Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard & Professional

INTRODUCTION

WINDOWS MOBILE 6.1 STANDARD

The new "Sliding Panel" home screen is very nice.

     It's a huge improvement over the "Neo" Home screen design introduced with the T-Mobile Shadow and I'll tell you why.  The "Neo" Home screen layout only showed one type of information at a time. You could not see your appointments, number of unread emails, or profile status at the same time. You had to specifically navigate to those sections to find that information.  This made it much more difficult to find those details despite the "Neo" design being marketed as "easy to use".  Microsoft's "Sliding Panel" Home screen design seems to be a direct answer to my criticisms of the "Neo" interface.

    The old Windows Mobile 6.0 style Home Screen is still available. Notice the unlabeled "Recent Programs" icons at the top. These are very difficult for new users to understand.  Also notice that in this home screen layout, most of the data is accessible with vertical scrolling which means it's easier to use with a scrolling thumb wheel since you don't also have to navigate horizontally.

In the Sliding Panel screen layout, notice in the second row of icons how the one with a greater-than-zero number next to it becomes more prominent. This is indicating that you have a notification for that item.

    If you have one unread item in the notifications panel, once you scroll down to it, it will jump directly to that item.  If it's an email or text message, it will show the contact's photo along with a preview of the message. Pressing the action button will open the full message.

    If there is more than one new message, selecting the notification area will show the number of unread messages for the account. Pressing the action button will bring you directly to that account's folder.  Also notice the right softkey at the bottom has changed to the "Compose" command when the messaging account is selected in the Home screen.  This makes it much easier to create new messages since the "New" command has been buried in the messaging program of Windows Mobile 6.

    In the Notifications panel, pressing the directional pad left or right also shows the number of voicemails and missed calls in addition to the text messages, MMS messages, and email accounts. Notice that when the Voicemail panel is selected, the lower right softkey changes to the "Voicemail" command which will let you easily access your voicemail.

    The Calendar panel shows the earliest upcoming appointment and you can slide left and right to show other upcoming appointments or create a new one.  Notice the bottom right softkey is assigned to the "Today" command which will launch the Calendar application and open it to today's date.

    The "Getting Started" panel lists and links to a few instructional pages intended to help new users with some of the more complicated things such as setting up email, connecting a Bluetooth headset, and syncing music with the desktop.  Selecting a topic links you directly to that topic in the "Getting Started" application.  The "View All" right softkey brings you to the "Getting Started" application and its full listing of topics. If you don't want to see this panel on the Home screen, you can easily remove it within the "Getting Started" application.

The Music panel works in much the same way as the T-Mobile Shadow's "Neo" interface and links up with Windows Media Player. It will show album art and you can browse through and select other tracks to play all from here. 

    The photos panel lets you browse photos on your device in the My Documents/My Pictures folder. Unfortunately, it does not show photos in the /Storage Card/My Documents/My Pictures folder. That's a big disappointment since generally you wouldn't want to keep many pictures in the phone's memory.

    The "Settings" panel lets you change the Profile, access the Wireless Manager, change Ringtones, change background images, and open the Task Manager. Also note, the bottom right softkey command shows "All Settings" which will bring you to the Settings control panel.

    The text messaging section has gotten a nice update. Notice how the icons have multiple letters on top of each other?  That means it's a conversation. Conversations are only viewable within the text messaging Inbox folder.  The "Sent Items" folder still shows messages chronologically, but as you can see below, the sent messages also show up in the text message conversation windows.

When you're typing a message, the number of characters now appears in the upper left part of the title bar.

Messages you send appear in line with the messages you receive. This makes it easier to follow the conversation, but more difficult to manage text messages in a received-time order. That's probably a fair trade off.

Unfortunately, you can't mark text messages as Unread anymore.

You CAN select multiple messages in the Messaging program now. 

The "Several" option lets you use the up/down arrows to select multiple consecutive emails.

There is now a default email signature included that says "Sent from my Windows Mobile phone."

    When you press the "Start" button on the Home screen, you are now presented with a "Recent Programs" listing.  This is much easier to read and use than the recent programs listing that was at the top of the default Windows Mobile 6 today screen (which did not have any labels.)  The disadvantage is that there is one more step to access the Recent Programs. 

    In the Home Screen settings, you can turn off the "Show Recent Programs" option, which will let the Start button send you directly to the All Programs folder.  You'll also see a "Sliding Panel Media" and "Sliding Panel" Home screen layout options. The "Media" version adds the photos and media player options to the sliding panels.

Pocket Internet Explorer has a new Zoom feature. You'll notice the "Zoom Out" command is in a different place than the equivalent on Windows Mobile Pro 6.1 on the second page.

    Another great new feature for Windows Mobile Standard is the Copy/Pasting capabilities. It's not as easy as Windows Mobile Pro where you can just select anything by tapping and dragging your stylus and then tap-n-hold to bring up the menu (or tap Ctrl + C on the SIP keyboard).  Instead you have to turn on the selection mode in the menu, move your insertion point to the beginning of what you want to select, then turn on selection, move your cursor to the end of what you want to select and then press the Copy command.

    Then you can paste the content elsewhere. Unfortunately, the copy/paste capabilities are only available in Internet Explorer, Messaging, and Office. This is a pretty unfortunate, since I copy/paste information in Contacts, Calendar items, and tasks on Windows Mobile Pro all the time. 

There is now a "Clock & Alarm" icon in the All Programs menu.

It really only gives you easier access to setting daily alarms or changing the time.

    The "Managed Programs" item in the Settings are lists applications that have been installed remotely by your system administrator via Mobile Device Manager 2008. This will be a great feature for large enterprise businesses with many mobile devices to manage.

    A "Setup E-mail" option is now available in the Settings area. It just links to the new email account wizard in the Messaging application. It's good to have the redundant link here because I'm sure many people will look for it in the Settings area.

    Both Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro and Standard include a "Getting Started" item on the home/today screen and in the programs folder. This is a basic HTML based help file designed to give you tips on learning how to do some of the more complicated things like setting up a Bluetooth headset, setting up email, or synchronizing with Windows Media Player for music from the Desktop. There's also a link that lets you easily remove this item from the Home/Today screen.

    The video above will show you some of the new features in Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard including: the Sliding Panel home screen layout, the new task manager, threaded text messaging, multiple email selections, recent programs listing, Internet Explorer zooming, and copy/pasting.

Click below to see what's new in Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional