One of the new changes to Windows Mobile 6.5 that has gone under the radar is the improvement of the soft key menus, shown below. The new style menus will “hover” above the screen and fill up a limited vertical height. The text within looks to be larger (thus more finger friendly), and the up and down arrows imply that you can easily scan through the choices with your finger, even if your desired menu choice is above or below what you’re seeing.

Something else to take note of is how highlighted items now have a more glassy look to them (see Application Data on the top right screenshot).

It looks like Microsoft is satisfying the critics who say that although you can dress up Windows Mobile with TouchFLO 3D and other interface replacements, you still eventually are taken back to the boring, heavily text-based UI that is Windows Mobile as we know it. With the changes we’ve seen so far – the honeycomb launcher, the new soft key menus, refreshed highlighting, a bigger close button (hopefully the visual style on that has yet to be completed) and the sliding-panel Today screen, we’re getting closer to a more visually pleasing mobile operating system that should do quite well at holding us over until Windows Mobile 7 in 2010, when a dramatic UI overhaul is rumored.

More on 6.5 as it comes!