Small Fish, Big Pond

My Phone uses WM6.5 and sometimes it feels like I’m the only one defending it; many people attack it because the interface isn’t “iPhonesie” enough for them. In other words they don’t have the eye hand coordination to hit buttons smaller than 2in square.

Plus I like that Windows Mobile is actually more open than iPhone OS or Android to tinkering and changing. Not only does it make the phone customizable to my tastes but it means that any programmer can go in there and make the Os do what they want to. Ironic since I know so many Open Source gurus that lament my choice of Windows 7 on my desktop saying Linux is the way to go. But they have iPhones…

Anyway BGR has new rumors on the specs Windows Mobile 7 will have when it’s revealed in a couple weeks. And it’s all bad news.

- The traditional Home Screen will get a whole new look and will not support custom interfaces like Sense and TouchFLO
- No Flash support as time constraints prevented its inclusion
- Applications will be installed through the Windows Mobile Marketplace only, manual installation from a storage card will not be allowed
- Say no to multitasking and yes to push notifications which may be provided by a Microsoft hosted push notifications environment
- No .NET Compact Framework backwards compatibility so all those old apps will not work, but a portion of the data and business logic .NET CF may be ported at some point
- Browser is based upon desktop IE7 codebase, but with some IE8 functionality and is currently faster / better than the iPhone 3G
- No more active sync or Windows Mobile Device center. Zune software will handle all syncing

Basically they’re going to make WinMo suck as hard as iPhone. I’m frankly sick of the world striving to emulate the iPhone and focusing on all the worst aspects of the iPhone to adopt. First it was taking away the stylus, now where locking down the device and not allowing third party companies to improve upon the design.

I REALLY hope that either this is all bunk. Or the rumors that the phone OS is splitting into a Business and Consumer version; and that this is the consumer version and the Business version will retain the openness of the current OS.