Microsoft announces Windows Marketplace partners, tweaked policies, designer WinMo 6.5 themes

Details are starting to come into focus on some of the finer points of Windows Mobile 6.5's launch later this year after February's announcement at MWC, and if you had to boil the news down to just two words, they'd be "pretty" and "support." As "pretty" goes, it's been announced that Microsoft has partnered up with Design Museum London and the Council of Fashion Designers of America to offer designer themes for 6.5-based devices -- colors, wallpaper, and the like -- with the first designs coming from fashion dude Isaac Mizrahi. If that's not good enough for ya, the company will be releasing a Theme Generator later this year that'll let you customize colors of UI elements on your device, pair it up with wallpaper culled from your own photo collection, and send the batch straight to your phone.

Over to the "support" front, over 25 companies will be announcing their full support for the Windows Marketplace at CTIA this week, including EA Mobile, Facebook (pictured), Gameloft, MySpace, Namco, Pandora, and Sling Media. To help improve the Marketplace's public image, Microsoft is tweaking some policies, too: developers will now be able to issue unlimited updates to their apps free of charge, and users will have up to 24 hours to "return" apps they don't like (very cool). Notably, Facebook's new app will be available in April, offering direct video uploads straight to your wall if you're into that sort of thing (you know who you are).

Finally, Microsoft's issued a clarification regarding upgrades from 6.1 to 6.5: devices that are already out in the marketplace with a minimum of 128MB of RAM and a 400MHz processor or better are theoretically capable of being upgraded -- it's all up to licensees to decide whether they want to go to the trouble of offering the upgrades to their customers. Let's hope, shall we?

Microsoft announces Windows Marketplace partners, tweaked policies, designer WinMo 6.5 themes

[harley3k Posted Mar 31st 2009 12:13AM]

looks sweet...

[applehateboy Posted Mar 31st 2009 12:15AM]

Excellent..!
The Support stuff is really really good.. LOVE IT

[Peter F Posted Mar 31st 2009 12:16AM]

WM 6.5 is really starting to shape up! I can't wait to see what they have for 7!

[loginatnine Posted Mar 31st 2009 12:19AM]

Kudos to MS for these policies revision, the unlimited update should have been there since the beginning but it's good to see it there. And the 24h return policy is also awesome!

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 31st 2009 1:10AM]

Who needs our OEMs? Check out these screens 8-) running on my Touch Pro.

http://picasaweb.google.com/tonyfl/Wmscreens#

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 31st 2009 2:23AM]

Yes, but will they get ActiveSync and the alarm working after all these years ...

[Jason Omega Posted Mar 31st 2009 9:10AM]

It doesn't work? That's weird. Seems like it works just fine on my Omnia.

[SoCoolCurt Posted Mar 31st 2009 9:40AM]

they both work but they do have some problems. like i know my phone won't sync if i have birthdays in people's contact information. it doesn't support that apparently so it just gives me an error and says it can't sync until i removed them.

[frauhottelmann Posted Mar 31st 2009 1:15PM]

Both works perfect for me, don't know what you're doing...

[siksik6 Posted Mar 31st 2009 4:12AM]

Typical MS I fear... too little, too late.

[Yankee Posted Mar 31st 2009 4:45AM]

Sweet, I'll be able to upgrade my Touch Pro to 6.5 (and hopefully 7 next year). HTC and at&t better offer the upgrade as soon as 6.5 comes out, I remember how long I had to wait to upgrade my original Blackjack from 5.0 to 6.0 it took a year after 6.0 was out... There's always gonna be the hacked ROMs, but I'd rather have the official thing.

[Level 5 Posted Mar 31st 2009 2:23PM]

I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that one. Every smartphone I've ever had has suffered from carrier bloatware and other crap I didn't want. Luckily, kitchen ROMs to the rescue!

[smover Posted Mar 31st 2009 8:11AM]

wow !
i found myself thinking : WinMo is getting hot !!
I was thinking of getting a new symbian or android phone, and now WinMo 6.5 may be a competitor too... it seems that people at redmond are waking up?!

[pimpzilla Posted Mar 31st 2009 3:21PM]

I've been running the latest WM 6.5 Beta for a few days now on my Touch Pro. Besides the Isaac Mizrahi theme, there are Vera Wang, Rock and Republic, and Ron Arad designed themes also. It's really shaping up nicely and is a much bigger update than originally eluded to.

[pimpzilla Posted Mar 31st 2009 3:33PM]

Oh I almost forgot Dianne Von Furstenberg.

[Chrinik Posted Mar 31st 2009 5:12PM]

I guess it looks good, but that's probably the extent of it.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 31st 2009 10:48PM]

Not a big improvement over 6.1. Hopefully they will get WM 7 right - innovative.