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Microsoft To Add Yet Another Smartphone OS This Year

Posted by timothy on from the 5th-time's-the-charm dept.

GMGruman writes "Someone at Microsoft either really loves mobile operating systems or can't make up his mind as to which to use, because Microsoft Thursday announced yet another mobile OS, its fifth. The new Windows Embedded Handheld OS will succeed Windows Mobile 6.5 and run on at least some existing Windows Mobile smartphones. It is not the same mobile OS, known as Windows Phone 7, that Microsoft earlier this year said would replace Windows Mobile and break with it in terms of compatibility so Microsoft could better compete with the iPhone and Google Android OS."

3 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Er what??? Android is 100% open source by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    All this talk about Jailbreaking Android phones is for people who want root access but *DO NOT* want to re-flash their phone.

    Or who discover, months into a contract, that they have a phone that uses tivoization to block re-flashing with firmware packaged by an individual.

  2. It's becoming a Unix world by Burz · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...in smartphones and hand held devices in general.

    iPhone -- iOS Unix

    Android -- Linux

    Palm -- Linux

    RIM -- Moving to QNX

    That leaves Symbian and Windows Mobile as the two non-'nix holdouts.

  3. Re:Incompatibility by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's exactly what they did!

    Windows Mobile looks like crap, and they know it. They maintained compatibility above all else, and the result is that you can use most of the familiar Windows API on it, and make all your apps look like tiny desktop apps. They worked but weren't very intuitive, especially in the new world of touch. Because of this, "Windows Phone 7" was announced as a completely incompatible OS, supporting only Silverlight apps. It's meant to be the next-gen platform that can compete with the slickness of the iPhone.

    The problem is that Windows Mobile had a lot of business users and they weren't too happy with everything they make and use becoming obsolete overnight. That's the void this fills. This "Windows Embedded Handheld" maintains the compatibility platform they bought into.

    I suspect the only difference between the two will be that one uses the old shell and one uses the new Silverlight shell -- it's already easy to confirm that Windows Phone 7 uses a similar (if not the same) platform underneath the new UI.