Foreword
Windows Mobile is a very old operating system. Its history goes back until the launch of Windows 95, as Microsoft Handheld PC 1.0, based on the Windows CE kernel, has been launched at the same time, which has in fact been a heavily downgraded version of Windows 95, made for handheld portable devices. This didn’t have much to do with Windows Mobile 6.1 that is currently in use, but the Palm-size PC 1.0 system, launched in January 1998, resembles it quite a lot, at least regarding its user interface. Of course it would be an exaggeration to say that the current Windows Mobile is ancient, as its kernel is up-to-date, but it’s also a fact that its user interface looks pretty much like the one used on the basic version, which is over ten years old.
Start menu and task manager of Palm-size PC 1.2 Color
All this hasn’t been a problem until a couple of years ago, as there were barely any WM-based phone PDA-s, the “simple” ones – that cannot be used for making phone calls – were not bought by the man of the street, while businessmen and geeks have accepted that the user interface has been sacrificed by Microsoft for the sake of functionality. The problems have arrived with the launch of iPhone, as it became clear for everyone that a touchscreen cannot be used only with a stylus, the nice visual effects won’t necessarily have a negative effect on usability and such a device can be fast as well. HTC was the first to react, not much after the premiere of iPhone they’ve launched their handset called Touch, which had the first really usable Windows Mobile GUI. This has been followed by TouchFLO 3D (which is still in use), that was easy to use even for newbies.
TouchFLO 3D: a serious improvement
The other manufacturers are, however, in great trouble. Asus is trying, but they somehow can’t really manage to create something good, Acer, who have recently acquired E-TEN, is just starting up in this business – but at least we can see some potential –, Gigabyte has been at a medium level, but this year in Barcelona they’ve proved that they’ve found the correct path, and then there’s Samsung with Omnia, and it’s no coincidence that many people install TouchFLO on it. Airis was told to launch a 3D GUI, HP, NDrive, Palm and Toshiba have no GUI of their own at all. We also have the old handsets: those who own such a thing, have to do with the default Windows interface – or they look around like we did, searching for 3rd party software. We have found two great software packages, let’s see them!
A cikk még nem ért véget, kérlek, lapozz!
