When Microsoft launched Windows Mobile 6.5 earlier this month, the latest version of the company's operating system for cellphones and mobile devices was met with lukewarm (if not hostile) reviews. In a nutshell, the biggest complaint is that the operating system was essentially unchanged from the previous few versions and didn't offer much to convince users to stick with the platform instead of switching to an iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android, or Palm device.

But there may be hope. Windows Mobile 6.5 does have a new and improved web browser and home screen, even if the calendar and contacts applications haven't changed in half a decade. And now it looks like Microsoft is working on an incremental update that may or may not be called Windows Mobile 6.5.1 that will bring a number of minor but significant improvements.

Unofficial builds of Windows Mobile 6.5 have been leaking onto the web for the past few months, and blogger Long Zheng reports that among other things:

• There's a new contact application that's more finger-friendly
• The start menu and close buttons have been moved to the bottom toolbar, which allows the toolbar at the top to be thinner and hold status icons only
• UI elements including buttons and check boxes have received a visual refresh

Windows Mobile 7 is expected out next year, and it will reportedly represent a major shift by including more finger-friendly controls and a new version of Office Mobile. But until then, it sounds like Windows Mobile 6.5.1 might be the way to go if you're stuck with a Windows Mobile device. Long Zheng reports that early builds are already available for download for some mobile phones in the shadier areas of the internet.

Microsoft has pulled back the thin veil that was covering Windows Mobile 6.5 and launched its next generation operating system for mobile phones. And it's pretty much exactly what you would expect based on all the information that's been coming out over the past year or so. That's to say, it appears to be a minor, mostly cosmetic update to Windows Mobile 6.1.

A number of tech news sites have published detailed reviews of Windows Mobile 6.5. And here's what they generally have in common: Microsoft has tweaked the home screen to make it more attractive and more user friendly. The program launcher has also received a minor cosmetic update that makes it easier to navigate with a finger and no stylus. But there's no good way to sort programs or arrange them the way you like them. And when you actually launch the applications you're often greeted with programs that haven't changed much since Windows Mobile was called Pocket PC 2002. For instance, the calendar is as ugly and feature-free as it was 7 years ago.

The web browser is actually a pretty major improvement. It's based on Internet Explorer 6, which may be incredibly out of date when it comes to desktop browsers. But for a mobile web browser, it's pretty good at rendering most of the web content you'll encounter. It also has improved navigation buttons that don't take up as much on-screen real estate. Those buttons disappear when you're not using them. The browser supports Flash, and you can zoom in and out of web pages to see the full page or just the text area you want to read.

• Windows Mobile 6.5 review - Engadget says not much has really changed
  
• Windows Mobile 6.5 1st Look - Mobility Site has what is probably the most extensive walkthrough of the bunch
  
• Windows Mobile 6.5 Review: There's No Excuse for This - Gizmodo has lots of pictures, lots of complaints
  
• IE 6 for Windows phones: Interface improved - CNET suggests that Internet Explorer 6, at least, is a welcome update
  
• Windows Mobile 6.5 disappoints; no Start customizations and stylus still required - ZDNet decides Windows Mobile 6.5 fails to live up to even relatively low expectations

The long and short of it? If you're leaning toward getting a Windows Mobile phone anyway, Windows Mobile 6.5 has a few features that you might like. But it's hardly a home-run hit that will help Microsoft compete with Apple, Palm, Google, Symbian, and other mobile platforms. We'll have to wait for Windows Mobile 7 to see any major changes in the platform.

Been holding off on buying a new phone until Windows Mobile 6.5 devices are available? It looks like the wait is almost over. Microsoft announced today that the first smartphones running the next generation of Windows Mobile (which will just be called "Windows Phone") will be available on October 6th.

Of course, Microsoft also admits that the odds of you holding out for that new OS before buying a new phone are pretty slim anyway, since the company "discovered that most people who carry a Windows phone don't realize it's running Windows Mobile" anyway.

The new phones will apparently come in a variety of configurations. Some will have keyboards while others will not. Some will have touchscreens, GPS, accelerometers, or high resolution cameras, and others not so much.

In North America we should see devices from HP, HTC, LG, Samsung, and Toshiba carried by AT&T, Bell, Sprint, TEULS, and Verizon. For information on Europe, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific region, check out the Windows Team blog post.

