While the world patiently awaits the release of the first
Windows Mobile 6.5 device, it seems like the devs behind the software are warming to the fact that folks love those touchscreens. While existing versions of WinMo -- not to mention early builds of WinMo 6.5 --have focused on switching between screens via clickable tabs, a new ROM pictured over at
PPCGeeks shows a subtle but significant change. If you'll notice, the screen on the right would prefer that you swipe left or right to get from 'Version' to 'Copyrights' or 'Device ID,' which should absolutely delight fans of the OS who also prefer touchscreen-based phones. Now, if only we could get Microsoft to push this stuff out onto a
shipping handset, we'd really have a reason to cheer.
[Via
1800PocketPC, thanks Mark]
posted Jul 19th 2009 12:18PM
Well, this is great news. I'm getting the Touch Pro2 next week, and the experience should be much better once 6.5 comes out.
6.1 taught me to be a pro at touch screens because of the level of difficulty, i thank windows/resistives for that
No it won't - 6.5 sucks. The version of TouchFlo on the Touch Pro2 is so good, that you don't need the Windows Shell much. Everything from the control panel to the program manager has been replaced by TouchFlo. Windows Mobile 6.5 brings nothing decent to the OS.
Do you even know what you just said?
I'll give you a hint. There are these things called Graphic User Interfaces, and then there are these things called Operating Sytems. You tell me which is which.
@Scooby: To each his own, but since moving to 6.5 I've been able to completely dismiss TouchFlo3D. Couldn't take that swiping anymore. The new home screen is awesome and utterly beautiful
@Mike C
There is a great Windows Mobile app out right now that actually blurs the line between an application and an operating system. It's called Kinoma Play and it's pretty awesome. It's a steal for only $30 and if you can't afford that then consider one of the TrialPay options they offer on their site...kinoma.com. I'm currently running it on my Sprint HTC Touch Diamond and Palm Treo Pro. I'm hoping the developers at Kinoma decide to integrate it even further with the settings of the device and not just content. The launch function within it is a good start and tells me that they might be interested in going in such a direction. Kinoma Play is by far the best Windows Mobile app I've even seen. Give it a try and see for yourself.
Personally, I'm liking the combination of TouchFlo(2D) and 6.5 in a custom ROM. The Titanium Panel isn't as useful as HTCs GUI (yet), but this ROM (by NFSFAN) makes use of 6.5's menus and kinetic scrolling which is snappier than HTCs add-ons.
I'm sure they will at some point.
It's progress. I like WM, really I do, but WM6.5 won't cut it in this current smartphone battle.
Why?
Seriously. It looks OK and a much needed improvement.
WM is terrible! It's the worst you could ever run on a phone!
@Andrew12
So are you going to give reasons or just make unfounded statements that make you look like a dick?
As a windows mobile user, I can back up that it's a terrible OS for a touchscreen phone. Most of the buttons seem to be designed to be touched by stylus. For example, the little OK in the top right hand corner is the universal way to save settings and close out of apps. In order to quickly change settings for volume or your wireless networks you need to somehow manage to click on their respective icon next to it. I'm often better off navigating through Program Files to their settings.
Look, everyone knows, even winmo fans admit that its a terribly outdated os, in virtually every way.
why anyone would choose/pay (if they weren't lumbered with it by their business like a large number of winmo users) to use it is beyond me.
In my opinion, Winmo is untouchable at least until 7 is released. But by that time the other modern os's, osx, android, rim even nokia will have upped their game even more.
This is coming from a ex-diamond user.
Um Winmo 6.5 is completely 'touchable', and works absolutely great on my diamond. The home screen is the large zune-like interface which is easy to use and decently fluid. Now 6.1 was not great for touch, but that's why companies like HTC made TouchFlo.
I'm not interested in what 'everyone knows' I want to know why WinMo 6.5 isn't an acceptable touchscreen OS specifically.
Now does anyone who has actually used it have anythign to add?
How fat are your fingers, or is your hand eye coordination that bad?
My problems with WinMo are far beyond the UI. The UI... I kind of like I suppose. I accept it. Its the fact that there are always niggling little problems with everything.
Preface this with the fact that i've had 4 WinMo phones, 1 Samsung, 1 Motorola, and 2 HTC...
1. No matter what CPU is in it, after about a month or two, it runs slow as can be.
2. I can have NO apps open, and over 15mb of free RAM out of 18 or so, and I try and start the camera... which promptly tells me that there is not enough free memory, close some open apps.
3. Phantom alarms. I'd set an alarm for say... 7am. Even if I deleted that alarm and set another, I'd CONSTANTLY still get the alarm going off at 7am until I did a hard reboot on it.
4. Randomly the web browser just won't actually do anything. It opens up and attempts to connect and it just doesn't work. Like the data connection isn't there, even though my ActiveSync works fine, my Palringo connection works just fine... just not Pocket IE.
5. Battery life is terribly inconsistent. Using the same work load, sometimes it lasts 3 days on a charge, other times 7 hours. Does not seem to be phone related as it did the same thing on all 4 phones. Seems like maybe the data connection gets stuck and is constantly doing.... something.
I switched 6 months ago to an almost 3 years old phone in the Blackberry 8330 Curve... and all of my problems have gone away. I added AstraSync to cover my enterprise exchange connectivity, and this phone is awesome. Upgrading to a Tour shortly. I might consider revisiting WinMo once 7 hits, but 6.x can die in a fire.
