RSSThe 'Windows Phone' era officially starts today
By Tim Conneally | Published October 6, 2009, 1:13 PM
Today, we finally welcome Windows Mobile 6.5 and the "Windows Phone" platform from Microsoft. As a part of today's Windows Mobile 6.5 debut, the new Windows Mobile Marketplace app store has opened for business, the new Bing for Mobile app has been unveiled, the My Phone sync and security service has been launched, the first Windows Mobile 6.5 devices have been announced, and the list of Windows Mobile 6.1 devices that can be upgraded to 6.5 has been published.
Microsoft is fully in mobile mode today.
The list of devices shipping in the US with Windows Mobile 6.5 pre-installed is somewhat small, including only three HTC devices (Pure, Imagio, Tilt 2) and one Samsung device (Intrepid, due in less than a week on Sprint). But Microsoft has also unveiled the full list of devices which can be upgraded from Windows Mobile 6.1 to 6.5, which adds eight more devices to the list: HTC Dash, Ozone, Snap, and Touch Pro 2; Samsung Jack, Mirage, and Omnia Pro; and the Pharos Traveler 137.
Worldwide, Microsoft will have Windows Mobile 6.5 on more than 30 phones in 20 countries before the end of 2009.
My Phone, which has been in beta since May is Microsoft's free cloud-based sync service that automatically backs up a user's contacts, photos, video, text messages and calendar data to a password-protected site and also lets users directly upload content to Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace or Flickr.
The $4.99 premium My Phone package includes features that help users who have lost their device. It also includes Web-based GPS location of lost phones, the ability to remotely lock a device with an "if found..." message, or remotely wipe all data. It can even blast a loud location alarm in case the device has been misplaced, has fallen between the couch cushions, or has otherwise disappeared without actually being lost.
Finally, the Windows Marketplace rounds out today's offerings in Microsoft's mobile environment. The new marketplace app is only a part of the greater plan for mobile software distribution. Right now, it only includes free and for-pay apps (up to around $30) directly downloadable to a user's phone, but will eventually include a PC-based app catalog and mobile carrier side billing. The complete service will be tied together with a user's Windows Live ID and will let apps be installed on as many as five devices.
The meat of today's announcements actually has very little to do with Windows Mobile 6.5 itself, which is simply a finger-friendly incremental update to a largely unchanged operating system. In fact, though the mobile operating system ties all of these services together, the most important thing to take away today is that Microsoft has built a complete consumer mobile experience that strives to be as comprehensive as its enterprise experience.
I upgraded (XDA developer cooked rom) my HTC Kaiser (AT&T Tilt) I must say, WM 6.5 makes my phone now not just a business phone, but now is as sleek as the iphone and has the kiddie social networking abilities =P. Windows Market Place is great!!!
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|The problem is that MS always seems to involve too many areas of the business and the product suffers without focus. Everything they do always seems clumsy and not elegant. That's what Apple and google do better.
Focus and simplicity.
http://afewtips.com
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|Wow.. Thats great that M$ is now on the Smart phone market..
Anyone see people getting fired for playing with there iPhone?? I have only seen a few at the company I work for..
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|Have you been living in a cage? Windows has been on phones, much longer than iPhone has even been a dream.
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|And actually, Windows Mobile has still slightly more marketshare than iPhone, although it is not really going very well for Microsoft lately.
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|They weren't really fired for playing with the iPhone per se, but the act of choosing to use an iPhone and its gay 4" interface instead of a full-blown PC sitting in front of you was clearly used as a covert IQ test by the employer.
See, if I saw someone eating Italian icecream with Japanese chopsticks I would fire him immediately as well. ;)
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|The beginning of the end for the iPhone. Yes, you can get laid if you're a sexy chick (iPhone), but you're not gonna get any commitments from anyone with serious intentions (businesses, EXPENSIVE COMPLEX software that requires multitasking/integration with other software), if you have nothing more to offer.
