Windows Mobile 6.5 phones coming Oct. 6 – C-Net
Microsoft is hoping that a new crop of phones this fall will help the company in its quest to stay relevant in the cell phone market.
The software maker said on Tuesday that the first phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 will launch worldwide on October 6 and will include phones running on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless.
The new crop of phones will also be the first that Microsoft will sell under the “Windows Phone” brand, an effort to tap into the marketing power of its flagship desktop operating system.
100 Million cell phones.
Nothing to say.
Do they come in beige?
Nothing wrong with 6.5 for me. Been using it on my Verizon Omnia for the past month. With custom ROMS. Seems fast and customizable.
Cool. The Blue Screen of Death in a smaller size. I hope they are more reliable than my kid’s XBox which I just had to repair due to the Red Ring of Death after one year. The fix is a hassle. Consists of total disassembly, (opening the stupid cases is a bitch), re-applying heat transfer compound and installing new screws to keep the heat sinks in good contact with the chips. Then, overheating the whole thing again to “reflow” the rotten new Democratic lead-free solder. Then putting it all back together, and waiting for it to fail in a year or so again. I can imagine all these phones getting a similar problem.
“Stay” relevant? I think you have to BE relevant first before you can STAY relevant.
Well, what a surprise that people don’t like WinMo. It has been bad mouthed hardcore by the technocrati/Jobian followers since the announcement of the original iPhone.
The joke?
The iPhone STILL does not do everything you can on a WinMo device.
I will readily admit that the interface on WinMo/WinPho is not the prettiest in the world but come on. Since when did it really matter so long as it is functional? I am constantly hearing murmurs of how limiting the interface design of the iPhone is and yet over in WinMo land, if you don’t like it, you just simply change it. Oh what was that? Steve says NO? Cause Steve knows best? Whatever…
Microsoft has had a broke overall strategy on WinMo but the reality is that they STILL sell a CRAP ton of copies on all the devices that are sold. Even the iPhone only recently started outselling WinMo devices. What will come of things when MS decides to put some real effort into this?
And to the troll comment on the XBox being representative of the WinMo devices, grow up. MS does not make the phones. They come from top tier players in the cell phone industry like HTC, SE, Moto, Samsung and others. I am going on over 5 years using HTC manufactured devices and they are rock solid. As for WinMo? Since 6.x, I might reboot once in 2 to 3 weeks and if I have to, it is from running one too many apps at the same time. Something you do not have the privilege of doing on the iPhone.
And regardless of what Dvorak thinks, you NEED multitasking on a smartphone.
Sure it can do a lot if your visions great, your pulse is firm, and you got the cash. Unfortunately many of the potential market they’re counting on don’t fit the bill. Most of the great stuff you can do on this thing you can do much more quickly and comfortably on the PC and not be constantly worrying if your data’s synchronizing between your phone, laptop, and PC. Last but not least, till the crisis gets better people are not gonna rush out to get one.
#3,
Microsoft haters havent been rational for years. For example, Snow Leopard has some problems that Vista suffered nearly a half a decade ago, yet we are not hearing a thing about it from the silicon vally bloggers. Notably it has the exact same problems with 3gig+ PAE, and a poor 64bit compatability. Yeah, and if you have a non-new integrated printer scanner fax machine thing, I mean come on, we heard the haters go on for years about those things, and not a peep from em now.
#9,
Nope I disagree. Over the next year this class of device will become the free with service phone. Microsoft will eventually sell about a billion of these things.
Allegedly we are gonna get basic phone features on the iPhone in the next few months, like being able to trade pictures and ringtones, but I am not holding my breath…
Additionally, I expect the winmo phones to have features like the free with service phone, like the samsung phone that does the face and geo tagging on pictures. This is stuff that should be a slam dunk with the app store, but nothing yet…
Finally, there are some outright embarrasments on the iPhone like SeaDragon is a better picture browser than anything Apple has come up with yet, and the MS Tag reader is the only bar code reader on the iPhone that works in any realistic scenario.
Nope, the phone business will be a retelling of the childrens parable of the rabbit and the turtle. It is a shame the iPhone showed so much promise just 2 years ago, and has been relegated to the farting soundboard platform of choice…
>The Blue Screen of Death in a smaller size.
Microsoft has been running Windows on cell phones/PDA for years now. Have we had these big problems that people always predict for Microsoft, or have they delivered a good product?
Might they even be usable for cars?
#8 said it best. iPhone is a POS next to my WinMo 6.5 Omnia. WinMo is so much better cause you can install almost anything you want on it and there is no shortage of people who make custom CABs for it.
i ran a windows mobile phone for 3 years but the assfuckers at t-mobile wanted to charge me $400 for another windows mobile phone and since they can’t get me an iphone, i ended up with an android G1. the g1 is cool but it corrupts photos regularly AND forgets i have a memory card every other time i use the camera. plus it will let me READ but not EDIT googledocs, so the windows mobile phone would STILL be a better call for my needs since it’s got word and excel. sadly, there’s just not much app development for windows mobile, nor the G1. the iphone still RULES because it’s so much more than a phone. but i’d prefer real buttons for typing any day of the week.
#13,
What apps are you seeing that you are missing out on? I mean, look at the Tom Tom reviews and price for the iPhone. For the price I elected to just go out and get a Tom Tom rather than try and shoe horn that feature onto the iPhone.
Other than that, what are the killer apps for the iPhone? The games are still just cell phone quality games, although the iPhone has a very mildly improved controll interface than the t9 the old cell phone games.
Have yet to see a productivity or photo application that is worth even the time to check out.
Lots and lots of just stupid crap. I suspect 90% of those 15,000 apps are stupid crap. I don’t know been a couple of months since I looked at the app store. Has the signal to noise ration improved any at all?
I use Pandora and NPR, but… If Mobile Safari supported flash I wouldn’t need those… But even in that case, I would be happier if I had kept my XM radio going than abandoning it for this miraculous all in one device.
Way back when, Dvorak predicted that the iPhone would fail because it is a convergance device, (or some such, I don’t recall exactly what he said…) but all things considered…
For less than the monthly fee of my iPhone over a two year period, I would rather have a free with service phone, a Sony PSP, an XM Radio, and a Tom Tom GPS device. Yes, the iPhone does all these things… poorly.
I just did the math, and I could throw in a netbook with 3g service and still be under the minimum monthly fee for an iPhone.
That’ll be a bitch when the phone BSOD’s.
I;ll bet PeeDrool can’t wait for this.
#16
hahahahahaha haahahahah ahahahah
Thats funny because the iPhone doesn’t crash!!! hahahahahaha I get it!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Postman, did you skips your meds today? Don’t you have some mail to burn that you didn’t feel like delivering?
The hardware in the Xbox seems to be crap. Highest failure rate I ever heard of.
MS needs to set up a phone division that doesn’t answer to the rest of the company and let them work on the thing full time otherwise I think they are history in a few years. Kind of hard to be sure though because they do work with their own stuff.
M$ is already too far behind to make a difference. Their product sucks and is having their ass kicked by Apple, RIM and even Google.
Amazing, that Microsoft would pick the worst phone on the face of the earth. Just a few idiotic interface issues with this phone. 1. The screen wakes upon ringing, but disconnects if anything but connect is touched when removing from its pouch. 2. Default email setting, “reply all”. 3. The screen goes blank on any phone connection, so voice mail require you to wake the screen, then call up the keyboard to access voicemail whereupon it goes blank again and you do it again at each step to call up your message. And the list of stupid interface stupidity goes on and on. And none of these interface problems are changeable. It’s like no one at HTC ever used the phone.