windows mobile 6: the straight story
in case you haven’t heard, mothership officially announced windows mobile 6 this week.
there are some interesting changes & updates you might want to get your head around with this release.
mobile office retooled
the venerable mobile office included with wm6 gets a much needed facelift. in fact, it looks like mothership ponied for a tummy tuck & a boob job as well.
word & excel definitely get a new coat of paint in this release, while outlook adds enough features to make the argument that it can serve as a total replacement for the pc version of outlook. alas, the new version of mobile powerpoint remains bereft of any editing functions whatsoever. once again, the road warriors mourn.
version rename
taking a page from the version insanity that infects their desktop products, mothership in its infinite wisdom has decided to introduce new terminology for the various flavors of windows mobile. in a nutshell, pocketpcs will now be called windows mobile 6 classic devices, smartphones will now be called windows mobile 6 standard devices & pocketpc phones will now be called windows mobile 6 professional devices. wow…that’s a lot less confusing, don’t you think? </sarcasm>
better certificate support
in a move that is sure to please everyone, redmond did listen to all the wailing & gnashing of teeth that arose from folks trying to use certificates on their wm5 devices, particularly smartphone users. wm6 blessedly offers tons of improvements in certificate handling over wm5. chief among these would have to be the inclusion of a built-in certificate installer & the addition of support for wildcard ssl certificates. wow. a move by mothership that will actually save folks money! in other news…the damned are snow-skiing in hell today.
more eye candy
get ready for some new screen resolutions. wm6 adds support for 800×480 & 320×320.
broad carrier & device support
the list is as long as your arm & still growing. you can expect the usual suspects to introduce devices with wm6, especially now that palmos has basically gone the way of the dodo.
sdk on the way
the codeheads lurking here at the funcave will be interested to know that the windows mobile 6 sdk will be released very soon & that it will be supported under visual studio 2005. in the meantime, there’s a whitepaper available now that outlines the changes in wm6 for developers.
here are some key additions:
- .net compact framework in rom
- sql compact in rom
- broad wm5 application compatibility
- ajax support
- remote desktop mobile
arch for more security
besides the certificate improvements, wm6 offers some much needed security functionality. encrypting content on the storage cards is great, but i’m wondering if they will finally add the ability to remote wipe those cards. heck, if nothing else…i hope they close the hole with remote wipe that was already discussed here at the funcave ages ago.
on dashers
folks using a t-mobile dash running wm5 will be able to install an upgrade to wm6 on their dash. as for everyone else…i say we go out & start beating those folks up now.
if you haven’t been blessed enough to get a look at wm6 yet, here are some excellent sources:
- engadget photo gallery
- motherships’s own page & their spiffy datasheet
- g33k.dk’s mulligan stew of culled source material on wm6
final word of advice:
many of the new features require exchange server 2007, altho a subset will also be available on exchange server 2003 if sp2 is installed.
so before you go out & let your mouth write a bunch of checks your infrastructure can’t cash, it’s prolly worth spending a bit of time looking at what’s what in wm6.
|| posted by chris under funlab, hardware, migration, mobility, utility belt || comments (0) || ||