@ Mr Anderson "Now does anyone who has actually used it have anythign to add?"
More of a question have you tried android or osx mobile? Do you know what your missing?
Hows a mobile OS thats 90% of which was designed in the 90's doing for you, still matching the windows 98 on your comp by any chance?
@Mark: As a WM user/constant ROM loader/occasional personal cook:
1. One of the big problems is that a great deal of WM users are using this thing on a "way too small" 2.8" screen like the TP and Diamond. This alone assists in killing the finger friendliness.
2. If you are not using the notification enhancement from HTC, selecting individual icons on the top is effing hard.
3. Combo boxes are still too small to make them very finger friendly. What they did in those screenshots is the right idea to rectify the situation, but they could have at least added a little style to them.
4. The tabs on the bottom are often not reskinned, depending on the application you are using. And even if they were, those tabs are too small to access, especially on a 2.8" screen. The above pictures help, and 6.5's introduction of tab swipes helps quite a bit, but this interaction isnt as apparent to another user. Having the Zune-like top tabs make it much more obvious, but curved tabs are not the solution.
5. The improvement to File Explorer made that application much easier to use, but on a screen the size of the TP/Diamond, it needs to go further.
6. Windows Media Player has seen absolutely NO improvement. That is unacceptable, especially so close to release. They better have a new media player ready at launch.
7. Tree's are still unusable. Hitting the "expand" icon is still luck of the draw.
8. Office apps have yet to see any improvements at all. Outlook has gotten much easier to use, but it still needs a facelift like no other. On the other hand, Excel and Word are still difficult to use with no attempts at all to make them finger friendly. Even Word has not introduced kinetic scrolling from 6.5. You have to drag with the scroll bars. And dont get me started with the Bing app. What an afterthought.
9. The scroll bars are still too small. All they have done is re-skin them, but didnt change their core capability. I would prefer no scroll bars unless a finger travels to the edge, or when you flick scroll, a large grabable component shows up for you to scroll through. I know you can enlarge the scroll bars in Advanced Config, but at the expense of screen real estate on a screen already so small, thats unacceptable.
10. Tasks has seen no improvement to make individual tasks larger and easier to select, and the command buttons up top have seen no improvement. They are still extremely difficult to interact with.
11. The close button/ok button have grown in size, but their target area has not changed very much, making them still difficult to hit.
12. Check boxes are still too small.
I know that its current state should not be its final state once its released, so ill accept some of these components missing as this being a beta. But if what im using now is what is released in September, then I am truly disappointed.
Forgot a few:
13. Standard WM Volume Control has not been changed, and is one of the most difficult controls to use.
14. Sliders are unchanged, with no attempt to make them more finger friendly. They are a pain in the ass to use. Unacceptable.
15. Text boxes are still too small. The target area needs to be larger, like a larger selectable region around the text box, or the textbox itself being larger.
16. Text selection is not finger friendly at all. There has been no attempt to make it easier to use with a finger. None.
17. Calendar has seen absolutely no improvement. Swipes are great, but do I have to swipe 3 times to get to Wednesday when I can select it up top? Make those damn controls larger.
18. Adding a calendar or a contact is still an ordeal that I like to avoid, which is why I maintain all my contacts out of WM because its such a pain in the ass. HTC with TF3D2 has the right idea of how to handle those kinds of components. Its sad Microsoft couldn't get that written. Hell, it seems like they have been doing absolutely nothing for quite a few months now. And I have pretty much updated to nearly every 6.5 build that has come out.
Wow, er Ruben, have to agree with every single one of those. Thats why i switched
@james
Mobile OS X, yes, Android not yet. I intend to try out the Hero when it's available in the UK. To be honest the UI on the iPhone is nice but it has some really stupid bits in it - the inability to create sub folders for apps springs to mind.
@Ruben
Thanks for the response. I agree with some of what you say but a lot of the issues seem tied to small screen sizes. One wonders how the iPhone or G1's UI would cope with 2.8" or smaller screen as part of the issue with capacitive screens is that they need to be fairly big to improve accuracy. There is no reason - yet - to suppose that 6.5 on a 3.5" screen will be unusable.
I'm not currently a WinMo user myself - I use a Nokia 5800 at present because it suits my needs - but I detest all the usual nonsense from people who haven't used WinMo 6.5 on a large screened phone. Perhaps when we have a few production models in place we can really judge how user friendly it is.
I've been running an early build of 6.5 on my 2 YO Touch now for 3 months. Here are my PERSONAL experience - which contradicts Rueben's:
1. Maybe once a day I select something on accident. 6.5 made huge strides in being finger friendly.
2. Never have a problem selecting the alarm or envelope notification. On my build you select anything on the top bar and you are brought to a new menu with larger icons. Piece of cake.
3. Haven't run into any combo boxes that are problematic.
4. Tabs on the bottom are easily selected. Some programs (like MobiPocket) obviously haven't been reskinned and are a challenge to select. However, for apps built for 6.5 selecting tabs is a breeze.
5. No problems with file explorer. However, I use Resco primarily so not a lot of experience with the default explorer.
6. I don't play music on my device (I have a Zune to do that). That said, you are probably right that media player stinks. Good thing is there are tons of other media players available.