The iPhone will be remembered as a fad just like the one-hit wonderkid Motorola Razor at the time.
Apple and their iron grip on the ballz of hardware manufs (licensing for the iPod/iPhone bullcrap...GIMME A BREAK) and software devs ("no no no, you can't offer this to our precious customers"..."oh no, that app will hurt our bottomline...DENIED") -- they'll see their demise sooner than most believe.
Microsoft will do to the Mobile OS what they did to desktop. From pretty much easy to use but crappy as hell (Win95) to the PERFECT DESKTOP OS (Win7) in 15 short years. We're now at approx win98 stage for WinMo -- just before being unified with NT into Win2000, which basically guaranteed ultimate success with biz and home users -- stability AND compatibility in a unified office/home computing experience.
Microsoft will do the same thing here, ENHANCED. WinMo will be unified with "Win10+" (in maybe 5-10 years) and the dev tools will be enhanced to support desktop/laptop AND handheld devices ALL IN ONE SHOT. In other words the devs will write one code that'll run on the diff form factors only taking into account diff resolutions and other obvious physical differences. The user will now have the same experience in his office, at home, laptop, and..handheld device. Probably even Control Panel items and numerous other GUI elements will be unified so it'll be a unification from the inside (dev tools) to the outside (user experience).
Apple will try to do the same, but sorry, they're just not good enough to come up with anything relevant before they have become extinct from the world.
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|I love people who do drugs. What are you taking?
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|Now that's what I call forward thinking! Cheers to the future!
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|"I love people who do drugs. What are you taking?"
I take a dose of Microsoft in the morning, afternoon, and nighttime right before bed. Whenever I try to mix it with an Apple, I do suffer acute diarrhea. Whoever said "an Apple a day" was obviously a trained Afghan counter-intelligence operative...
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|Sorry; that was supposed to be a reply to lvthunder's question.
It has office apps to allow you to work on Word documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and the like. I will freely admit to being ignorant of whether or not like programs exist on the iPhone, but of all of my friends who own the device, none of them are aware of, or have any interest in, productivity apps. The other difference (at least on most non iPhone handsets) is that hardware data entry is possible, either through a slide-out qwerty keyboard, dial pad, or external bluetooth keyboard. The iPhone definitely has the lead for entertainment and leisure use, but its very design prohibits business users from ever taking it seriously. If I just want a phone to goof off with, the iPhone is a good choice. I unfortunately don't have that luxury, though, and decided to pick a more boring, but more practical, platform.
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|What irks me is that the HTC Touch Pro 2 is on the list for supported upgrades, but the Touch Pro isn't. Aside from some outward hardware differences, the two devices are otherwise identical in both memory and CPU. I greatly dislike the iPhone for its lack of true productivity capability, but I will give Apple this: users can legally update the OS on their phones, even ones that are technical relics from two years ago, instead of having to buy a totally new device for a so-so upgrade.
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|Lipstick on the pig of WinMo 6.1. But still a pig. Easy to see why all the hardware vendors are running to Android as fast as they can.
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|Android shall be a failure just like any other Open Source project by Google. Devs wanna know the platform will have billions invested in it in the next 10 years, meaning tools will have billions invested in them, hardware compatibility/drivers will have billions invested in them etc. Google will run out of money before 2012 if they just throw away money on a platform they cannot charge the manuf money on -- A LOT OF MONEY -- BILLIONS IN TOTAL.
Android is doomed for failure. An OS is not like a browser where you have loads of talented people who can contribute to the project (like Firefox). Linux is proof that as an open source, your OS can never compete with commercial OSs for the target audience of HOME NON-TECHIE USER. Linux is fantastic for the techies running ugly-looking-but-highly-useful AMAZING server software... But once you have the need to make the software support millions of peripherals/drivers/software/graphics combinations to please home users -- you're SOL cuz you don't have the 50,000 man-dev-hours to invest. It's basic math, actually.
