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Windows Mobile 6.5 coming mid-year?

by Brad Linder on January 21, 2009 at 12:00 PM

Microsoft may begin offering Windows Mobile 6.5 to mobile device manufacturers by the middle of 2009, which means we could see cellphones running the operating system start showing up in the second half of the year.

DigiTimes reports that sources at Taiwanese companies that make handsets expect Microsoft to introduce the updated operating system at Mobile World Congress next month.

There's not a ton of information available about Windows Mobile 6.5. As we reported a few months ago, this will be a bit of an incremental upgrade to hold cellphone makers and customers over until Windows Mobile 7 is ready. But based on the leaked screenshots we've seen, Microsoft certainly has made some changes to the user interface. Will it be enough to keep Windows Mobile devices competitive with the iPhone and mobile devices running Palm's new WebOS, Google Android, or Symbian? We'll have to get back to you on that one.

Tags: osupdates, windows-mobile, windows-mobile-6.5

Comments

typoinkJan 21st 2009 2:34PM

Neutral

I'm curious to see how this turns out. WM is still probably the most flexible and powerful smartphone OS out there, but it's too clunky, inelegant, and just "un-fun" compared to the competition. If MS can slick WM up without killing its advantages, they could have a winner.

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JamesJan 21st 2009 2:34PM

Neutral

The thing that bugs me about WM upgrades is that they generally apply only to new hardware. My TyTN has gotten homebrew/hacked WM 6.1 upgrades, but I think the last official support is WM 5 or maybe 6.0 (I forget). I really wish they'd encourage a more modular hardware support/driver system, so those of us who already have a phone would have an easier time keeping the software up to date.

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