by Frank McPherson, author of How To Do Everything With Windows Mobile

 
The Mobile World Conference is going on right now in Barcelona, Spain, and apparently now is the time for all the big Windows Mobile news for the year.

First, Sony Ericsson announced their first Windows Mobile device, the XPERIA X1. Of course the fact that a big mobile handset manufacturer has announced they will sell a Windows Mobile device is big news, but I hope the pictures don't do the device justice because to me it just looks ugly. It does look like it will have an interesting home page UI akin to the T-Mobile Shadow. This year you will be seeing a lot of manufacturers trying to stand out by making different front ends to Windows Mobile, which is going to make support a tad of a nightmare. I wonder which U.S. carrier will sell the XPERIA and what it will cost. It looks like a high-end device, probably heading well north of $500. (We need cheaper devices not more expensive devices.)

The next big piece of news is the announcement that Microsoft is acquiring Danger. Seems to me that now that Bill is leaving Microsoft is spending that big stockpile of cash. Frankly, I don't understand this move. Could it be that Microsoft has finally decided after all these years that it needs to sell it's own device, possibly targetted at consumers? Over the years we have debated the benefits of Microsoft manufacturing and selling their own device to have total control over the experience like Palm had and Apple has with iPhone. But aren't the Sidekicks getting a bit long in the tooth, and does Danger really have developers that are better than what Microsoft has? Perhaps Danger can help in the vision area but I don't know, this thing seems too little too late. If Microsoft is planning on using Danger to compete with iPhone I don't think that pig will fly.

Besides the Danger announcement the next big announcement from Microsoft has been that they have made a version of MSN Direct available for Windows Standard (or the device previously known as the Smartphone) available for download. I downloaded and installed the program on my T-Mobile Dash and it runs ok, adding a new plug-in to the home screen. It's not a full implementation of MSN Direct though, as I have more info on my Abacus MSN Direct watch than this applet provides. The program needs to provide a way to configure what is downloaded and provide all the channels. The version of MSN Direct for Windows Mobile doesn't use the FM-based radio network that works with the watches, which I think is a bit of a mistake. OTOH, perhaps some of the devices that will have FM radios will be able to work on that network?

The final announcement that caught my eye is news that a Webkit-based mobile browser is being developed for Windows Mobile. The browser, called Iris, uses the same web engine as Apple's Safari browser. I use Safari on my iPod Touch and I can tell you that Iris is no Safari. Note to developers of web browsers for Windows Mobile: please provide a one button way to go back and forward to pages. I would like to use Opera on my devices, but I can't stand that Back requires two clicks while it's one click in Internet Explorer mobile. All this mobile browser activity is interesting, but I wonder how some of these companies are going to make money.

Labels: 2008, news

posted by Frank at 7:48 PM 0 comments Links to this post