Posts Tagged ‘Windows Mobile 6.5’

With Microsoft gearing up for Windows Mobile 6.5 to officially hit the market, training material for partners and advertisement templates, banners, etc. are being made available. Amongst all this content, there is one bit of material in particular from June 2009 that caught my eye: Windows Phone Cobrand Guidelines

Yes, right on Microsoft’s servers, there is a set of guidelines which teaches partners how to make the sell and do it by Microsoft’s book. In a section labeled, “Communicating to Customers,” there’s a subdivision labeled, “use only when necessary.” The content in that section is a breakdown of how partners should get down to brass tacks if need be with the customer. When discussing how they should go about discerning Windows Mobile versions, they give a nod to Windows Mobile 7 as seen here:

For those of you who aren’t familiar, Contoso is a fictitious company name used by Microsoft to represent anything from non-existent products to examples for how to use products already on the market. As such, the Contoso Alpha and Contoso Zeta phones mentioned are purely fictitious. Again, though it isn’t much, this is just another non-public mention of Windows Mobile 7 by Microsoft. I suppose the next step will actually be a build in between 6.5 and 7, though. As always, I’ll be sure to post whatever I can dig up!

Source: Windows Phone Cobrand Guidelines on Microsoft’s Website

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

With PDC 2009 right around the corner, you can probably bet the farm that Windows Mobile 7 will be unveiled there. Every PDC has consisted of major announcements and this one shouldn’t be any different. With Windows 7 out of the door, Office 14 all-but-complete, and Zune HD hitting the shelves soon, Windows Mobile 7 stands as the last really hot item to not be even so much as acknowledged by Microsoft. Well, I’m going to take it one step further and guess that Microsoft is not just going to reveal Windows Mobile 7, but they may even make a pre-release build of Windows Mobile 7 available at PDC. The reason I’m stepping out on that limb is comprised of 3 reasons:

1. Microsoft has a history of putting the bits of the technologies revealed during their keynotes into the hands of attendees at its conferences. If Windows Mobile 7 is revealed there and history is any kind of indicator, some form of the mobile OS will find its way into the hands of attendees.

2. The following Windows Mobile 7 roadmap I posted back in May which verified similar info Mary Jo Foley posted about back in February of Microsoft planning for a release to testers in November (the same month as PDC, no less):

3. The latest work experience status from the following LinkedIn profile of a Motorola employee has a rather interesting mention in it: “Runtime Environment: Windows Mobile 7.0 (Beta)“ Hmm… Does that mean Windows Mobile 7 has already hit an internal stage of Beta 1?

The aforementioned gives me good reason to speculate that Windows Mobile 7 will not only be revealed, but it will also be put into the hands of attendees in *some* capacity. I say, “some” capacity because I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft to strip it of certain features (or disable them) – just as they’ve typically done with the Windows pre-release builds they’ve distributed at past conferences. The only problem I see with that hypothesis of mine is the number of people who could actually do something with those bits. We don’t all exactly have a spare Windows Mobile device hanging around for us to install a build of Windows Mobile 7 on. Actually, that gives me an idea that maybe, “the goods” could include something that would serve the purpose of using a Windows Mobile 7 build… probably not, but it would be cool if so!

With that in mind, I’m also going to guess that Windows Mobile 7 will meet a similar fate as Windows 7 where conference-attendee interaction is concerned: Once it’s announced during a keynote on either day 1 or day 2, there will be a number of Windows Mobile 7-ready devices on-hand for all to see up-close and fiddle with.

How different do you personally think the UI is going to be from Windows Mobile 6.5? Do you think it’s going to resemble the old WM7 prototype images that have been floating around out there for quite a while, or do you think it will be completely revolutionary? I’ve heard rumors from a couple of people that its interface will be the same as the Zune HD’s interface. I guess we will all find out soon enough!

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

(Follow me on Twitter: msftkitchen)

Another day, another roadmap. Here, we have a roadmap with dates pertaining to Windows Mobile RTT (released to testers) – not device to market dates. This roadmap comes from a Windows Mobile 6.5 presentation given a week and a half ago, so this is about as current as it gets – though the information isn’t as specific as other WM7 information I recently dug up. Another point of mention is the picture inclusion of a phone using the Organic User Interface we’ve seen in some of those conceptual Microsoft videos. Regardless, here’s the roadmap:

-Stephen

(Follow me on Twitter: msftkitchen)

As with Windows Mobile 6.1, Windows Mobile 6.5 is going to come in the same two flavors: Mounds (Standard) and Almond Joy (Professional). (If you don’t get that analogy, Mounds and Almond Joy are the same candy bar, except Almond Joy has an almond in the center and Mounds doesn’t…) The main difference between the two is essentially touchability and the functionality that comes with it. Standard edition will run on phones without touchscreens and – you guessed it – Professional will run on phones with touch screens. While that certainly isn’t news, I was digging around the innanets last night and ran across a couple of devices from AnyData; a company that provides, “wireless solutions for a smarter world.” While the ASP-535D (see the link at the bottom of this post if you want to d/l the spec. sheet) was announced back in February to come with Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard installed, the following two models seem to be newer devices running Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard and Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional, respectively:

ASP-705W: Running Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard, refer to the following pictures for details:

ASP-735W: Running Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional, refer to the following pictures for details:

While there is a page on their website sporting all of that information, good luck finding it via their main portal (I had to use Google to stumble upon it). In addition to the white ASP-705W seen above, it appears a black model of the ASP-705W is floating around out there.

And just for the sake of adding to this list, here’s a random device I ran across purporting to run Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional (that looks like a proprietary UI on top of WinMo 6.1, if I’m not mistaking; feel free to correct me):

In conclusion, this post essentially just adds to the list of hardware vendors (beyond the obvious, like HTC, Sony, etc.) set to run the latest and greatest Microsoft mobile OS on their devices.

Resources:

ASP-535D PDF Document: Download Here
ASP-735W PDF Document: Download Here
ASP-705W PDF Document: Download Here
Skyworth PDF Document: Download Here

-Stephen

(Follow me on Twitter: msftkitchen)

Since I’ve completely missed the boat with the whole Windows Mobile 6.5 thing, I thought I would go ahead and obnoxiously start (you like that huge image up there? Yeahh… I know you like it… yeeeaaahhhh) a post containing some random pictures from presentations I’ve had floating around on my hard drives here. I did a quick 2-page Google Images search – as well as a search on Long Zheng’s blog (since he’s been keeping up with WinMo 6.5 quite nicely) – and didn’t see any of these, so maybe you’ll fancy them as something, “new;” even though these are probably prototypes/mock-ups (which I think is cool, either way). Feel free to let me know if these were posted elsewhere at some point and I’ll be more than happy to give credit where credit is due! Onward to the awesomeness:

-Stephen