Donka's Mobile Rambles

Yesterday, Microsoft officially announced the latest incarnation of the mobile Operating System – Windows Mobile 5. While I have been greatly anticipating this new release, I still feel a little unfulfilled by the changes list. While I applaud Microsoft for the great strives that have been made in the under the hood changes and introducing new technology to the platform, there appears to be some issues that will impact on the experience for the end user. One of my main beefs about Windows Mobile 2003 SE is the implementation of new resolutions such as VGA. While the hardware exists to take advantage of these new resolutions, for the most part the OS and supporting applications still appear very much like QVGA thanks to pixel doubling. Unfortunately I have seen no mention of improvements in this area in the new release. One other area of concern that has been introduced with this incarnation is the inability to sync with a PC over TCP / IP such as Ethernet or WiFi using the new ActiveSync 4. This appears to have been removed for security reasons however I am a big user of Wireless syncing and it appears I am not the only one with some of the grumbling of discontent I have heard of this removal. It would be great if this option had been left in with a warning to the end user prior to enabling it. Anyway, time will tell how well this new OS will be accepted but in the meantime head on over to the Microsoft website for some screenshots and the MSMobile website for a breakdown on the main changes and new features.