean it's not just a bunch of trash-talking - author Chris Ziegler does a good job highlighting the pros and cons of what 6.5 brings to the table. There's no escaping the fact thought that as an OS update that is more than 18 months in the making, 6.5 doesn't exactly blow the user away with great new features. Kind of makes you wonder what the Windows Mobile team has been doing all this time, doesn't it? Video after the break. <MORE /></p><p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="600" height="360" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" id="viddler"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="src" value="http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/19abb725" /><param name="name" value="viddler" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" height="360" src="http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/19abb725" name="viddler" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" id="viddler"></embed></object></p>

[whydidnt]

It does seem strange, that after 18 months we basically have a new home screen, menu and some bigger screen elements to show for all their work. I've mentioned before, but I seriously wonder how small the WM team is. Otherwise, what are they doing, and why after all this time is the mobile browser so bad that most OEMs feel the need to include Opera in the Rom? Finally, let me get my ongoing rant about the hardware in. Even the highest end devices only have 512 MB of Rom. why? How come Apple & Nokia can manage 32 GB of Flash memory, yet WM is state on 512 MB?? Is there some problem with the OS that prevents them from competing? Or, are they just cheap?

[alese]

It does seem strange, that after 18 months we basically have a new home screen, menu and some bigger screen elements to show for all their work. I've mentioned before, but I seriously wonder how small the WM team is. Otherwise, what are they doing, and why after all this time is the mobile browser so bad that most OEMs feel the need to include Opera in the Rom? Finally, let me get my ongoing rant about the hardware in. Even the highest end devices only have 512 MB of Rom. why? How come Apple & Nokia can manage 32 GB of Flash memory, yet WM is state on 512 MB?? Is there some problem with the OS that prevents them from competing? Or, are they just cheap?

OS - yeah really sad, how little is there for 18 months of work. Unless there are only one or two developers in the "team" - in this case it's not "that" bad. Especially considering that HTC (a hardware manufacturer) did more, better and more in depth UI changes for the whole OS in their Manila (TF3D) interface in same 18 months than WM team.
Flash - just cheap HW manufacturers. HTC Diamond 1 had 4GB of flash, HTC Advantage had 8GB microdrive in version 1 and 16GB flash in version 2 so it's not a technical problem. But it does look that the smaller "level 1 flash" is usually much faster and thus more expensive than the "level 2"...

[Stinger]

I'd expect that the majority of their staff are concentrating on Windows Mobile 7...

[lexden]

OK, that's it. I can no longer stay with Windows Mobile. The Iphone offers a better user experience, Exchange email and cheaper apps. I'm off after about 10 years.

[soho_1]

When lamenting the absence of memory consider that the cost of the operating system license is probably higher than the cost of the missing RAM. A Windows Mobile licensee is burdened with at least $8 higher bill of materials than an Android licensee. If $8 does not seem like much consider also that an iPhone with 16GB of memory has a bill of materials of at most $100. The bill from Microsoft is quickly becoming the third most expensive component in a smartphone (after screen and CPU). It should come as no surprise that Google is gaining licensees.

[Gerard]

I think it's time Microsoft either stopped including Pocket IE or re-wrote it from the ground up, with zero recycled code. I've been using WM6.5 since last spring (yes, it's that old - 18 months in development is not really accurate as since at least March there have been only minor tweaks) and have found every attempt at using PIE to be painful. The main problem is the lack of user control over zoom level on initial page load. A typical page is displayed with characters only a few pixels tall, completely unintelligible. Like this:
http://www.luthier.ca/other/forum/pie_on_fiddletech.png
If the user must zoom in to read EVERY, SINGLE, PAGE, using a series of bothersome screen taps and slides (minimum of 3 operations, often 4 or 5), taking at least 5 seconds and often more like 20 as the page jumps around during loading of elements, this is simply too inefficient for actual everyday use. Pocket IE was more efficient under WM2000, plain and simple. By this vain attempt at emulating the finger-friendly behavior and zooming of the iPhone's browser, Microsoft has abandoned serious functionality. Oh sure, pages coded specifically for mobile browsers work okay for the most part... but how much of the web is composed of such pages? Other mobile browsers keep up just fine. Why not PIE?

And it's not just zooming which gives me a headache. If I wish to input an address manually, I must now tap a menu icon, tap the URL bar, then tap the Input icon because for some mysterious reason it no longer pops up automagically. What, am I supposed to *think* a web address into place there? And then there's the way Favorites are now less manipulable. Used to be a separate dialogue for deleting them. Now if one uses the PIE interface, thanks to the finger-scroll feature, one must tap and hold until the indicator (little circle of dots) has popped and vanished just to select a link without launching it, and only then can the trash icon be tapped to delete it. Integrating link management into the same page as link launching would be a bit more intuitive if tooltips worked, but alas they've been killed off so it's guesswork as to what some of the icons even mean. I could go on... but frankly Pocket IE has become so worthless it's not worth the time. I use NetFront and find it very much acceptable for heavy lifting, and Opera Mobile is okay for the odd bit of light reading where one needs no access to Favorites.