While Flick Software's iSwish Project certainly isn't the first attempt we've seen to emulate the iPhone interface for Windows Mobile, it's definitely one of the prettiest, most effective looking. At least if we go on the video above. But if you look closely, you'll notice a few things in this video:

1. While the demonstration shows a user zooming in and out of pictures by "pinching" the screen, our guess is that the device, which doesn't recognize multi-touch is actually just detecting the motion of one finger.
2. The program launcher interface is pretty, but at least once in the video, we're pretty sure we caught the producers stopping and restarting the video to make it look like an application actually started up more quickly.

The biggest problem with any iPhone clone for Windows Mobile is that beauty is only skin deep. The software appears to include a program launcher and support for SummerBoard themes, and maybe a program or two. But once you launch your application, you'll find that you've still got the same Windows Mobile software running under the hood. Some of it's pretty, some of it's functional, and some is anything but (Pocket Internet Explorer, anybody?)

Flick's iSwish is due out sometime in May, and should work with a variety of Windows Mobile devices, including older gizmos like the Dell Axim X50, which does not (officially) run Windows Mobile 6. So there's hope if you've got an older PDA or phone.
[via Engadget]