Microsoft has just announced that it will begin accepting applications from developers for the Windows Marketplace for Windows phones on July 27th. But what's even more interesting is that while early word was that Windows Marketplace would only be available for phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 and up, it looks like the company is going to make its App Store-clone available for Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 phones as well.

Sure, that leaves users that are still using phones with Windows Mobile 5.0 or older operating systems out in the cold. But you didn't really expect Microsoft to support an aging operating system that was released years ago, did you?

In other news, Microsoft has confirmed that it will take a 30% cut of revenues generated from Windows Marketplace sales, and developers will have to pay a $99 annual fee for each app listed in the store, although developers will be able to list up to 5 programs free of charge if they submit them before the end of 2009.

Windows Marketplace won't be available to the public until later this year. In the meantime, you can still download and install thousands of Windows Mobile applications the old fashioned way, by hunting for them on the internet using a desktop or mobile browser.

[via Engadget]

Want to play with Windows Mobile 6.5 before it's available on phones and don't feel like installing one of the hacked versions floating around the shadowy corners if the internet? No problem. Microsoft launched the Software Development Kit for Windows Mobile 6.5 today, and as part of that launch, the company released an emulator that essentially lets you run the mobile operating system in a virtual environment on a Windows PC.

The idea behind the emulator is that it gives developers the tools to create and test applications for deployment on Windows Mobile 6.5 devices. But since the emulator images are available for anyone to download, you can also use them to take the operating system for a test spin or see if the apps you're running on your Pocket PC 2002 device will run properly on a new phone.

A group of Microsoft folks got together at the TechEd conference yesterday to discuss the upcoming launch of Windows Mobile 6.5. They talked about widgets, the new Windows Marketplace app store, and about how Silverlight won't be offered. But the most surprising admission was the fact that Microsoft doesn't really consider the Windows Mobile 6.5 user interface to be "complete."

Responding to a question about the UI, Windows Mobile Senior Product Manager Loke Uei Tan said the team "couldn't complete the interface on Windows Mobile 6.5" due to time constraints. Microsoft spent about 8 or 9 months developing Windows Mobile 6.5, and the emphasis wasn't really on the UI.

This isn't to say that Windows Mobile 6.5 will be completely unusable. It is a complete operating system. It's just that some of the new UI elements haven't been updated. So while there's a new program launcher and home page, large portions of the Windows Mobile 6.5 user interface will look a lot like Windows Mobile 6.1.

Microsoft has announced that it will announce the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 (which we already know an awful lot about) on May 11th at the Tech Ed 2009 conference. Odd are you won't actually see any cellphones running this operating system until this fall. But Microsoft is holding a "kick off" presentation next month.

The Tech Ed conference is aimed at IT professionals and developers, and Microsoft will be hosting several sessions on developing for Windows Mobile. So the reason for launching the OS before it's actually available to the public appears to be to help encourage developers to work on third party applications for the platform.

[via ZDNet]

Microsoft is preparing to launch Windows Marketplace for mobile phones. The Marketplace is Microsoft's answer to the iPhone App Store. It will allow Windows Mobile users to find purchase, and download mobile applications directly from their phones. But as we discovered this week, the service will only be available to users with Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. Microsoft has no plans to release a version of Windows Mobile 6.0, 6.1, or older devices despite the fact that millions of people already have mobile devices with older versions of Microsoft's mobile operating system.

Unlike Apple, Microsoft also doesn't make it easy to upgrade from one version of Windows Mobile to the next. It's typically up to the phone manufacturers and wireless carriers to decide whether an upgrade will be available and the upgrade procedure can be cumbersome, to say the least. So odds are if you don't get a new phone running Windows Mobile 6.5 you won't be able to use Windows Marketplace.

That said, this isn't the first controversy surrounding the Windows Marketplace. Microsoft initially told developers that they'd have to pay a fee every time they issued an update for an application listed in the Marketplace. But after receiving strong criticism, Microsoft backed down. Maybe if there's a large enough stink around the Windows Mobile 6.5 requirement, Microsoft will come up with a way to let users with older phones use the Windows Mobile Marketplace.

Microsoft showed off a recent build of Windows Mobile 6.5 at MIX09 yesterday, and it doesn't look quite like the earlier builds we've seen. Probably the most notable change is that Microsoft has removed the "honeycomb" grid lines that populated earlier versions. Program icons are still laid out in a staggered pattern, but there aren't lines separating the areas. I can't decide if I like the new UI better or not, what do you think?

