Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: winmo, 6.5, upgrade | Themes: Windows Tech Talk, Smartphones
6. Finally, a Better Browser
The Pocket Internet Explorer browser in previous versions of Windows Mobile was extremely basic and most handset manufacturers have been including Opera instead. Windows Mobile 6.5 includes a brand new browser, Internet Explorer Mobile 6, which is based on the rendering engine from Internet Explorer 6 and the JavaScript engine from Internet Explorer 7. It runs Flash, although it uses Flash Lite (the full Flash player won't be available until 2010 and handset manufacturers can choose to leave out Flash Lite if they want to cripple the browser). That’s enough for YouTube and some Flash games. In general, pages load correctly, and with the right layout, even complex sites like Hulu and Flickr can be viewed, but some pages show slightly odd spacing.
To show as much of the Web page as possible, the address bar disappears once pages have loaded and there’s no menu bar, but just a button in the corner that brings up controls for Back, Favorites, the keyboard, Zoom, and a simple menu. You can use that to change the text size or switch back to loading the mobile versions of Web pages for speed. However, you can’t pick between which sites you want to have the full version for and which you want mobile–it’s one or the other.
If you have a hardware zoom control, you can zoom in and out of Web pages. In fact, although the on-screen zoom bar is smooth and responsive, we were able to zoom out farther with the zoom bar on the Touch pro 2 than with the software control. Panning around the page by dragging is also responsive rather than jerky–you can swipe fast and the page will scroll fast (and bounce a little to let you know when it gets to the bottom). As you move around, you see a map of the page so you can see where you are–it’s more accurate than scrollbars and takes up less space (it’s translucent so it doesn’t get in the way of the page).
Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is a decent browser with some helpful ideas. Start typing a domain and it offers to autocomplete it with www and .com, .net,.org and other common URLs. Double-tap on a YouTube video and it automatically zooms it to full screen and rotates to landscape mode. It doesn’t have as many options as third-party browsers like Skyfire (which uses Firefox in the cloud to display pages with Flash, Silverlight, JavaScript, and PDF) and it doesn’t render pages quite as well as the browsers on iPhone and Android (although it’s far better than the BlackBerry browser). It might not be state of the art, but it is a major improvement.
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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.