Seemingly real Windows Mobile 6.5 screenshots trickle out of leaky internet faucet
By Laura June 
posted Jan 29th 2009 2:02PM
posted Jan 29th 2009 2:02PM
A fine fellow over at the xda dev forum has posted some screenshots of what is purportedly Windows Mobile 6.5 -- and well... they look plausibly real. They're pretty Zune-ish (though maybe slightly less so than the last ones we saw), and also pretty good looking. There's still no info on when we can expect 6.5, though rumors have it that it'll be at MWC. Check some more photos (including the honeycomb app launcher and IE mobile) after the break. Hey Grey Crowned Crane, how're you doing?
[Via Gadgetmix]
[Via Gadgetmix]
I Can Haz download link please?? this looks sweet!!!! Except I'm getting the Pre when/if it comes, Apple will try to stop perhaps, who knows....
Can't... Stop... Laughing. Please tell me this is real.
And as usual, Paul A. Moron thinks his "opinion" is unworthy of being added to the normal list. No, Paul needs everybody to see it, so he adds it as a totally unrelated "reply" to the first post...
Oh, is that right, "L". It's not like your comment is totally related either...
Atleast Paul A. "Moron" chose to disclose his identity
Anyway, lanejasper, sorry you had to be the first one to post. Apparently, nobody agrees with us.
I am completely hooked on Windows Mobile and TIRED of their STUPID, SLOW, UGLY interface. WinMo 5.0 to 6.1 was COMPLETELY USELESS. To people like me, this is candy!
I cannot switch to iPhone/Symbian/Palm Pre (which looks GREAT) because the most important apps only work on WinMo and aren't available on any other device.
You people talk of a Paul Chapel. l have yet to see this person. Mr Chapel! Show yourself! Stop being invisible!
The Saddest UI: A Tragedy in .5 Acts
L, are you from deathnote?
While Windows Mobile 6.1 wasn't a major graphical update, it increased stability 100 fold. Before 6.1, I would have to reset my phone every few days due to constant memory leaks that eventually would take over the entire phone memory. Now, with WM 6.1, it keeps at around 50 percent (on HTC Mogul).
WM 6.5 is the graphical update we've all been waiting for!
@bob
Have you tried SPB Shell? It turns the frankly awful default UI into something pretty good.
It looks fake -_-
are you f'n kidding me? did you even look at this shitty paint job before posting this?
Well of course you will not know until Feb, and this could easily be some XDA photoshop job, but I'm liking the direction, and cant wait to see what it's really like.
Why are they so pixely?
Does anybody actually hit the read links?
If you read through the forum it links to, what you find is that this is WinMo 6.5 beta aspects put onto a WinMo 6.1 ROM. It's a beta testing of the different features on top of the old OS.
It's still be finalized and cleaned up. The graphics quality was reduced to function on top of WinMo 6.1. The quality will be better when they appear in their own ROM.
Actually the reasons that these are so horribly pixelly and distorted is because :
(A) They're badly resized by whoever added them
(B) Direct capture screenshots like http://www.zdnet.co.uk//i/z5/rv/2007/02/wm6_1.jpg do not show the font-smoothing that is present on the actual device.
It still does look a little bit photoshoppy to me though, possibly because of the stupid backgrounds being used. Perhaps it hasn't got round to the UI cleansing department yet though, I remember the difference between Vista Beta and Vista RTM in terms of UI.
If these are real then my photoshop skills are ultraprofessional.
Looks like someone took a big dump and this was what was inside.
How old are you?
It's not fair to ask him that, he hasn't learned the number keys yet!
Haha. You guys are hilarious.
Anyways, these shot seriously look horrendous in modern standards. I don't care how accustomed wm users are to ugliness, but get with the times. Attractive UI's are an important part of a good OS. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to make a functional OS that also looks sleek.
What are the little º symbols after the voicemail, phone, text "texts"? Is that just a beta thing???
No calls.. no texts...no voicemails...
The number '0' as in zero, ostensibly.
Are we looking at the same pictures? How could anyone think this was pretty good looking?
Lo-res people, still looks better than WinMob 6.1...the layout, design etc. these are obv, lo-res pics.
That's all I'm saying...a nice refresh if you will..
*vomits in mouth*
"and also pretty good looking." Really ?.... Little early to be drinking. I guess it's 5 o'clock somewhere..
UGLY??? Are you kidding me, this is great!!!
LOL, If you're used to windows mobile (like i do) and you see this, it doesn't look so bad.
However, if you compare it to Symbian/iPhone, now thats a different story
My point exactly!! Was never agreeing it was awesome compared to other devices, just much better over Win Mob 5,6,6.1 etc.
:-)
Im hoping that this is a bad photoshop job
I think they're fake. that font looks like Verdana, not Segoe UI (the UI version of Microsoft's corporate font).
Excellent point!! it does look like Verdana. Still much better looking than previous Windows Mobile OS's, NOW, compared to other devices.....not so good at all...ditching the WinMob anyway, Pre!
or zegoe, the Zune font. which I would think would be used for the zune-style menuing, if it does come to 6.5 in the form shown.
I bet is as crappy as Vista....
What's "I bet" and how can you compare it to Vista?
This guy hasn't used vista... or used it with his powerhouse 486DX2!!! with 16MB of ram!
It's the fuglyness I've come to expect.
May be a clever photoshop, but maybe the lack of standard fonts is a new feature in WM 6.5. Maybe they let you customize your home screen with whatever font you see fit. Its a simple thing that you could do that would greatly enhance the end user experience.
Something about the first screen screams "photoshop"
yeah, definitely photchop'd...look how the 0 in voicemail is covered in the background of the taskbar, yet, the left Eyebrow of the bird is not and in the foreground of the taskbar...
"Seemingly real". Really..?
Its obvious there is a major problem with the anti-aliasing for the fonts. Besides that, amazingly poor choice of background graphics.
This is one thing, and one thing alone, a Hit Piece. I expect the retail product to sport something similar to the zune asthetics, and I cant wait.
I can see the fear in the turtleneck wearing crowd, and I'm not surprised to see sabotaged screenies of winmo 6.5.
NW with sabotage, its running on old hardware apparently.. :-/
Still, winmo doesnt deserve to be bashed before it gets out the door, but bashing is what a mac fan does best. oh well, at least i can honestly say that i have a now-dead ipod 60gb and a mac slim keyboard(on my gaming rig) without bashing them too much.
I don't hate apple, I hate apple fanboys.
the bird....is looking.....at YOU
that picture is gonna be responsible for my nightmares tonight.
Congratulations, you've just been added to my list of annoying, blocked users on Engadget.
Anyone else? Here's a GreaseMonkey script for you!
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/36579
@Brad: thats the nicest gift I've ever received from someone on the internet!
That's a grey crowned crane, not a peacock.
Ha! Thanks. I'm going to update that!
Crane? At first glance I thought it was a dodo, as in "WinMo is as dead as a dodo".
6.5... no thanks I've now switched from my HTC WinMo 6.0 OS to an iPhone and would never go back.
Yep, Dodos are dead, because we ate them all.
Their succulent, tender meat... dripping with juices...