Thread: The Windows Mobile Tour

Welcome to the Windows Mobile tour! This tour is aimed to provide an overview, a guide and all you ever wanted to know about Windows Mobile 6.5.3. This new promising Windows Mobile version brings many new features and changes over Windows Mobile 6.5. Many even don’t know if it exists, most probably because it had a soft launch during MWC 2010. In the end of this tour you would be able to recognize both the bright and dark side of WM (Windows Mobile) 6.5.3 and also the improvements over WM 6.5. Let’s begin!

If you are one of the people who are thinking that WM 6.5.3 is just a small update to WM 6.5 then let me tell you, this is not just increment of numbers but it is the missing piece of puzzle. On completing this puzzle, we have a complete finger friendly OS.

When WM 6.5.3 is booted the first noticeable change anyone could see like me is the location of start button. Traditionally start button was always at the top left corner of screen in all the version of WM right from WM 2000 to WM 6.5 (See the images below).

This is the first time ever start button’s location is changed to bottom left corner. Another new thing added is a transparent bar with icons, which pops up when tapped on notification bar. While many including me feel that the new notification bar is useless some of the developers already found a good reason for loving this new notification bar as this bar can be changed to a launcher bar, which will act as a quick launch bar. What’s else is there in the today screen? The same Titanium UI. Coming back to the bottom bar, apart from addition of start button it has now got soft keys which makes it more finger friendly as now the users don’t have to move their finger or stylus to the top of device because with the new UI layout the whole OS can be controlled by one hand.

My favorite part of WM 6.5.3 is the new graphical icons instead of texts which actually don't fit the screen (some). In WM 6.5 one couldn’t rearrange the start menu icons freely but now in this new version we can arrange the icons in start menu, its easy just tap and hold a particular icon then put it to your desired location and drop. Although moving a icon into a folder and renaming is not possible but that can be done through file explorer. I expected something like that for Titanium UI also that is the ability to rearrange the tabs of Titanium UI. WM 6.5 was able to eradicate the need of stylus to some extent but WM 6.5.3 completely eradicates the need of a stylus, finally stylus can take rest. This OS also brings multi-touch and capacitive screens support officially, earlier HTC modified WM 6.5 to bring multi-touch support on HD2.

The great advantage of all the new visual enhancement is now there are infinite choices for theme makers to produce some innovative themes, just for example i have added some images of different themes. One more thing i would like to emphasize on is the new Internet explorer, it has always been good at rendering pages but the new version has the ability to resize fonts and now it tries to fit the the whole page. There is something called view port which can be tweaked for different resolution devices to get the best page view in IE Mobile. This brings to the end of our tour but if it wasn’t so easy to follow then don’t worry official feature list of WM 6.5.3 will summarize the whole article.

Official Feature list of WM 6.5.3

• Capacitive touchscreen support
• Platform to enable multi-touch
• Touch controls throughout system (no need for stylus)
• Consistent Navigation
• Horizontal scroll bar replaces tabs (think settings>system>about screen)
• Magnifier brings touch support to legacy applications
• Simplified out-of-box experience with fewer steps
• Drag and drop icons on Start Screen
• (Mobile) Internet Explorer Page load time decreased
• IE Memory management improved
• IE Pan & flick gestures smoothed
• IE Zoom & rotation speed increased
• Updated runtime tools (.NET CF 3.5, SQL CE 3.1)
• Arabic read/write document support
• Watson (error reporting) improvements and bug fixes

IBF on IE Mobile and different themes

Pros:

• Graphical icons instead of texts.
• More choice for themes
• Completely finger friendly
• Multi-touch support
• Customizable than ever before

Cons:

• Useless Titanium UI
• Mobile IE still lacks speed
• Consumes more RAM than WM 6.1 and earlier OS.
• Needs more animations.

My rating:

User Interface:

Ease of Use:

Features:

Overall rating:

I hope you all enjoyed the tour and all i can say is its a worthy update for all WM 6.5 users.