7. The tree + and - boxes are a little difficult to select with Explorer. Not terrible though.
8. Agreed that the Office apps need a refresh. Still better than what the competition has to offer though. The Bing app (I'm assuming you mean the app that followed Live) is fine. Directions, gas prices, movie times, etc all work fine. Not the best app but I use when Google Maps gets wonky at times.
9. Scroll bars - this seems like a gripe about your specific device. You can make them larger (as you point out) but then it cuts into your screen real estate. Personally I don't use them. I'm sure 7 will do away with them completely as people use kinetic scrolling more.
10. Same as it has always been. You select the far, upper right icon to bring up running apps. Simple to use and intuitive.
11. No problems hitting the close/ok buttons.
12. No problems with the check boxes.
13. I use the hard button volume slider. Not sure what else you want it to do?
14. What sliders are you talking about?
15. Text boxes seem perfectly fine. Again, not sure specifically what you are referring to.
16. Text selection works much like it has in the past. While not as great as a mouse, I don't see it being any more difficult that highlighting text on an iPhone or on Android.
17. Calendar shows in 30 minute increments - previously 6.1 showed only hour chunks. Navigation could be easier but I use the calendar all the time and don't see it as an issue. My only serious gripe is that I switch out to month view all the time. Right now that means I have to open up today, select day, then week, then month (or use the menu button, select view then month)
18. I agree that contact / calendar management is best handled outside of the device. Of course, this is true for every other mobile device as well. It just makes too much sense to pull your data from Outlook or Google or Facebook, etc. Who wants to type a bunch of contacts into their BB or G1? Typing them on a computer (or downloading them) makes soooo much more sense.
19. Finally, as for Microsoft doing nothing - we are all working on pre-releases. When was the last time iPhone users were given a pre-release to play around with 6 months before an official release? Give the guys in Redmond a break.
Windows 6.5 is a very slick UI. The panel concept on the Today screen is slick looking and useful. In a few seconds I have access to 90% of the core functionality of the phone. That's a good UI. It may not have the fancy transitions of an iPhone but it is more efficient. Really, it seems like most of your gripes are rooted in hardware. Having a high res 2.8" screen (which BTW is the same as mine) does make it more difficult since things are smaller. However, I am perfectly happy with the proportion of the UI elements. My guess is that you won't see screens smaller than 3" going forward on WinMo devices.
And while I think 6.5 is nice, remember, this is just a warm up for 7. I think MS is throwing out features to see what people like and don't like. Overall, I would give 6.5 a rating of 9. By way of reference I had an Android device for 3 months and have played with enough iPhones to log in easily 2 months worth of experience. I prefer 6.5 to all of them.
I am no Microsoft hater, they are indirectly responsible for the bread on my table. I am a .NET developer, and I think they have many excellent server/enterprise products, and Windows 7/Office 2xxx/Visual Studio 2010 should greatly improve their client sofware.
Anyways, As a long-time smartphone user and now developer, I can attest to the fact that Windows mobile needs a major makeover. Although the CE kernel is quite good, Windows mobile components, libraries, and the interface is very antiquated, having been built around the needs and user paradigm of last decade. The current WinMo interface is a disjointed labyrinth of menus, with tiny GUI elements that require a stylus input. Current attempts from manufacturers to implement a touch-friendly layer over the top do help, but once you are past the app launcher you are back to stylus hell. And they are no replacement for a native touch oriented interface.
Similarly, the interface is built on the ancient pre-OpenGL GDI graphics system, which is slow, inefficient, and doesn't natively support hardware graphics acceleration --- A primary reason screen redraw can be sluggish. Web browsers especially need hardware graphics support for fast zooming and panning, which is precisely what makes the Palm Pre and iPhone have excellent browsers.
Another major issue with Windows mobile is the fact that it is built for maximum compatibility. While this may be a good thing for older device support, it really holds it back from taking advantage of modern performance optimizations. The compiler for Windows mobile can only target up to the ARMv5 instruction set, and doesn't include native support for a FP unit. So while it can use the raw processing power of modern ARM cores, it cannot natively take advantage of new, optimized instructions in ARMv6/ARMv7 nor use SIMD units or DSPs.
Overall, what it comes down to is that it is very hard for manufacturers to create a fast, responsive, hardware optimized Windows mobile 6.x device. I give props to HTC for doing much to overcome this, although their choice to implement graphics acceleration drivers in early devices was BS. For now, manufacturers would do well to use fast CPUs like Snapdragon or OMAP3 to help to overcome the software limitations.
All that said, there is definitely hope on the horizon. I for one am hoping Microsoft really knocks it out of the park with the all new Windows Mobile 7. I would LOVE to have a powerful, responsive, and touch-friendly device similar to the iPhone 3GS with a modern OS and UI, and which natively supports Windows Presentation Foundation and .NET 3.5+.
That said, if WinMo 7 is underwhelming, I think Android is really going to take off.
@bjsguess:
1. Besides the expansion of selectable items like in file explorer and the kintetic scrolling, they have done very little from 6.1 to improve components. The menu is improved, but HTC did a much better job improving menus in WM than Microsoft did.
2. Your build has an HTC product to help you out. While I like WM for the fact that you can introduce things to make your experience better, its still a fact that by default, you have to peg individual icons to select those components.
