Say Hello to New Windows Mobile

TechFlash reports: Microsoft and its industry partners will try to make a big splash on Tuesday as they release the first mobile phones with Windows Mobile 6.5—complete with a mobile application store, a mobile synchronization service, a new look, and features designed to streamline the process of accessing information on a device.

However, Microsoft executives acknowledge behind the scenes that they wish their mobile operating system was farther along. Perhaps most noticeably, the new Windows Mobile supports single-finger touch input but not native multitouch, the ability to interact with the screen using multiple fingers at once—to pinch or expand a Web page, for example.

Multitouch is one of the signature features of Apple's iPhone.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was quoted recently saying that he wished Microsoft had already launched Windows Mobile 7, the planned successor to the version just now being released.

"It's not the destination for us, by any stretch of the imagination, it's a step along the way," acknowledged Greg Sullivan, a Windows Mobile senior product manager, in an interview. However, he said, consumers should see Windows Mobile 6.5 as "a big step" compared with the previous version of the Microsoft software.

Along with the Windows Mobile 6.5 debut, the company is launching a mobile synchronization service called My Phone. Free features will include the ability to manage content on a phone from a Web browser on a PC, and to back up information such as contacts, text messages, calendar notifications, and documents to a password-protected site.

My Phone also includes premium features, such as the ability to remotely lock a phone or locate it if it’s lost or stolen. Premium features will cost $4.99 per instance of use, but Microsoft is offering a trial period in which the first use of a premium feature will be free to all users.

Changes in the Windows Mobile 6.5 software include the ability to quickly see and jump to individual emails, text messages and other newly received alerts from the "lock screen" that appears when people initially pick up their mobile phones.

The home screen takes cues from Microsoft Zune's interface, letting people scan categories of content by scrolling vertically, and then see individual items within those categories by scrolling horizontally.

Microsoft will try to differentiate its new Windows Marketplace for Mobile from Apple’s App Store by offering features including a 24-hour-refund policy. Apple’s has significant momentum in this area, recently announcing that its store has more than 85,000 apps. Tens of thousands of apps are available for Windows Mobile, but Microsoft has been slow to bring everything together into a centralized store.

On a broader level, Microsoft has been beefing up the Windows Mobile team with new executives and engineering talent, hoping to catch up and position itself to capture more of the future growth in the smarphone market.

For example, whereas the Windows Mobile team had zero of Microsoft's elite “distinguished engineers” a little more than a year ago, now it has eight. Sullivan said the company has dispatched “a disproportionate amount of resources and talent” to the Windows Mobile group, and many of the newcomers have been focusing on future versions of the mobile operating system.

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Todd Bishop is managing editor of TechFlash.