Thanks for sharing this wealth! I have been living in the dark all these years... always been using symbian based phones or more recently an iphone... Never had a chance to use a windows mobile and that HTC in the picture looks neat

Will buy a windows mobile one day

Originally Posted by Admin

Thanks for sharing this wealth! I have been living in the dark all these years... always been using symbian based phones or more recently an iphone... Never had a chance to use a windows mobile and that HTC in the picture looks neat

Will buy a windows mobile one day

Iam glad that you liked my shared wealth
Aah one thing if you ever plan to buy a WM be sure to buy a device with monstrous hardware like 1Ghz Processor or just wait for the ultimate phone That is WP7 with GPU Direct x and lots more, that means high quality games and performance, and don't worry about that lock down that ms has put like iPhone its gonna be hacked and unlocked anyways.

P.S. I have spent hours to make the pics neat, actually i had to merge many pics as IBF limits me to have only 8 Pics.

Good one. Rich with pictures.

Thanks meetdilip and hackdown for rep.

I used Symbian based devices nearly 2yrs.. From Nokia 6600 to Nokia N82..
Just last december i moved into Windows mobile operating system and i was amazed with its features that it has...
If you are an Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 user means you can easily update your rom to windows Mobile 6.5...
Roms wont be available Officially, they are custom made using the main files from an Windows 6.5 mobile...
But updating Rom is not available in Symbian mobile...

I use to update my HTC Touch viva from wm 6.1 to wm6.5 when there is a stable and good rom available..

Yea ofcourse, Windows mobile is great and bonda let me tell you that some of the screenshot above are directly from my mobile HTC Touch Viva running WM 6.5.3!!!

And the first and second homescreen screenshot is from my rom.

Originally Posted by jagan2

Yea ofcourse, Windows mobile is great and bonda let me tell you that some of the screenshot above are directly from my mobile HTC Touch Viva running WM 6.5.3!!!

And the first and second homescreen screenshot is from my rom.

Ya i know you Jagan2, you have developed may roms for my HTC Touch viva..
All your roms were great..
Now i am using the stock rom because am going to sell my mobile in few days...
And your Evolution series rom was awesome buddy...
Just loved that rom...

Originally Posted by jagan2

P.S. I have spent hours to make the pics neat, actually i had to merge many pics as IBF limits me to have only 8 Pics.

one things happen like that.. try to crop and paste two small pics and make it one.. i havent tried this here, but in most photography forums which is joined i do this.. its my idea and everyone else is happy to see this new idea..


thus you can post 4 images which are actually 8

Originally Posted by mickey

one things happen like that.. try to crop and paste two small pics and make it one.. i havent tried this here, but in most photography forums which is joined i do this.. its my idea and everyone else is happy to see this new idea..


thus you can post 4 images which are actually 8

Nice suggestion bro but on my request to mods and admins they have removed the limit, and i have taken its advantage also - see here.

Offtopic: I love the way senior members respond and are always helpful in IBF. I will also try to be helpful here though i was not active from many months.

^^Thats the spirit here..

by the way the job was well done..

and i am happy for you that ad-mod have responded positively to your image limite request..( they never listen me )

admin

@mickey: Seems you are too much angry towards Admin :P

Lets not take this thread to offtopic, we can have a nice discussion via pm's

Originally Posted by jagan2

@mickey: Seems you are too much angry towards Admin :P

Lets not take this thread to offtopic, we can have a nice discussion via pm's

offtopics always lead this forum..

by the way, are you writing another thread of cons pros in the rest minutes??

@mickey: I started writing on the pros and cons of Windows Mobile and android but i wasn't able to complete though i had written 326 words till now. And i think admin mod will disqualify my article if i post now (Yet to be completed). But i will complete that article later and post in the relevent section so that it will be helpful for everyone. I could have posted what iam writing now but then i want to cover each part of OS which is not possible in this little time.

So, only two articles for contest. Lets see if any one of them get's selected for voting...