Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: winmo, 6.5, upgrade | Themes: Windows Tech Talk, Smartphones
- 1. Updated Look and Feel
- 2. Looks Like a Zune, Feels Like a Compromise
- 3. A Help File: An Admission of Guilt?
- 4. Don’t Call Them Hexagons: Start and Settings
4. Don’t Call Them Hexagons: Start and Settings
Screens on smart phones are getting bigger, making the old two-across icon list a waste of space. Apple fits four icons across the iPhone screen but Microsoft has gone for three icons offset to make room for long titles (or five icons across when you rotate the screen to landscape). Early builds of Windows Mobile 6.5 showed the hexagonal grid, but this is now hidden, so you can see the full name of icons like Sounds and Notifications. The icons also certainly have a more attractive design, with a translucent "glow" marking the selected icon. The offset spacing means there’s always somewhere to put your finger so you can swipe down to the next set of icons without accidentally selecting an icon. But if you swipe too energetically, you can end up selecting one of the notification icons at the top of the screen, sending you to a dialog or back to the Today screen.
When you have a lot of apps and icons, it’s a long way down to the bottom and you don’t get any keyboard shortcuts. The Settings pane is particularly busy in landscape view, and with five icons in a row, you can’t just run your eye across them to find what you’re looking for. Compared to the categories of settings in HTC’s Touch FLO interface, it’s rather confusing.
The options for arranging icons are also very basic. You can’t create folders to organize groups of icons, although programs can install their own folder of icons (Office Mobile puts Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneNote Mobile together). You can tap-and-hold an icon to get a context menu that lets you move it to the top of the page, but you have to do that in the right order, one at a time, to get the arrangement you want. If you promote an icon you don't want, you can return it to its original position. The iPhone and BlackBerry interfaces both let you move icons to a specific position on screen or in a secondary screen or folder, which is much more flexible. And although you can choose Move To Top for icons in the Settings folder, this function actually moves them to the top of the Start screen, not the top of the Settings screen, so you’re stuck with the original order.
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I upgraded from windows 5 last week to the HTC Touch 2. Even though there isn't alot of hype at the moment there will be. My contacts, photos, calendar, sms's automatically copy to the net a few times per day. This happens even though i am on prepaid with no internet plan. I go into a secure myphone website put in a password and everything is there. If i copy the contacts from the computer they also automatically copy to the phone.
I think is a step in the right direction. I've been using WM 6.5 for several months now and I like the changes that were made. That being said, it's still nowhere near as polished as the iPhone, or the Palm Pre. The real beauty of Windows phones is the work that the makers put into customizing the software. HTC does a great job and the Leo looks absolutely fantastic. Samsung's Omnia II looks to be a killer phone also. The real upgrade is going to come once Windows Mobile 7 comes out...
Of course you should upgrade IF your phone manufacturer offers it. If not there might be an unofficial rom thats been cooked up for your phone too. I'm running an unofficial 6.5 build 23069 on my lg incite, and it works great. This is more current code than any official upgrades. The only thing that's been driving us crazy is the accelerometer driver from 6.1 does not work well with 6.5 and causes a lot of issues, so we're crossing our fingers on an official release from lg so that we can grab the newer drivers out of it and incorporate it into our cooked builds.
An article on WinMob6.5 on the 19th of October. When did they release it again? Point made.
I do prefer 6.5 over 6.1 BUT it's not enough. Even though Windows Mobile pretty much offers the same level of facilities and in some cases, more than other manufacturer's, the damage has been done with previous releases. Heck, 6.1 on a qtek 9090 flies with NO junk from providers installed. Funny that.