Windows Mobile 6.5: What we should expect

All indications are that today is the day Microsoft will officially launch Windows Mobile 6.5, the incremental update from Redmond that seeks to bring the resistive touch OS up to speed with the "finger friendly" capacitive touch devices that led the market last year.

Since last November, when CEO Steve Ballmer announced Windows Mobile 6.5 at a conference in Australia, the OS has been on a hurried path toward launch. It was introduced at Mobile World Congress, and then received a graphical overhaul in time for MIX 09, when the trademark on-screen "honeycomb" was eliminated. Shortly thereafter, Ballmer essentially dismissed the whole update as a provisional release prior to Windows Mobile 7, forestalling his marketing team's effort to build up momentum prior to today.

This afternoon, General Manager of Business Experience Stephanie Ferguson is scheduled to discuss and demo the new Windows Mobile 6.5 UI and its built-in apps as well as some new developer offerings. A portion of the presentation is expected to cover enterprise-aimed developments and productivity enhancements such as single number reach, a feature which was heavily promoted last year with Office Communications Server.

Three things we're hoping to see

NPD's Ross Rubin told us in March, "Moving forward, the area of focus in Windows Mobile 6.5 is going to be the browser," since the key purchase motivator for the most popular smartphones has been Internet access and browsing. A strong final version of Internet Explorer Mobile is going to be a crucial aspect of the 6.5 release, so we're hoping for an in-depth look today. Demonstrations of earlier builds looked promising, showing that IE6 Mobile had taken a lot of cues from Opera Mobile 9.5.

UI overlays like TouchFLO from HTC, Acer Shell UI, Samsung TouchWiz tailor Windows Mobile to different devices, and give it a fresh face. At the beginning of this year, the world's third largest mobile handset maker LG made a commitment to Windows Mobile, and a new UI overlay from the company (such as the Flash Lite UI in the LG Prada phone) would be a welcome addition.

Finally, there is one big mystery that still needs to be solved in Microsoft's mobile arsenal: the project from Danger labs known only as "pink". What is absolutely certain about Pink is that it has an advertising push expected to begin this month. With the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 today and TechEd going on the rest of this week, the timing is opportune for the ultimate disclosure of the mystery product.