3. On a 2.8" screen, I find myself having to aim with the nail of my thumb to select items from a combo box.
4. Same problem. With a large number of tabs, I have to aim with the nail of my thumb.
5. I use a Zune too to listen to music because my phone is so inept at the task (not all Microsofts fault. HTC is the primary culprit here). And im only talking about what is included with the device, not what you can get. Im talking about what Microsoft has provided, and Windows Media Player is a joke.
8. Go into categories and select something that introduces a scroll bar. Thats right. No flick scrolling. You have to use the scroll bar. I mean, come on!
10. No, that only exists because of HTC Task Manager. By default, you get no task manager. And I wasnt talking about Task Manager, but about Tasks, you know completed and pending tasks "tasks".
13. How about if you want to reduce the ringer but keep the system volume up? If you dont have the HTC Volume installed, you have to use the horrible built-in volume popup.
14. That default volume control is an example of unrepaired sliders. For another example, go into Power settings and adjust the backlight. The only way to fine-tune the settings is to use the nail of your thumb, or better yet, a stylus. I find myself too often using the D pad on my TP to change settings on sliders, and that is not finger friendly at all.
Listen, im not complaining about the OS. I personally use it and will continue to use it because I see no need to choose another OS. Im just answering a question that Mark asked and I answered based on what Microsoft gives you. Im well aware you can get a hundred replacements for certain things, but this is a discussion of what Microsoft provides you in terms of finger friendly components, and I believe it is not enough.
Look, we can come revisit this discussion when WM7 comes out. If you think everything is OK as it is and Microsoft does as well, then we should expect very few components to change from their current form, but I can bet you a large sum of money that the way these components currently exist will not exist in that form come WM7. Text areas will be larger, there will be a new way to make text selection, combo boxes will be much larger, and other components will be much more finger friendly.
Since ive been cooking fresh 6.5 builds without any assistant applications from HTC, i have had a chance to experience 6.5 the way Microsoft intended, and it is a poor experience in terms of finger friendliness. Thank goodness I can install OEM's to fix a lot of things, which is a huge strength of WM. But to turn a blind eye to 6.5's shortcomings (and those are shortcomings that a lot of power users acknowledge, like loosley_coupled outlined above) is just being naive.
It's good to see these small changes. I'm just hoping that Windows Mobile 7, does a good job at revamping everything.
lol, revamp is a kind word.
More like back to the drawing board.. They need something totally new to wow people back
They do need much more significant changes to "appeal" to the up-and-coming smartphone crowd. But even the earlier builds of 6.5 (such as the one i run) had much more finger friendly actions. All settings where there are tabs, the tabs could be changed by swiping left/right, same for calendar days, and the WMP. TouchFLO is a hog and takes up too much space on the screen for each tab of it for my liking personally. The "Titanium" homescreen from 6.5 has made me drop any other 3rd party UI i've used. I implore people to try 6.5 if they can find a ROM for their device, and decide for yourselves. I don't think i've seen anyone badmouth it after using it, besides the general bugs and the like, but we're running beta software at best, so its expected.
Good, now maybe we'll see some capacitive devices to go with it?
No chance before wm 7.0, that requires the sorts of rewrites that Microsoft do not seem to want to do at this stage.
@Jonathan
1) I'm in college. Third year to be specific.
2) Resisitve screens are capable of multi touch. http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/02/19/stantums-mind-blowing-multitouch-interface-on-video/
Anything your capacitive screen can do, my resisitve screen can do better.
If they truly want to be "finger friendly" they'll need to ditch those resistive touchscreens. Bigger buttons can only do so much. They need to stop trickling out little updates and just release WM7 already. As much as I love the the openness and customizability of WM, I had to move onto WebOS, because WM just seems about 5 years behind everyone else right now. While there have been minor changes, the GUI really isn't that much different than WM2003.
Whats wrong with resistive? When I'm in school and I got my head down it would be nice if I could work my iPhone with my pen top. Or better yet in those cold winter months when I'd rather keep my gloves on.
Either way when the Touch Pro2 hits AT&T I'm getting it.
I really hope they don't drop the resistive screen. If they are going to do anything with captive I hope the hardware side thinks of an inexpensive way to do captive+resistive input. Stylus input will still be nice nice since all new WM7 devices will have the 800x480 requirement (theirs actually 2 resolutions, but the other one is even larger).
If companies change around their hardware a little bit it would work out for the best.
where u at?, the benefit of allowing a high school student to sneak a text with a pen cap or allow a user to use a phone in the winter without taking off their gloves outside isn't worth the benefit of having a capacitive touch screen 24/7, 365. It is better. Especially, but not only, for opening the door to the world of multitouch.
isn't worth sacrificing the benefit*
windows mobile is garbage. It's like they're incapable of understanding that people want something that looks good. WM looks like windows 2000 on a cell phone. If they put the zune hd interface on phones they would have a smash hit OS. But they won't, because they hate us.
Microsoft merged the Zune team with the windows mobile group awhile back. The WinMo 7 UI is rumored to be completely based of the Zune team's work and even the new Zune HD will be running a stripped down version of WinMo 7.
My WinMo 6.5 ROM has a Zune-like interface that's the standard home screen, but honestly I just turn on TouchFlo. Now if Microsoft could buy out HTC's UI-design team and make TouchFlo the standard WinMo UI, maybe people would actually see that WinMo is actually capable of looking elegant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g713uXrUNc
I have a more recent build of 6.5 on my htc ppc-6800 than the one shown in the video and it runs really smoothly.
