SMB IT | Curtis Franklin » EARLY PEEK: Windows Mobile 6 with Screens and Bacon

February 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

EARLY PEEK: Windows Mobile 6 with Screens and Bacon

TAGS: Mobile SMB

Microsoft's PR usually drops me in a barbed-wire protected conference room for demos. So when the Mobile guys offered to do the meeting over breakfast, I stupidly jumped at the change of venue. 'Stupid' because I'm a self-employed freelance writer. To make an 8am breakfast meeting in NYC, I need to roll out of bed in north Jersey around 5:30am. I haven't been up that early since my last hangover emergency.

Fortunately, the W Hotel serves excellent coffee which eradicated my bleary fog such that I could actually understand what the Microsoft guys were talking about. Before that they sounded like one of those Charlie Brown saxophone-as-teacher numbers.

And that's Windows Mobile 6, once called Crossbow, and recently outed in a French newspaper even though the official embargo wasn't supposed to be till next week. Shards and feathers.

Embargoed or not, Windows Mobile 6 looks like it has enough sweets going for it to make Windows Mobile 5 users want to upgrade. The short list:

1. Support for Mobile Office. Previously only supported in Windows PocketPC.

2. Noticeable attention paid to the new user interface. Clear, colorful, with a few Vistaisms thrown in there, though the two OSes really don't have much of the same code.

3. Improved email support. All the push email that Exchange 2007 brings (including the manageability), but also the ability to one-step your Windows Live, Office Live and Hotmail email. Also has a neat service that goes and finds your proper email settings as long as that service knows about your ISP. All you need to know is your email address and password. Tres cool for folks with loads of pop mail accounts.

4. Better security. Not for viruses, that's still third party. But now not only can your IT guy wipe your phone's data if you lose it, you can, too. Just log into OWA and the tools will be there.

5. Improved ActiveSync. Now this does better with syncing not just files, but specifically photos and music, too. Though I need to have a discussion with the Vista guys on the differences between Vista's Sync Manager and ActiveSync. According to the Windows Mobile dudes, they're not the same thing.

6. Much improved searching. This covers a lot of ground. Searching for contacts starts with your local address book on the phone, for instance. There it narrows down the search the more letters you supply, covering the keys from a numeric angle as well. But local searching is only the start. You can now extend that contact search to your OWA address book, your Exchange Server address book, your Windows Live Mail contact database or even your other pop account address books.

Content searching is improved as well, similar to what you'll find on Outlook 2007. For one, it's noticeably faster. For two, it starts with your local email stores, searching addresses and subject lines. If you don't get a hit, you can opt to search any of your server-bound inboxes provided you've got connectivity. If you do, Windows Mobile 6 will extend the search and cover content in message bodies as well.

7. Lots of work done to the calendar. The Windows Mobile calendar can now take input from more than one source. It can also connect back to an Exchange Serve and serve up all those goodies about meeting availability and scheduling conflicts.

8. SharePoint touchpoints. They didn't have a demo ready, but the Windows Mobile 6 clients are supposed to be good SharePoint clients, as well. Guess we'll test that when we get a phone.

9. Oh yeah, contact search also covers Windows Live Messenger, which is fully integrated into Windows Mobile 6. So if your contact has a Windows Live Mobile ID, your contact search will not only tell you what that ID is, it'll also tell you whether the little freak is online right that moment. If he is, you can send him a text message right off the phone. That API is open, according to Microsoft, so you should see similar functionality from AIM, Yahoo!, et. al. pretty soon after Mobile 6 ships.

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10. And last continues the GUI features: Simply reading email messages is easier and clearer, with support not just for a better overall view, but also for HTML email specifically. Not to worry, you can still turn that off if it sets off your security hackles.

Problems? A few. For one, there's a limited number of phones that will support it out of the gate and only T-Mobile phones for the first 90 days, apparently.

Next is that upgrading your existing phone is a big question mark. Microsoft says it's not up to them. That cell phone operators and manufacturers (meaning for me and my Q, for example, that's Motorola and Verizon) need to build a fully working upgrade package and test it, then release it to customers. So we could be waiting until this summer the way those two companies move. Also means that our upgrade most likely won't be free with Microsoft, the cell phone maker and the cell plan operator probably all looking for a slice of the upgrade revenue pie. BITETH ME HARD!!

We'll know more once we actually get one of these into our grubby little hands.

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 9, 2007 02:54 PM

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