Microsoft announces Windows Mobile 6.5. Here’s my scattered notes about it…

Forgive me for the mess in this one, but here’s some of the important notes I could find in Microsoft’s announcement today:

Windows Mobile Phone (and good bye to the "professional / standard" stuff)

MyPhone (we already knew that too…) will backup your calendar, tasks, pictures, videos, music, documents, and text messages via the web.

Windows Marketplace (that’s an app store for win phones)

Windows Mobile 6.5 OS is here (not available yet of course)

Let’s see what’s new in 6.5:

Honeycomb Start Menu:

A new honeycomb window which will replace the old ‘start’ menu.

It does look great, much better than the old ones we had, and also will allow reordering the shortcuts in a simple configuration menu.

According to Microsoft, every new device running WinMo will have to have one button with the windows sign on triggering the new start menu. Cool.

Here’s a couple of examples:

The menus will get a significant upgrade with a much better look and feel and of course some finger friendly updates…

New Today Screen:

A bit too minimalistic for me, but I guess it’s better like that when there’s real information on he phone.

Sliding from one line to another expands the line into a complete informative panel. You can also slide your finger right/left in order to see some more information on that panel.

Internet Explorer:

The new Internet explorer is designed to give the same browsing experience as the desktop version.

Flash will be supported in 6.5, Silverlight will probably come later.

Notice the bottom buttons look much better than the ones in the beta release, and they have an auto hide behavior (like Opera).

I have to say I really like how it looks.

Lock Screen:

I like it: it’s not just a lock screen, it actually has a drop down menu for common activities people would like to do directly when unlocking the device! (Phone, meetings, etc.)

The demo also included a demonstration of voice messages in the mobile IM, an improved contacts window with built in pictures and finger friendly items and scroll.

BTW, HTC announced that the Diamond2 and Touch Pro2 will be WinMo 6.5 enabled, meaning that they will have a free upgrade to WinMo 6.5 when it will be released.

Nice. What do you think?