Windows Mobile 6.5 | featured news

I installed Android on my HD2 a couple weeks ago. Initially, I thought I would continue to use Windows Mobile 6.5 as my main OS, but just hop into Android once in a while for games and apps not available in WM.

With all the talk focused on Android, iPhone, and lately Windows Phone 7, I’m glad the guys at Opera haven’t forgetten about the group of us who are still using Windows Mobile 6.5 (or earlier versions). Opera released a native version of Opera Mini 5 Beta for Windows Mobile earlier this year, and being a beta release, it was buggy. Sometime in September, they finally got a chance fix those bugs and improve the page rendering.

HTC's Sense UI runs on top of Windows Mobile 6.5 on the HD2, providing a better UI and convenient shortcuts to Windows Mobile apps. It's finger-friendly and hides most of WM 6.5's software and interface flaws. Sense UI is a slick and mostly well thought-out interface, but it has a few shortcomings of its own. On the home tab, the first screen you see when you power up the phone, the quick links to your favorite apps are limited to nine; the calendar contains only one entry; and there's no task list. Co0kie's Home Tab (CHT) fills these voids.

About a month ago, if you want access to your Dropbox files from your Windows Mobile phone, your only option is Ruttensoft's CloudFiles. Now, they have a competitor - Droppedboxx. It's not as fully featured as CloudFiles, but it gets the job done, especially if all you want to do is ftp between your phone and your Dropbox account.

The only feature I miss from CloudFiles is the internal text editor, but I can live without it. Price wise, the official releases for Cloud Files and Droppedboxx are $6.99 and $2.99 respectively.

Dropbox has became an indispensable web development tool for me. It lets you share and sync files across multiple computers - your desktop, laptop, and netbook. It also keeps a history of your edits, like google docs. I use it as a poor man's svn to keep track of my edits to pages on Wopular, in addition to syncing design comps, and to-do lists. Since I already use my HD2 to pick stores to feature on the site, I thought wouldn't it be nice if I could also do some coding with it.

I've been using the HTC Touch Pro 2 for a couple weeks now, and I've been really happy with it.

I don't understand why there's all this hate towards the new release of Windows Mobile 6.5. First of all, there's a reason why it's called 6.5. It's just a partial upgrade, not a full upgrade like Windows Mobile 7 is supposed to be. Nonetheless, 6.5's sole purpose was to make the device more finger-friendly. And for that purpose, it succeeds.