Mike Temporale
06-21-2004, 07:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://smartmobileassets.com/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl/Blah.pl?,v=display,b=news,m=1087748363' target='_blank'>http://smartmobileassets.com/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl/Blah.pl?,v=display,b=news,m=1087748363</a><br /><br /></div>Emblaze Mobile have released the <a href="http://em.emblaze.com/specm5.html">M5</a> mobile phone running Windows CE .NET 4.1. The guys over at Smart Mobile Assets have post an interview with Eli Reifman, CEO of the Emblaze Group, where the ask him about their OS decision. (You can read the full interview at the linked article.) Here's what he had to say:<br /><br /><i>"We didn’t really create our own operating system, we simply didn’t go with the mainstream. The mainstream was Symbian or Nucleus as an embedded system or Smartphones 2003. The reason we went on CE .net is very simple…at the time none of the operating systems allowed the flexibility to do whatever you want, WHATEVER you want with it. Either Symbian or Smartphone would force you into UI flow, a certain experience and we wished to be able to have complete flexibility."</i><br /><br />I understand that this may sound attractive, but I feel it creates undo confusion in the Windows Mobile market. Casio did this in the PDA market a while back when they released the BE-300, for which they built a their own GUI on top of CE.NET and it was never much of a success. Consumers will have a hard time finding 3rd party applications for the phone. Not to mention the confusion of applications that have been made for the Windows Mobile-based Smartphone platform that won't run on the M5. With that being said; it is a pretty nice looking phone. I like the 2 extra action buttons located at the top of the screen.