Meaning the end of the stylus finally? and no more tiny X button that you can't actually press with your finger on the first try?
The X I didn't mind so much, it's the damn battery and speaker icons that I always have to try pressing several times. I just want to put the damn thing on vibrate, not perform neurosurgery!
I just use the hard button on my winmo phone to close programs and my finger for everything else.
I, for one, will mourn the loss of the stylus...
Wow.. this article is disappointing. No offense guys, but swiping to switch tabs is probably the LEAST significant feature of the 6.1-6.5 upgrade. I also wonder if this is an add-on of some sort, as I've used pre-releases of everything from build 21925 (pictured) to 23004 builds and they do not have this feature yet. Seriously though, what about the large changes across the entire OS?
- Flick scrolling menus
- Large softkey menus
- Dedicated notifications by tapping the top bar, no longer a pop-up
- SPEED! ALL 6.5 roms I've tried start on my Raphael in under 15 seconds soft-reset to Manila
- RAM usage, ALL 6.5 roms use less RAM on my device, and for some builds the difference is major.
- Titanium Home Screen. For those that don't like Manila, now they have yet another extremely solid and well thought out way to get around the OS that's quick, finger friendly, and original looking.
- New Dialer. Larger finger friendly buttons, slide to unlock/ignore.
- New Alarm System, again with slide to snooze/dismiss.
I could go on and on and on about how much better 6.5 is than 6.1. I'm really disappointed that most tech blogs don't mention these things. Most even are ballsy enough to say 6.5 is nothing but a new "skin" on the existing OS.
Sidebar, what page from PPCG is that on? That thread is over 600 pages.
Unfortunately this has to be specifically enabled on a per-applet basis. And if you try to enable it on a ROM that doesn't support it, the applet completely fails to load. You can read more at www.nuerom.com
So they have now made it a fully "touchable" os vs half the time touch screen, the other half poking around with the stylus? To me, winmo on the last device I used, was a horrible miss-match. You never knew when to touch the screen or use the stylus, its horrible
-Dedicated notifications by tapping the top bar, no longer a pop-up
They look like popups to me. They are no easier to use than on 6.1. Are you talking about a single notifications area with all of them grouped? Because thats a product of HTC.
- New Alarm System, again with slide to snooze/dismiss.
Specifying new alarms has not changed, and is still a pain in the ass to do. Even with all that extra empty space at the bottom, they have not expanded the size of the components to make them easier to hit. And the Snooze/Dismiss assumes you locked your phone. If you didn't, then its the same stupid notification. Read below.
- New Dialer. Larger finger friendly buttons, slide to unlock/ignore.
The dialer is barely bigger than 6.1. Again, are you using an HTC dialer which is actually larger. The stock one is still small. And if using the 6.5 dialer, having the slide to answer/ignore assumes you lock your phone. Microsoft doesnt even have an auto-lock when hitting the power button unless you are willing to have to enter a password every time. You have to install a program to lock it for you when you hit the power button. Unacceptable.
"Specifying new alarms has not changed, and is still a pain in the ass to do."
I do mine in the Rhodium Manila.. which to me is much easier than the stock WM dialog, which unfortunately is still there.
"They look like popups to me. They are no easier to use than on 6.1. Are you talking about a single notifications area with all of them grouped? Because thats a product of HTC."
Hmm.. yeah all my ROM flashes have had this HTC grouping. It is readily available without much of searching.
"The dialer is barely bigger than 6.1. Again, are you using an HTC dialer which is actually larger. The stock one is still small. And if using the 6.5 dialer, having the slide to answer/ignore assumes you lock your phone. Microsoft doesnt even have an auto-lock when hitting the power button unless you are willing to have to enter a password every time. You have to install a program to lock it for you when you hit the power button. Unacceptable."
Yes, I do use the HTC dialer, mainly because of the haptic that's built into it. I didn't really have a problem with the stock one however. That said, I've got several years of WM use under my belt, I'm used to the stock size. Since I use an HTC device, the larger dialer was in my stock 6.1 ROM. Keep in mind the auto-unlock bug, is just that.. a bug with the Tachi SIP. It's not present in all ROMS (NFSFAN's 6.5 0104 for instance), if you find one with say, the stock 6.1 CDMA SIPs, this problem is also not there. Also, the Tachi SIP roms have the Blackstone slide to answer built in and active regardless of whether or not the phone is locked, which I like. Sometimes pulling the phone out of my pocket ends up in me hitting the hardware keys anyway, so that's a welcome addition to me.
Personally, people can bitch about 6.1 vs 6.5 as much as they want, but the bottom line to me is that 6.5 is a complete replacement for 6.1. There is no reason to go back to 6.1 after you've had 6.5.
With the dialer, I wasnt talking about the unlock bug.
Assume you are not using HTC dialer and are using the 6.5 stock dialer.
MS introduced the slide to answer, which is part of the new 6.5 lock screen. If your phone is not locked at the time, when you get a call, it shows up as a notification just like a text message or a voicemail. If you have your phone locked, and a call comes in, you get the new slide to answer ignore dialog.
The problem is that the slide to answer dialog only shows up if the phone is locked. MS doesnt have an auto-lock on standby feature in the phone. They require you specify a password to auto-lock the device. Otherwise, you have to install a cab to auto-lock when you press the power button. Why isn't that a simple checkbox provided by MS? That is too much of a core function not to be.
