This afternoon at the Mobile World Congress Steve Ballmer and Andy Lees announced Windows Mobile 6.5 and it looks pretty good. While there doesn’t seem to be any one huge leap forward there looks to be quite a number of UI/UX tweaks that will make it easier and better to use…
There is also a change in the branding of the devices, they are now known as “Windows Phones” and they “bring together the best of the Web, the PC and the phone so you can connect instantly to the experiences you care about, no matter where you are” according to Steve Ballmer…
Miel has got a great post over at his blog which covers all manner of additions and differences but I’m going to look at the ones that hold the most interest for me…and hopefully you 🙂
One of the big new additions is the ability to have widgets on your home screen. Some of the Samsung phones have got these and it’s a pretty cool way to interact with a mobile device so I’m happy to see that come to WinMo.
It includes the new Mobile Internet Explorer 6 with the various benefits that brings.
“Infinite” Start list-making it easier to access more apps…
You’ve got a lot more access to info from the homescreen, for example, you can scroll through thumbnails of your photos right on the homescreen 🙂
2 big things are the launch of My Phone (for the syncing and backing up of mobile data to the cloud) and Windows Marketplace (to offer easy access to Windows Mobile Applications, like the iPhone App Store). These 2 services both make using Windows Mobile a more coherent, immersive and fulfilling experience, which can’t be a bad thing right?
The My Phone service is now in beta release and you can sign up to the waiting list here. It looks like everyone needs to get on the waiting list and then Microsoft will work through the applications and get access codes mailed out to everyone, but I imagine that may take a while! As soon as I get access to the service and have had a chance to play around, I’ll get my impressions up on here…
The screenshot above seems to show that My Phone will tie in to the existing Windows Live setup quite well, sitting alongside and looking like Hotmail etc.
It might also be worth following MSMyPhone on Twitter as they’re giving away codes at random intervals 😉
Gizmodo have got a post up with their thoughts on Windows Mobile 6.5 and a video of it on the new HTC Diamond 2…check it out here.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 