Do you use the directional pad on your Windows Mobile Professional devices? The latest trend in the mobile space is to forego hardware navigational controls all together in favor of the touchscreen. Both the BlackBerry Storm and HTC Touch HD have basic buttons for Call Send/End, Home, and Back. The Samsung Omnia and Epix have trackpads instead of the traditional directional pad, although the latter can be converted to use as a modified directional pad.

I have the Touch Pro and I find the directional pad there not very useful. Up and down works fine, but the left and right clicks sometimes get mistaken by the machine for me wanting to press Send or Home instead of a left click and End or Back for the right click. I find myself navigating with the screen more because using the directional pad there annoys me. However, I do miss the hardware navigation.

Is Windows Mobile ready for hardware-less navigation? Until the operating system catches up to the hardware, I am not so sure. While HTC has done a fine job integrating flick scrolling and gesture commands similar to the iPhone, they aren’t standard on hardware from other manufacturers. This is apparent in Samsung’s Windows Mobile offerings as flick scrolling works in some apps and not others. Also, the circular scroll wheel on the Touch Pro makes it feel like a gimmick because it works as a scroller in some apps, a zoom feature in others, and doesn’t even work in most apps. The accelerometer can be a great navigation feature for games and entertainment software and GPS can be used for social applications but we have yet to see good implementation of those technologies through third parties at this time, which is a shame.