Surprisingly, only very few highly intelligent people, as myself, understand these basic concepts. ;)
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|Obvious troll is obvious....
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|I do not see who in their right mind would even contemplate this turd when you have the iPhone out. Even if you were drunk, you could still get Android or Palm and have a _way_ better phone than Microsoft Windows Mobile.
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|Why would anyone what an iPhone? I would use a throw-a-way phone, before I bought one of those.
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|I've got a WinMo 6.1 phone and an iphone in the family. The iphone is really flashy and cool, but the 6.1 WinMo is really more useful. If Microsoft could make Winmo more sexy for the shallow minds out there, then it would be more appealing to people like you.
WinMo is mature. It has been on handheld devices for years and there are tons of apps everywhere. Microsoft is taking a good cue from Apple and creating the Marketplace. This will create a common place for people to find apps. Thankfully there are not forcing app makers to use this. Unlike Apple, they still allow for openness.
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|"The iphone is really flashy and cool, but the 6.1 WinMo is really more useful. If Microsoft could make Winmo more sexy for the shallow minds out there, then it would be more appealing to people like you."
I think you hit the nail on the head with that one.
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|@gawd21 - I dunno, because it is the best phone out right now by a large margin?
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|I have a Treo 800w WM 6.1, I love my phone, it has functionality, it works without over heating, I don't have to pay over priced prices for apps that should be free, and the best part, I don't have to have any of Apple's crapware on my computer. Oh, and it has always had MMS, unlike the iPhone.
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|Oops, that was a reply to "fatty".
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|So what does a Windows Mobile Phone do that the iPhone doesn't do?
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|"So what does a Windows Mobile Phone do that the iPhone doesn't do?"
Absolutely nothing. 6.5 brings very little, very late to the table.
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|You must not own a phone, if you even remotely believe that line of crap!
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|Yah the Iphone is wonderful. Since the 3.1 firmware upgrade I have experienced nothing but hell with my Iphone. The alarms I turned off go off and the ones I turn on don't.(But only sometimes of course making it highly unreliable) Not to mention at least once a day I will try to bring it out of sleep mode and it simply will not come back on. The only way to remedy this is to do a reset by holding the top and bottom buttons together. I have tried restoring it multiple times to no avail. Then one time I did a reset and it locked up on the Apple screen. I then reset it again and it deregistered all of my apps. Also my brother and my brother-in-law's phone both do the same thing. Any company that relies on this phone to do daily important business would be a fool.
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|"So what does a Windows Mobile Phone do that the iPhone doesn't do?"
Considering that it is more open anything that you want it to do. No AT&T or Apple telling you that you can't use your Slingbox App or your Google Voice App etc. You wouldn't let your internet provider tell you what programs you can run on your computer would you? The same principle applies here.
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|right on, this sounds like a great update to Windows Mobile. I really have to thing carefully and decide what I really want to get once my contract expires.
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|@siryak - mine works fine. Did you take it to the Apple Store and let them have a look at it?
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|siryak, and even with apple's "closedness" it has tens of thousands of more apps than the much older windows mobile.
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|Tens of thousands more, eh? What is that actually worth?
Have you counted how many fart apps there are? The number of stupid apps in that serve no real purpose is mind boggling.
If you break it down and separate all of the *useful* business productivity apps for each platform, I'm betting Windows Mobile has the iPhone beat hands-down.
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|@yountmj - so the Microsoft line is there are too many apps...none are good, etc... LOL. Face it, the iPhone has more apps and a wide range of apps from games to business productivity apps. The number of which is mind boggling. The iPhone has all other "smart" phones beat by a mile.
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|Fatty,
The iPhone is not a smartphone, nor is the user of one smart. I mean come on, it just got what the cheap old Nokias have had for many years, MMS. LMAO It is so funny hear about how great a phone is that couldn't even do basic functions.
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