Windows Mobile 6.5.1 on the Way?

not to be cruel, but where have you been? 6.5.1 builds have been rolling out weekly on a VERY well known mobile site for quite some time. I'm running a build now that is only 3 weeks old. This is EXTREMELY old news and visiting any windows mobile site will land you info on this stuff!

Avro Let's see. Windows mobile is, despite articles out there, one of the most popular platforms for smart phones (to the point that Apple conveniently leaves them off their pretty charts at press events) with sales and installed base well into the 20-30% range and actually several percent higher in the US market than Apple and second only to RIM depending on how you draw the feature phone/smart phone line to include or exclude Nokia. But, while I don't feel that way, you certainly have a right to think that corporations should drop product lines that aren't getting massive dominence in their market. So, should we assume that in keeping with your rules, you are also saying: "Why doesn't Apple just throw in the towel on the Personal Computer business and admit defeat?" and "Why doesn't Apple just throw in the towel on the Mobile Phone business and admit defeat?" Didn't think so.

Totally agree with Mike Galos on this one... suggesting that Microsoft throw in the towel on mobile OS is downright stupid. 6.5.1 is definitely something worthy of some press to show that Microsoft is working on improvements, and while test builds are great and have been around as reddragon pointed out, test builds aren't exactly suited for production release which is why OEMs haven't been rolling it out yet... not that OEMs are perfect either, lol.

And they should: this is what I found at Gizmodo. http://gizmodo.com/5374876/windows-mobile-65-review-theres-no-excuse-for... < I really didn't want to beat up on WinMo here, because at this point it just feels tired. But man, come on Microsoft, you're giving me no choice. Windows Mobile 6.5 isn't just a letdown—it barely seems done. t's a superficial update, and not a very thorough one. It's an interim product, and a vain attempt to hold onto the thinning ranks people who still choose Windows Mobile despite not being somehow tethered to it until the tardy Windows Mobile 7 comes out, whenever that may be. And it won't work. Things get worse when you move past the surface, revealing an OS that hasn't been fundamentally changed in years, and which bears a strong resemblance to Windows Mobile 6.1, and a startlingly not-weak resemblance to PocketPC 2002. The new homescreen Start Menu, lock screen and contextual menus are just veneers, and they're not very thick. The terrible Windows Media Player app looks the same, the photo albums are helped only by smoother scrolling and support of basic swipe gestures, and the text, email, notes and settings pages are jarringly old-looking, and seriously hostile to pointing devices any larger than a pen. Especially fleshy ones. The confusingly-named Mobile Internet Explorer 6 is to Mobile IE 5 what IE 7 was to IE6 on the desktop. Get that? This is to say it's a massive upgrade, but like IE7, which added tabs and popup blocking about two years after everyone else had it, Mobile IE6 is at least a generation behind its competitors. Microsoft isn't really advertising the SUPER SPEED of Windows Mobile 6.5, which makes sense: 6.5 is based on the same underlying Windows CE version (5.2) as 6.1, and even 6.0. In other words, its guts are oooold. I'd like to think that 6.5's stunning failure to innovate is a symptom of a neglected project—maybe Microsoft just needed something, anything to hold people over until the mythical Windows Mobile 7 comes out, whatever it is. But as Steve Ballmer himself has plainly admitted, it's worse: Microsoft has simply lumbered in the wrong direction for two years, letting everyone, save maybe Nokia, fly right past them. Oh, wait: Gizmodo are Mac-zealots. And wait, Microsoft will come out with Windows Mobile 7, that will blow everyone away. Right, Galos? I'm sure you'd believe it if Microsoft told you they created unicorns that shit gold and bring world peace.

@Avro The same reason Apple won't throw in the towel on the computer business and admit defeat :) @logjamming You sound like your describing Apple...

Windows Mobile 6.5 will do nothing to increase WinMo's market share against today's competition. It's that terrible and dated. Only pedantic IT managers still herded in the Microsoft corral would foist this turd on their end users.

Windows Mobile is outdated and dying. Mobile companies are dropping it. Windows Mobile is the lamest mobile OS out there.

At my company we moved off of BlackBerry in Sept of 2008 for about 200 users. We moved to WinMo phones. Everyone hates them. HATES THEM. 1 year later, we are ditching them. We are going with iPhones on ATT and the Hero on Sprint, users choice. Android is going to KILL WinMo and may even surpass the iPhone. http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/10/09/android_2012_gartner/

WinMo is in DEEP trouble, 7 is not out till what late 2010 at the earliest? And despite some' attempts to frame this as a MS vs. Apple thing much like some do with iPods there a plenty of other players in this space. In short MS can play the usual embrace extend extinguish game as there plenty of alternatives. http://www.intomobile.com/2009/03/13/mobile-os-market-share-stats-confir... Simply put no matter how hard MS has been trying they are losing market share every quarter and not just to Apple. The funny thing is that in its various incarnations its been around for what ten years? I strongly considered a Samsung Blackjack as my first smart phone until I saw what it ran on at the time, no way I was going to tolerate WinMo. So dance away saying (implying) that the iPhone is a failure. Fact of the matter is that the iPhone is nipping very closly at the leaders heels and has gone from no phones in 2007 to cash making machine 2 short years later. At this rate it will be less then a year before Apple elipses WinMo and starts after RIM. And on top of all of this I say use what phone you want, but anyone who thinks that the iPhone is a failure... there are plenty of companies that would kill to have that level of "failure". Commence mental gymnastics.