I thought I’d write a short review on the latest incarnation of Windows Mobile — Windows Mobile 6.5 — because of how long it’s been since I’d last touched Microsoft’s operating system for mobile devices. The last device I used that utilized a Microsoft mobile OS was the Compaq Aero 1550 that I got 2000-2001. It had Microsoft Pocket PC on it (which was basically a slightly updated version of Windows CE 3.0). Jump forward 8-9 years and they’ve managed to rename that OS another time and release 6 more versions of it.
So far, I’ve not had the thing “lock up” on me [knock on wood]. But I’ve only been using this thing since late Saturday afternoon, so there’s still time. :-/
Oddly enough, it doesn’t feel that much different than the last version that I’d used (Pocket PC 2000). In fact, the “Today” screen’s config is the same — and can be made to look exactly the same. Thank goodness HTC (the manufacturer of the phone on which I’m running WM6.5) came up with something “snazzy looking” that they call TouchFLO 3D so I don’t have a phone that looks like it’s running a 9-year old OS. Come on Microsoft, I know you didn’t get something that perfect on your first try — so how about tweaking things around?
There is absolutely no user-specified organizational abilities for the location of programs in the “start” page. That’s something that’s beginning to bug me a bit, but I’ll (begrudgingly) get used to it. There’s “move to top” and “move down”, but those just seem to move things to the top of the page, thus “reshuffling” (resorting based on some unknown internal algorithm) all the rest of the programs. I’ve resigned myself to just trying to memorize things locations and to try not to add or do anything that’ll possibly reorganize things. What I’d like to see is a way to drag programs around to organize them the way that I see fit — the same way that I can with programs on my Windows [XP or 7] desktop.
I’ve not (yet) downloaded and installed a mobile regedit, but give it time… I seem to recall doing that (to fix some obscure problem) on my Aero. I did a quick search and it looked as if such a tool still exists — the same one, I think. Sheesh, 8-9 years isn’t seeming all that long ago all of a sudden.
The updated versions of the mobile office suite of tools haven’t yet been touched by me, but they’re there if and when I need them. (There’s not all that much storage on this phone, so I’m waiting for my new MicroSD card to arrive.)
The updated contacts tool is nice. But I don’t think there’s really all that much that’s changed from that earlier version other than the addition of an ability to link an entry to a Facebook profile — but that really seems to only pull in the profile’s avatar from Facebook. A true “sync” would be nice, where it updated the contact information (if available) in your address book with that information provided on people’s Facebook profiles. I figure they’d keep that info more updated than me. After all, it is their info. Thinking about this a bit more, I’m thinking that perhaps the layout has been tweaked to “improve” the display of the info that is available and more commonly often needed.
Microsoft Transcriber seems to work about the same as it did back when I installed it on my Aero shortly after I got that PDA. And whereas it does a good job, I’m a wee bit out of practice of writing on a touch screen. You can’t write as quickly as you can with pen and paper. You need to remember to wait for the device’s computer to catch up with you. But I like it better than any other on-screen input options. This phone has a full “qwerty” keyboard that is nice, big, and easy to use that I do make use of for certain things (like passwords).
It looks as if they have improved the (although this might be more hardware manufacturer than OS) ability of the device to retain it’s touch screen calibration. I seem to recall having to recalibrate the pointer on that Aero quite often. I’ve done it once (just in case) and I’m pretty sure I didn’t really have to — although it did seem as if the vertical was off by a little bit before I recalibrated things.
All-in-all I must say that things seem quite a lot similar to how they were with that 2000 release, which isn’t that bad of a thing — I know my way around thanks to it’s similarity. However, I’m somewhat disappointed that things don’t look more different.
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