Windows Mobile 6 review

Paul Ockenden Read more October 7, 2009

Regular Windows Mobile 5 users who pick up a Windows Mobile 6 device probably won’t notice much difference, apart from the Vista-like Today screen with its mock translucent effects, spruced-up icons and larger fonts. Everything else looks pretty similar – and that’s a deliberate ploy by Microsoft. WM6 has been designed to improve on its predecessor, but without alienating those people already familiar with the Windows Mobile platform.

We’ve been evaluating WM6 for a few months now, from the early betas and developer builds through to the final release, and one of the most noticeable improvements throughout this testing has been the speed at which it runs. On similar hardware, WM6 is significantly faster than WM5, especially when you have lots of applications running. The release build also seems stable, with far fewer resets required than with WM5 devices.

The smartphone and Pocket PC versions are now called Standard and Professional respectively, and there are fewer differences between them than their WM5 equivalents. Standard finally gets the Mobile Office suite, but is slightly hampered by not being able to create new documents, only editing existing files. Luckily, simple workarounds are possible (which we’ll cover in next month’s RWC Mobile & Wireless column). Some might also find the lack of a spellchecker in WM6 Standard a problem, and Remote Desktop is available only with WM6 Professional, as it requires a touchscreen.

A welcome addition in WM6 is the ability to view HTML emails, including any embedded graphics – fast becoming the format of choice within many businesses. Other mobile platforms will only show a simplified text representation, often with links stripped out.

There’s a new search facility that works across several applications. Just type a word while you’re looking at your inbox, for example, and it will quickly find the messages that match. There are several other enhancements to WM6 email, but many will work only if you’re running Exchange Server 2007 – tasks such as setting an Out of Office message, searching your complete mailbox and intelligent attachment handling. While on the subject of email, WM6 Standard users in particular will appreciate a new set of keyboard shortcuts available using the numeric keypad, making common tasks much quicker.

One area where the improved speed is really noticeable is the web browser – it’s about twice as fast as WM5 when rendering pages containing large tables or using complex CSS-based layouts. That’s a major improvement for people regularly accessing web-enabled enterprise applications with lots of tabular data.

Windows Live is now fully integrated, including Messenger, Mail and Search. Messenger is becoming an increasingly important business tool, and with WM6 it integrates with your contacts list, allowing you to instantly see who’s online.

Those deploying WM6 within corporate environments will be pleased to see that it comes with Information Rights Management built in, and that it applies to both messages and documents. The fact that storage cards can now be encrypted will also comfort those responsible for enterprise security.

Lastly, there’s now a mobile version of Windows Update incorporated into WM6, but Microsoft has said it’s only intended to be used rarely, and purely for critical updates. As smartphones increase in popularity, security issues are becoming more of a concern, although it’s currently a theoretical risk.

While at first glance Windows Mobile 6 might look much the same, there are plenty of important changes below the surface – some things that improve the user experience and others that are important from a corporate operation and security point of view. But by far the most noticeable change with WM6 is the improved stability and speed of operation – it’s been a long time coming, but is one of the most welcome enhancements.