The fact that I can install stuff to make my experience better is a really good feature of WM. The fact that I NEED to is not. MS should be doing better with their default implementations at this stage. Some of the things they have done with WM in general is on the verge of unacceptable.
NFSFAN's roms are pretty decent, but I switched to cooking my own when his rom wasnt compatible with some games. Its a common problem, and depends on the SYS used. Currently using 23007 6.5
those are just clickable tabs in disguise.
Don't know why people dog WinMo. After using it for a few years, even going to prettier interfaces like Web OS or iPhone, I miss a ton of things WinMo phones can do that most phones are still playing catch up on. Sure, it ain't the most elegant solution, but it GETS THE FREAKIN' JOB DONE. Sometimes that's all you need! It is the most mature mobile OS from a utilitarian standpoint.
I couldn't agree with you more, I really couldn't. But I do know why people shit on WM like they do. The biggest reason, is that stock ROMs suck. Man are they just awful. Slow, buggy, not stable, built in crapware, etc. etc. So once the user discovers custom ROMs, that's where it gets really really love/hate. Which ROM do you choose? Which apps do you want cooked in? Which is fastest? Most stable? Sometimes that can get really frustrating. I know on my Apache, the first time I ever did flashes was really a pain in my ass. Now 3 years later on my Touch Pro things are alot less daunting and I know what to look for. What's the point in all this?
A lot of people want a device they're happy with from the get-go. Personally, I want a device I can customize to my every need. Not everyone has the patience for this, and thusly they think WinMo is grossly inferior, and of course for their needs it most certainly is. My device is tweaked to no end, most of the speed tweaks for the Raphael I have done, I use things like AdvanedConfig and DiamonTweak. The end result is a Juicy 8 090705 based device that boots in 20 seconds or less, and outguns almost every other smartphone in the world in raw speed. Coupled with what I feel is the best mobile browser in the world right now (opera mobile 9.7 beta), I have a device that I'm 100% happy with right now. But it took a few months to get it there, and as I said, not everyone has the patience for this. Luckily I do :)
They dog on it because it's made by Microsoft and therefore can be neither 'cool' nor 'good'.
Which is sad really. Every company has it brilliant stuff and its turkeys.
Please Mark, tell us about Microsoft's "brilliant stuff."
I'll be snoozing while you think of something...
Gee. I didn't know Windows Mobile was still around!
lol, well it has barely changed for years so you haven't missed much!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ..... You need to re-design the UI from scratch Microsoft!.
You have heard of WinMo 7 right?? I am guessing there is a much bigger team developing that right now. 6.5 is a stepping stone along the way hence the decimal upgrade. They weren't going to fully wait until 7 was ready until they released a new version. even more people would have move on to something else if they did that.
Ooh, the greater-than and less-than arrows are so classy.
Who the hell needs graphics anyway? I hope they use [X] instead of actual checkboxes.
Great job, Microsoft. That's sticking it to Apple!
WOW! I LOVE THE '>>' AND '
WOW! I LOVE THE GREATER THAN AND LESS THAN SIGNS FOR INDICATING FORWARD AND BACKWARDS. IT'S JUST LIKE MY TRS-80 MODEL II DOES IT. UNFORTUNATELY I HAD TO TYPE THIS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE MY TRS-80 DOESN'T SUPPORT LOWERCASE.
(It's not as funny when engadget truncates your post because they treat your 'less than' signs as HTML tags. Actually, it's not funny at all anymore.)
I would be so happy if the rest of the engadget web page below your comment was broken.
Damn you html tag removers.
I don't have the patience for Windows Mobile. There are so many annoying bugs and issues.
I had a WinMo phone and I couldn't access my Exchange email from it because of a security certificate issue. Unlike a web browser, it just doesn't offer you the option to accept a certificate that it has problems with. The result: no email access.
I switched to an iPhone and it connected to my company's Exchange server with no problem at all. MS Exchange email on the iPhone works great!
This is the difference between Microsoft and others: when it comes to Windows Mobile, there is no attention to detail. Funny how phones from other companies provide better access to Microsoft email servers than Microsoft-powered phones do.
Every WM PDA, or smartphone I have owned since Pcoket PC 2002 has worked flawlessly with exchange server on the first try. Maybe you had a lemon device which is possible from any manufacturer.
Other than the small finger unfriendliness of WinMo, I've had no problems.
Exchange, installing whatever apps I want, anything. I really consider my phone a small laptop.
as regards to speed I've had my phone for over a year now and it's still fast.
Also if you get tired of regular interface you can always get a shell.
Resistive screens are great. (they are accurate because the have to be and I don't need a special stylus to use it)
People who say Win Mo is a horrible mobile OS don't know what they are talking about. Period. Sure the iphone is good in it's own way but come to think about it. WinMo v. Iphone is almost exactly like Windows PC v. Mac. If you worked with both and really know how to bring out the best in the software then you'll see they are both good in their own way.
It is not a good Touchscreen OS. And I do know what im talking about.
It, on the other hand, is a fantastic and fast non-touchscreen OS.
The greater majority of negative remarks towards Winmo are from past users. "I had winmo phone..." "I have had 4 Winmo phones".
