Recent Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM shows finger friendly approach
By Darren Murph 
posted July 19th 2009 12:18PM
posted July 19th 2009 12:18PM
[Via 1800PocketPC, thanks Mark]
posted July 19th 2009 12:18PM
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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.