Observations from Windows Mobile 7 Documentation
Recently we’ve got our hands on a leaked copy of Windows Mobile 7 Documentation. The document defines Windows Mobile 7 as “the next-generation OS for Windows(R) phones”, “based on Windows Mobile 6 with many additional features including enhanced support for e-mail, task and calendar functionality, improved device management and security functionality, ink handling, and VOIP. Windows Mobile “7” also includes support for .NET Compact Framework version 3.7, and SQL Server Compact Edition”. Read on for five interesting things about the upcoming Operating System.
1. The Calculator application included will be a bit more evolved than the one we’ve been accustomed to; it enables users to perform calculations, convert currency amounts and calculate tip amounts. Tip Calculator functionality can be controlled by accessing the registry key so it will be only a registry tweak away to enable or disable Tip Calculator.
2. Windows Mobile 7 will come with stock file viewers included that will provide a way to read common Microsoft Office file types as well as (nb) Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
3. Microsoft® Windows Media® Player 10.2 Mobile and later will be included with the OS, supporting several audio (AIFF Audio, AU Audio, AVI Video, G.711 Audio, GSM 6.10 Audio, MIDI Audio, SND Audio, Wave Audio, ASF Video and Audio, MP3 Audio and Windows Media Audio (WMA)), video formats (ASF Video and Audio, MPEG-4 Video, MS RLE Video, WMV Video) and image (JPG, PNG 1.1, TIFF, GIF, BMP, EXIF, ICO and WMV9 Image 1.0, 2.0) formats.
4. Windows Mobile 7 will also support Widgets, which are defined as “lightweight Rich Internet Applications that run on Windows® phones. Widgets are made up of one or more HTML files and can use CSS and JScript as well as other technologies supported by the browser control, such as Silverlight (nb). Windows Mobile Widgets also have access to features of the Windows® phone on which they are running, such as the State and Notifications Broker. A Windows Mobile Widget can be presented in one of three different containers; it can be a dynamic Start menu icon, a home screen plug-in, or a full screen application”.
5. In order to gain some performance and have a longer battery life, there will be improvements in File caching. In order to achieve this, “Windows Mobile includes two kinds of file caching services: file caching and disk caching”. This, combined with new, fast processors and strong batteries could finally bring peace to the ever lasting battle between performance and battery life.
