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Windows Mobile 7 Phone Release Delayed Again

Posted by timothy on from the many-thousands-will-die-without-seeing-it dept.

jcoventry writes "Microsoft is delaying Windows Mobile 7, and it is thought new phones with the operating system are unlikely to reach the market before 2010. Microsoft partners who had expected to have a final release in their hands by early 2009 have been told that it won't be ready until the second half of 2009. Partners include companies like Verizon, Motorola and Samsung, all of which plan new phones that include the Mobile Windows 7 OS. Windows Mobile 7 is expected to have features like gesture recognition and speech input."

5 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Too slow by viljun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft is just too slow and clumsy nowadays. Mobile Windows 7 may already be old at the time it hit's the market.

    --
    Ville / Varuste.net
    1. Re:Too slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Do you really think WM is "forgetting" four simple integers?

      Well, it is Microsoft we're talking about.

  2. Recognition by freeasinrealale · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder if Microsoft or the mobile 7 software recognizes the gestures currently being submitted by the developers.

    --
    A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
  3. Re:gestures by pchan- · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm no iPhone fanboy but it seems ironic that after 6 iterations of Windows Mobile, Microsoft still hasn't released an update to handle gestures.

    Before version 4, WinCE (which is the core of Windows Mobile) was unusable garbage. In version 4 it was upgraded to "terrible" (as an OS), and the source code became available to developers. Version 5 is the first version that didn't entirely blow (although I quit a job using WinCE for one using specifically not WinCE because it is still a shitty OS).

    WinCE is not inherited from any of the other Windows lines, it doesn't share any code with them at the lower levels. The problem is that WinCE bolts the horrid Win32 API on top of this OS. And then MFC. And then dotnet. And it still retains much of the desktop+mouse user model. Every time I see that mouse arrow on a retail WinCE device it makes me cringe. For an embedded device, this makes no sense. Microsoft was more interested in maintaining compatibility with its desktop environment than with creating an interface that is logical for an embedded device.

    Device manufacturers have given MS a kick in a pants. They told them that what is currently being produced is inadequate. After the iPhone came out, MS released WinCE 6, which is the same old stuff (ooh, now a process can use 64 megs of RAM instead of 32) with more dotnet. They came out with yesterday's product. HTC and Samsung had to revamp the UI totally to ship a competitive phone. Can you imagine the level of hackery that went into this? Will MS catch up? Up until now there was no competition to WinCE (Linux required too much work, Symbian was, well, Symbian, and iPhone OS is not available to anyone). But with Android, handset developers have a real alternative OS (yes, I know it's Linux, but it's a complete OS). If Google hadn't screwed up Android by tying it in so much to Google services, I would say MS is too late. As it is, we'll see.

  4. Not the full story by Stan+Vassilev · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article uses very unclear wording in that part, so I thought I'd clarify.

    Microsoft will release updated browser in their 6.2 update. The good news is it can render Flash and AJAX and so on because it's based on the rendering engine of the desktop Internet Explorer browser. The bad news: it's based on the desktop version of *IE6*.