We all have had our disdain for winmo in the past and present, both fans and antagonist. Yet people talk about a new version that hasn't even been released yet like its relevant! Quite frankly there will be some that will not be happy or conceding with ANYTHING Microsoft releases, thats their prerogative. Microsoft is a publicly traded/owned company with shareholders...they can't appease every whim of a user simply because it's not like another os. iphone os is media-centric... if that's important to you. WinMo has and I believe will always be a business-first OS. Just today I saw a Nokia ad on the side of a webpage for the N97...it listed Games first, followed by Email as features. As a person trying to be as efficient and productive running a small business...games, taking pictures, videos, blowing into the mic to see bubbles appear on the screen, and other useless app crap... is the farthest thing from my mind when on the go with my cellphone. When I manage the office on the go...I will grab a WinMo (TP2 soon) to Get'r done. (Pre for the interim)
I too am a fan of WM. The other OS's don't come close to offering the ability to customize it to your liking, and the business type apps for WM are stable, and mature. I have a 2003 era Toshiba e830 PDA that I still use daily because I enjoy it so much. Stylus is very rarely used since with a 4" VGA screen, even the standard the WM interface is finger friendly. Same for the HP210 which also has a 4" VGA screen. As someone in an earlier post noted, many of the finger friendly complaints are due to the small screen size, not necessarily the interface. If I don't like the interface, I can change it. Mobile Shell 3.0, and Touch Flo 3D are as glitzy as the iPhone if that is you thing. Touch Flo is free with new devices, and Mobile Shell is about $30. Try customizing the interface for the iPhone? Yes, I find the iPhone's interface boring, and would like to change it. I don't own an iPhone (too feature deficient), but did purchase an iPod touch so I could gain extensive experience using mobile OS X, and mobile Safari (both overated IMO).
For a little $, I can change WM to my liking while keeping the mutitasking, mature business 3rd party apps, native exchange support, an accessible file system, and real keyboards etc.. No matter how much money I spend, I cannot add a replaceable battery, keyboard, multitasking (without jailbreaking), accessible file system, and apps that compete with the built-in apps to my iPhone or iPod touch. No thanks.
You also hear a lot about how great mobile Safari is. Yes, it does a nice job on multi-column pages that don't use Flash. But, I prefer the mobile web on devices with a < 7" screen since all the required panning (just another name for horizontal scrolling) for the full web gets old quickly for me. Moblie Safari is at the bottom of the heap when it comes to displaying single column webpages that are not iPhone specific, or have not had the viewport META tag added to the page. In portrait mode, the page is unreadable, in landscape mode, you are lucky if you have a 9 point font. You can always use the pinch zoom to enlarge the text, but unfortunately, the text does not word wrap again. Try viewing Craigslist (one of the top 10 English language websites) on the iPhone or iPod touch. If you pinch zoom to a comfortable text size, you are horrizontally scrolling to read each line which gets old after about 2 lines, and is the bane of web surfing. I have found Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, and NetFront to be the equal of mobile Safari for rendering full multicolumn web pages, and Opera / NetFront to be far superior to mobile Safari for displaying older single column web pages which were not customized for the iPhone. About 80%+ of my mobile web viewing is the mobile web, and the much maligned Pocket IE does the best job of rendering mobile single column pages. For the other 20% or so, I use Opera, or NetFront. Of course, there is also the proxy based Skyfire which renders just about anything you come across on the web including Flash.
This.
Previous phone (SX66) screen was about 3.5 inches. Even on the Pocket PC 2003 OS it was a joy to use, no stylus needed. Things changed for the 2.8 inch VGA screen devices like Tilt, TyTn. The OS was not designed for that. Add whatever third party interface I feel like that week (though I don't need to) and it's all good again.
Ditto on the browsers.. people make a big deal out of seeing a full web page on a 3 inch screen, which is ridiculous. Single column rendering is appropriate for a 3 inch mobile device.
WM was a very very competitive OS until people got spoiled by the iPhone UI. It still remains relevant because for years it has always supported the newest features and tech (A2DP, GPS, 3G - and iphone just got these). WM 6.5 is actually a great improvement and is a good bridge to WM 7 when it comes out. It has satisfied me until them. If I had a larger screen (3.5"+) I would be perfectly happy.
The one thing I find interesting is that WM is probably the most open of the phone OSes, even the "open source" G1 that has Google constantly finding ways to stop people from rooting it. I have never seen MS try to lock down the OS so people cant flash roms or the radio. That is one of the main reasons why the OS still continues to be so huge.
Make no mistake, Apple has been integral in woking up MS (along with Palm and Google). First Windows 7, then WM 7 will both be very good OSes when they come out.
Competition like this only benefits us...
Arg, typos.
*then*
*waking*
As someone who flashes their phone entirely too much, it may be worth noting, WM 6.5 still hasn't been officially released. Complaints about it not living up to something are ridiculous when it is a significant upgrade, but a filler before 7.
For all of you shitting on WMO, I can understand some of your gripes. Most of the issues with WMO are do to to the OEM's who add their garbage and do not change the page pool to a decent size, which in return turn the phone into a paperweight. This includes ATT, Tmobile, Spint, Verizon, etc... I cook up my own roms and must say that I never get any slow downs on my Touch Pro or Hermes HTC phones. I am running 6.5 on both with the 23004 base and its smokin' fast. For those hating on windows mobile I suggest at least giving http://www.ppcgeeks.com a try. There are many chiefs over there which you can flash another rom to your device. Give it a shot and then if you still are hating WMO, well then don't buy a phone with it.