Another update is that when you flick your finger to scroll through pages of icons, the animation will flip through one window at a time and then stop, which should make it a lot harder to miss the button you're looking for. Of course, if you have a ton of applications, it'll take longer to scroll through them all this way.

You can watch a 3 minute video of the presentation at I Started Something.

The rumors were true. Microsoft plans to support internet widgets in Windows Mobile 6.5.Widgets are basically bits of internet code that can run like native apps on your mobile phone. In other words, rather than launching a program that's taking up space on your mobile device or loading a web browser and then navigating to a web page, you'll be able to just click a button and launch a web service in a standalone window.

You can already use these types of widgets on desktop computer operating systems, the iPhone, or the upcoming Palm Pre with WebOS. Windows Mobile 6.5 support could make it a lot easier for developers to create web apps that will run on multiple platforms with minor modifications. Instead of developing for the iPhone, Windows Mobile, OS X, Windows 7, and so on, they'll be able to develop for the web and make sure their apps are compliant with the widget engines on each platform.

Right now, Microsoft is showing off screen shots of a few sample widgets for Live Search, stocks, and weather. More information will be available to developers in April.

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.

As expected, Microsoft pulled back the tiny little veil that was still covering some of the corners of Windows Mobile 6.5 today. The latest mobile phone OS from Microsoft retains some of the features we've grown to love/hate over the years like the start menu and soft buttons at the bottom of almost every screen. But it has a new web browser that's all grown up and able to render anything that Internet Explorer 6 can render, as well as significantly more touch-friendly windows so you can poke your phone with your finger instead of a stylus.

Microsoft has also announced a new naming convention. While the operating system will be called Windows Mobile 6.5, the company is now referring to devices running the OS as Windows® phones.

Along with the new operating system, Microsoft is also launching a "My Phone" service that will allow users to synchronize contact information, text messages, photos, and videos on the web. There's also a new Windows Marketplace which is essentially Microsoft' answer to Apple's App Store for the iPhone. Users will be able to find, purchase, and install apps directly from their phones.

While Windows Mobile 6.5 doesn't may not even be an entire integer away form Windows Mobile 6.1, Microsoft says the new OS will not be available for existing phones. And we won't see any new devices with the software preloaded until Q4 of 2009.

Of course, if you're the adventurous and law-breaking type, there are apparently some early builds of the OS floating around the interwebs for those willing to download them and try them out on existing hardware.

Microsoft is expected to show off Windows Mobile 6.5 this week at the Mobile World Congress. But if you just can't wait to see what Redmond has up its sleeve for this latest incremental-but-not-revolutionary update to its mobile operating system, you can check out this video. It shows what appears to be an early leaked beta build of Windows Mobile 6.5 running on an HTC Touch HD handset.

The operating system performance seems a bit choppy, but that's likely because this is a beta. If you watch through the rather lengthy video from start to finish you'll see some pretty significant changes to the look and feel of Windows Mobile, including:

• Drag and drop, touch friendly, navigation of many screens
• A new "honeycomb" style program launcher
• Touch friendly Today screen with large fonts and icons
• Larger, easier to use context menus
• New on screen keyboard with larger keys
• New mobile version of Internet Explorer with improved page rendering, zoom, and full screen features

[via Engadget]

Over the past few days we've seen a ton of leaks related to Windows Mobile 6.5, the next generation of Microsoft's operating system for mobile phones. First, there was a report that Microsoft would show off the OS at the Mobile World Congress in February and release the operating system publicly by mid-year. Then an unofficial build of Windows Mobile 6.5 hit the web and some hackers managed to shoehorn it onto existing devices.

But now CompuLab, the team behind the upcoming Exeda mobile device have uploaded a few photos showing the operating system running on the company's hardware.

CompuLab says the photos are meant to demonstrate how well the Exeda is to developers, because the team managed to install Windows Mobile 6.5 the "same day it was released." Now clearly, Windows Mobile 6.5 hasn't been released to the public yet and there are no commercially available devices running the operating system. So I'm going to assume that CompuLab is saying the day the OS was released to manufacturers. Or maybe the company installed the same leaked pre-release build that hackers had already been playing with.

[via Gearlog]