Microsoft will soon release a version of Internet Explorer 6 for Windows Mobile. The browser uses the same rendering engine as IE6 for the desktop, but is optimized for mobile devices, allowing you to view full web pages or zoom in to read certain areas much the same way you can with Safari for the iPhone or Opera Mini.

According to the::unwired, the new browser will be part of Windows Mobile 6.5. It will also be available for Windows Mobile 6.1 AKU 1.4 and newer builds. Which means that pretty much any Windows Mobile device released this year could run the new browser as long as it has a 400MHz or faster CPU asn 128MB of RAM or more. But Microsoft will not be making the browser available for users with older phones to download and install on their own.

So if you've got Windows Mobile 5, 6, or an earlier build of Windows Mobile 6.1, you're out of luck. Well, officially anyway. Hackers have already managed to get the browser running on existing hardware with no help from Microsoft.

Microsoft has said it does not plan to make Internet Explorer Mobile 6 available to end users as a direct download. In other words, if you want IE 6 on your mobile phone, you're going to have to buy a new phone. Because it won't run on existing devices. Instead, Microsoft will work with OEMs to load the updated browser on phones that will be released in the not too distant future.

But there's good news for impatient Windows Mobile users. A member of the MoDaCo forums has built a custom ROM for the HTC Touch HD that comes with Internet Explorer 6 preloaded. In other words, it's possible to get the browser running on existing hardware. And if a hacker can do it, there's no reason we couldn't eventually see phone makers distribute the software as a download. Sure, it's not likely, but it's certainly possible.

In the meantime, if you have a Touch HD and you're looking for a browser capable of full desktop views and the same rendering engine used in Internet Explorer 6, you might want to give the potentially warranty-voiding ROM a try. If you're less adventerous you might want to settle for Opera Mobile, which is entirely legal and has the added benefit of supporting tabbed browsing.

[via Engadget]

The Windows Mobile team has publicly released Internet Explorer Mobile 6. There's just one catch: You can't run it on your Windows Mobile phone yet. Instead, the download lets you run Windows Mobile 6.1.4 on your Windows system in an emulator. So if you want to get a feel for how the new browser, which is based on Internet Explorer 6, will work, you can take it for a spin. If all you're waiting for a mobile version so that you can actually view full web pages on your Windows Mobile phone or PDA, it looks like you'll have to wait a bit longer.

This is the second time in the last few weeks that we've seen a software developer preview a mobile browser by releasing a desktop-only demo. But while Mozilla released a relatively light weight desktop version of Fennec, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 demo includes a full Windows Mobile emulator, which makes the installer file weigh in at 200+ MB.

That said, Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is a huge improvement over past versions of Pocket Internet Explorer. Like Safari for the iPhone, you can view full web pages the way they would look in a desktop browser and then zoom in tight for a better reading experience. Web pages did take a fairly long time to load, but it's not clear if that's the browser's fault or the fact that it's connecting to the internet through an ActiveSync connection with my laptop.

Internet Explorer Mobile 6 also features Flash Lite 3.1 and the Javascript v5.7 engine from Internet Explorer 8, which means you can watch Flash content from sites like YouTube and render Javascript-heavy pages like Google Docs.

My only real complaint with Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is that there's still no support for tabbed browsing.

[via Windows Mobile team Blog]

Microsoft will be rolling out the first major upgrade to its mobile version of Internet Explorer since... well, practically ever. The version of Internet Explorer that ships with Windows Mobile devices is based on code from Internet Explorer 4. The new version will be based on the desktop version of Internet Explorer 6 and should be able to handle pretty much any web site you can view in IE6.

The::unwired got a handful of screenshots of Internet Explorer Mobile 6. And it looks like a pretty major upgrade. First, you can choose between desktop and mobile browsing modes. In desktop mode the browser will squeeze full web pages onto your PDA or Smartphone's small screen. In mobile mode, you'll get the mobile version of any web page that's optimized for mobile browsers.

There's certainly still room for improvement. Full desktop mode on the iPhone version of Safari or on the Opera Mini web browser manages to squeeze large pages onto small screens without the need for scrollbars. Yet Internet Explorer Mobile 6 requires a bit of side to side scrolling action.

Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is expected to be available as a free upgrade for Windows Mobile 6.1 users soon. But if you just can't wait, you might want to check out the Skyfire web browser for Windows Mobile. It's available today and supports the desktop version of Flash, which means it can handle YouTube videos and other Flash content all within the browser.