Windows Mobile 6.5 - "about as useful as a poke in the eye"

Internet.news and several other sites have reported that Windows Mobile 6.5 will be released October 6th. The changes in 6.5 include an improved user interface, better Internet browsing capability and access to the new Windows Marketplace.

Comments that I've seen around the internet have not said the improvements were bad; however, they have indicated that they aren't overly great either. One of the guest comments on WinProNews summed it up the 6.5 release interestingly. To quote:

As a developer on windows mobile this is about as useful as a poke in the eye. New front end to the tired old backend....wow. Nice one Microsoft, you'll only be a couple of years behind the pack when this comes out. Pull your finger out and get Win Mo 7 released then you will have something to shout about, but until then you've got no business trying to hock this off to anyone.

Sounds like at least a few people will be waiting for Windows Mobile 7.0.



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I haven't tried this new release but compared to the other phone systems on the market I find the windows mobile clunky at best, which is a shame as it stops me wanting to develop for it..

Pino

I am hoping 7 will be the lucky number for MS again.

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I haven't tried this new release but compared to the other phone systems on the market I find the windows mobile clunky at best, which is a shame as it stops me wanting to develop for it..

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I feel the same way. After working with the iPhone SDK, desiging for WinMo feels so out of date. Language wise I still prefer WinMo/.NET , but designing user and human interface is a joy on iPhone. :eek2:

Developing aside, a new front end for WM is going to be very welcome... I've got a HTC Touch Diamond 2 and around 60% of it uses the nice TouchFlo interface that HTC have created to hide the bland mess that is WM's user interface but unfortunately there are still some parts that use the standard WM UI and it looks awful. I for one will be glad when they release 6.5 even if all it does is make it look nicer.

One of the things I develop on is a series of very advanced Honeywell barcode scanners that run WM6 (the kind of scanners that you can walk deep into a plant, scan 30 dozen boxes and have it transmit the data via GSM phone to a receiving server) and I also find it really clunky and cumbersome to use.

ActiveSync is the bane of my existence. It's the most stupidly unreliable API/interface I've ever worked with. I'd say, about 15% of the time, when you dock the unit into it's USB cradle, Activesync fails to connect. Even when it does connect, it takes 45 seconds! If only Mobile 6 devices docked as quickly and elegantly as USB flash drives I'd be in heaven.

I do detest ActiveSync as well but thats from a system admin point of view, not a developer point of view. It has one particular feature which I hate - to communicate with the mobile device you connect to your PC it actually creates a virtual network card on your machine. When this virtual NIC is told to connect, if the user has offline files enabled then they suddenly find that they are in Offline mode as Windows tries to connect to the server using this new virtual NIC (which cannot reach the server as it has some random IP address). We did find a workaround for it - disable the Client for Microsoft Networks protocol and the File and Printer Sharing protocol on the virtual NIC - but its still stupid!