Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional

INTRODUCTION

WINDOWS MOBILE PROFESSIONAL

This video takes you through some of the new features.

    The first new thing in Windows Mobile 6.5 that we'll look at is the lock screen.  Click to see what the old lock screen looked like. You can manually lock the screen by going to Start>Lock (bottom left soft key) or you can set it to appear after a certain amount of time and require a password. You can choose simple numeric passwords or alphanumeric passwords. If you have notifications waiting for you, you can see how many are listed by looking at the number on the lock slider icon. If you tap the icon, it will show more icons representing each type of notification that you may have missed. If you don't have a password set, sliding one of the notification icons to the left or right will take you directly to more information about that notification.  (If you have password protection on, you'll have to enter the password after sliding the icon.)  So for example, if you have a text message icon in the lock screen, sliding that will take you directly to the text messaging application.  Sliding the voice mail icon will take you to the phone dialer, but will not automatically start dialing your voicemail.

    Another great thing about the lock screen is that it shows your current or upcoming appointment at the bottom along with a large clock and the date. Unfortunately there's no way to quickly unlock directly to details about that appointment in order to see/edit more information or add notes. Sliding the primary lock icon to unlock the device naturally brings you to the Today/Home screen.

    The Windows Mobile 6.5 Today screen features a completely new interface. It's implemented as its own Today Screen item, so if you go into Start>Settings>Today>Items, you'll see it listed as the only one turned on "Windows Default."  Of course, you can shut it off from here and use any other Today screen plug-ins you'd like just as with any other Windows Mobile Professional device.

    There are four ways to control this interface. You can see in the center a highlighted area that shows you details on the selected section, you can tap this highlight rectangle and move it up or down in order to select a different item. After you release, the interface will center itself on the selected section and show you more information.  Optionally, you can drag your finger accross any area outside of the selection area in order to move the background list.  Whichever item falls into the center selection area will then load details about that item. The third way is to use a directional pad in order to change the selection. The fourth way is to simply tap the item that you want selected.

If you see little triangles to the left and right of the selection rectangle on the Today screen, that means you can swipe the selection area horizontally in order to see more options.  In the case of Pictures and Music, this will let you scroll through items in your library.  Also note that when the primary selection changes, the soft-key menu command at the bottom right will also change based on what you have selected.

There are a number of advantages and disadvantages to the new Today screen.  On the plus side, it looks really nice!  The designer themes are gorgeous, and the large type lists go nicely with the Windows Media Center and Zune interface designs.

The old default Today screen gives you instant access to much more pertinent information. 

    Next is the new Start Menu. When you press the "Start" button in the upper right, a full-screen layout of icons appears. Some advantages to this new Start menu is its finger-friendliness.  The icons for each program are much bigger and the off-set layout grid allows the active area for each program icon to be very large and finger-shaped. You can also see there is more room for the text labels beneath each icon allowing for a larger, more readable font.  The offset layout also gives the user a visual indication of a continuing list. As you can see at the bottom, some icons are cut off... this indicates that there is more to it and the user must scroll to see the others.  This was Microsoft's reasoning for not including a scrollbar in this list, however the other function that a scrollbar provides is completely missing...  There are no visual cues for indicating the length of this list.  You must simply scroll until it reaches the end and stops.

    It would seem that OEM's are allowed to choose the size of the icons that should appear in the Start menu.  Here's a screen shot of the HTC Pure with 4 columns of icons rather than 3. The ability to scale these icons is good for accomodating various sized touch screens. Naturally a larger screen could accomodate smaller icons and maintain finger-friendliness.

    You may remember older versions of Windows Mobile included both "Recent Programs" and hardware keyboard navigation capabilities in the Start menu. For example, in Windows Mobile 6.1, I could press the Start menu hardware key, then press the letter "P" for programs, then press the letter "G" and it would quickly select the first icon who's program name began with the letter G.  This was a very fast and efficient way of finding programs by name.  That functionality has been removed.

    Previous versions of Windows Mobile also had very easy access to "Recent Programs" since their icons were always at the top of the Start Menu.  In 2 taps (or 2 keyboard button presses) you could switch between recently used programs very very easily. This was essential for easy and quick multi-tasking. Unfortunately that capability has been removed from Windows Mobile 6.5, and switching between active programs has become much more difficult. 

    Microsoft's attempt at making up for the loss of a recent programs listing is a very limited method of customizing the order of the icons in the Start Menu.  If you tap and hold on an icon in the list, a command will appear that says "Move to Top." Activating that will make the selected icon the first one at the top of the Start menu.  This makes it possible to move your favorite programs to a more-accessible area of the Start menu, but it is not remotely user-friendly and certainly can be very tedious.

    Also note that the new Start menu now has an X associated with it for closing the menu and a "Lock" command at the bottom for manually locking the screen. Another usability issue is the fact that the Start menu button in the upper left corner has no visual cue that it has been activated.  Previous versions of Windows Mobile always made it obvious that the Start menu was active.  Furthermore, if you press the Start menu button and then press it again, normally that's supposed to close the Start menu.  That doesn't happen on Windows Mobile 6.5.  If the Start Menu is open and you press the Start menu button on the screen again, nothing happens!  This is certain to cause some confusion with new and existing users. 

    Annother annoyance with the new Start menu is that even though it now looks and behaves like an application window (with an X button in the upper right even), it does not appear in the application stack.  So if you open the Start menu, navigate to a program you want to open, open it, then minimize it, you are not returned to the Start menu. That means if you want to open another program, you have to go to the Start menu again, navigate its long scrolling list or multiple folders again (it doesn't remember what position you were at before), then tap the next program icon.  It's extremely tedious. 

Oddly, the Settings window, while it looks just like the Start menu, does actually appear in the program stacking order.  If you navigate to this screen, open a settings dialog, then close the dialog, you will actually get back to this Settings screen.  If you close the settings listing here, one would expect to go back to the Start menu, but no... you go back to the Today screen.

On the next page we'll go over the new custom designer themes in Windows Mobile 6.5!