Just my thoughts,
Churma
+1.
I run Juicy8 090705 and I've changed the PP to 24MB. The result is a smoking fast phone with close to zero lag and stylus reset to manila in 20 seconds give or take. As I mentioned in the previous post though, most folks don't have the patience to mess with roms.
And I know this will sound fanboyish but once you've used the web (in any browser) on any VGA or WVGA phone, you'll wonder how 480x360 is considered acceptable.
For one thing I would like to comment on the wm bashing. Coming from android, blackberry and iphone, I can honestly say OS varies on the needs of the user. Where it was once a dominated wm market just a little over 5 years ago, have led to several other manufacturers building OSes to revolutionize a finger friendly. That being said, what windows mobile does really well is the ability to give users the options to customize the operating system to their hearts content! I have to say that in itself is the most impressive part of the OS. The communities available for windows mobile are quite vast and anytime you need help with a question, the average user will get it fast.
With some complaints from memory locks and leaks on windows mobile, to be honest, many of the devices will lock because there just isn't enough ram (as of 2008 htc had devices under ram with the exception of the htc kaiser). And to be completely honest, out of the box, the devices were so underperformed it wasn't funny. But then, switching to blackberry and even iphone, I have even worse experiences.
On my storm and my curve, the memory leaks are unbelievable. And we discuss program ram available? On startup, my device will have 50 mb and by the time I have my msn open and writing email, my system had 10 mb free (and this is after closing the applications). And while there are memory reclaiming options available, the problem is they don't really help. Blackberry is also very slow too...
Now on to the iphone (luckily I have just recently used 3gS, bought a 3g and sold it). While the user experience was nice, all it is really is a launcher. There are a lot of applications to fit the needs of the user, but if you are a power user, you will get exceedingly frustrated with the frequent hangs on screen, and while it touts muliple processes being ran together, it is nowhere near as polished as windows mobile unfortunately. It is gesture friendly, and it works relatively well out of the box, but unfortunately even with the 3gS iteration, that is all.
While you may not like windows, it is fully customizable as long as you can alter files. It makes you a techie geek, but at the same time, you will never turn back even with new hardware available. One OS with exceeding interest is webos and I hope to get a palm pre soon.
I don't understand the "swiping" fad... seems quicker and easier to just tap (or press a physical button) than to swipe. The swiping seems like something that makes a demo look fancy but it is annoying if you want to actually do things.
Totally agree, swiping IMO is grosslly overated. Swiping vertically is frustrating, and inefficient. I'll take a page down button (real or virtual) any day of the week. If I have to swipe vertically more than two times to read a page, I am ready to swipe the device to the wastebasket.
Swiping horizontally to pan a webpage, or move to the next screen is also very frustrating, and inefficicient. Unlike vertical swiping which takes two swipes before I am ready to ditch the device, horizontal swiping cause me to want to swipe the device to the wastebasket after one horizontal swipe.
I respect other opinions, and if you like panning, swiping, and zooming, power to you. I still prefer physical buttons, and a good D-pad or other physical navigation control.
I wish Microsoft could speed up development much more. It's taking way too long! Can't wait to see the finalized version of WinMo 6.5.
Um changing the look of the icons and the shape of the icons doesn't make it any more finger friendly. They are still the same god damn size.
I got a finger friendly approach I'll show Microsoft! WinMob BLOWS! too late!
As Winmo progresses along, I sure as hell hope Microsoft doesn't "dumb" down the OS just to cater to those "coming back home" from other K.I.S.S. systems like iphone, (android?), and symbian. Again, as others and I have said..each os has its fans and detractors...but it just urks me when your average female can just pick up an iphone for the first time and navigate it. "omg i love this!" Last thing I want is my wife or any number of my girlfriends *roll eyes/whistles* to be able to easily navigate my phone. Along with being a very flexible os with tons of productivity apps, Winmo keeps that buffer zone. Back in the days you could come out the place looking like a champ because you could pull up content instantly when others didnt have the device or had it but didnt know how to use it. Today? Everyone thinks they're "smart" cuz they bought a smartphone. *shakes my head*
In closing, Winmo may not be the easiest to navigate, not the fastest to open an app or swipe to the next screen (we talking a split second here?) but it sure is a workhorse of an operating system. As I type this I'm looking around at how I'm always multitasking... 2 laptops side by side and both doing a number of things. My place is pretty quiet and I'm so used to this kind of environment that when the pc fans are NOT humming audibly...i looking to see what's wrong! I guess I have grown to expect that out of my mobile phone as well.
If I have to multitask and juggle a bunch of things throughout the day...why shouldn't my cellphone?
Why don't they come out and say they just need to copy iPhone's swipe interface and be done with it. Ballmer has thick skin! Copy Copy Copy!!!
This is as significant as a new update to Palm OS Cobalt would be. Legacy software...
bleh...out of all teh screens to show us tantalising touch improvements in 6.5, we get the Device ID screen... It's like a porno mag filled with pictures of ankles.
Been using 6.5 (mobilevu's Cobalt v4.3) on my Xperia X1a for almost a month. Some small buttons like the "OK" and "X" but otherwise, it's been smooth sailing. :-)
Window fan boys have such low standards if those screens make them delighted.
Yes! For a moment there I was worried that they were forcing gestures. It would be a pain to have to swipe, when a tap is so much quicker, easier, and more intuitive.