Gizomodo has posted some commentary about what’s wrong with Windows Mobile and how versions 7 and 8 are going to fix it.

The first problem they have is that the UI is not more like Windows. There’s no easy way of seeing which applications are running, and the general user interface convention of pressing the X button to close an application does not actually cause the application to close.

My response to this, is that I agree, but.. the whole point of removing the taskbar from Windows CE for the Pocket PC flavor of the operating system was to simplify the interface. Microsoft thought that they could make it smart enough that you don’t need to close applications by yourself. The operating system would manage open applications for you and simply close the least used ones once resources were needed elsewhere. Usually this works pretty well if you don’t run too many 3rd party applications who don’t play nice with that method. The downside however is when you keep too many applications running in memory, this can affect your battery life.

Granted, the task management interface could certainly use some improvements. Looks like Zumobi has a good thing going.

The next problem Gizmodo has is with making phone calls. Apparently, they’re using the phone dialer with on-screen soft buttons instead of voice recognition or a built-in keypad (and didn’t notice the predictive capabilities). I actually find the Windows Mobile phone calling experience to be far superior to other operating systems. Gizmodo compares dialing on a Windows Mobile device to an iPhone:

Compare that to the iPhone, which has just a touchscreen, but gets you to the keypad, your favorites, recent calls or your contact list, all within two key presses of the home screen. Dialing shouldn’t be this hard, and the fact that it is just illustrates how bad the rest of the UI is.

Windows Mobile 6 Standard probably has the best interface for making phone calls. Read on…