It’s been unfolding all day, but it seems Microsoft is leaking again, via XDA Devs, with the latest version of Windows Mobile 6.5, which now has a .1 after it.

Brandon over at PocketNow.com has done a quick video of one of the latest leaked builds, and one of the trendiest UI features of late, finger friendliness, seems to be addressed in this build. There look to be some nice swipe able options in the UI that are more comparable to third party apps than WinMo natively.

SO it seems like we’ll be seeing this on new devices in 2010’

Renowned ROM hacker l3v5y claims this version, called Windows Mobile 6.5.1 will be released in January 2010, with the Samsung Jackie being the first device to get it

Well maybe? These leaked ROMs that offer us a sneak preview of Windows Mobile development are no end product, running on devices that are not essentially designed for the OS. Let’s just hope that it delivers half of the experience documented above!

Via WMPowerUser

More often than not, lately, the big phone providers, are focusing on the latest online trend, Social Media. Sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, brought everyone an online portal, on which to share their thoughts, feelings,absurdities and emotions. The popularity of these services, and the myriad of others that seem to appear on a daily basis, Is driving device manufacturers to include native applications to access these services.

Nokia are the latest on this bandwagon

The fact that phone makers are picking up on the whole self promotion, social media wave is not surprising. I wonder though, is this something that all mobile phone users want or need.

Admittedly I’m a twitter user, and I find it a useful tool, occasionally. I follow a whole heap of web sites that provide pertinent Windows Mobile information, that I might use, some what like a RSS reading application. Sometimes though I wonder, shouldn’t use of these services be a personal choice, and not an included service on a mobile phone, that you inadvertently use without prior knowledge of what the service is, or does, or leaves you open to?

Creating a profile on any social media network, leaves you open to as many whack jobs, self promoters, sales people and genuine people as you can handle. Filtering that combination of input, is well above the average level of work, and time that most people have in a day online. A lot of people get sucked into affiliate services that let them automate their Twitter accounts, and get lot’s of followers, as a marketing tool. Lot’s of people hook up with the same add ons and get spammed, and get no value from their social networking accounts.

So seeing this press release today from Nokia, this post is my reaction, and action.

What I wonder is

• do these apps, and their inclusion value add to the device?
• does the inclusion of these native apps, value add to the social media site?
• Should people not have the choice to install these apps themselves?
• Should device manufacturers assume that these are apps that people want?

I’d like to see your opinions and views here, but I’ll state mine, to start you off.

I can get a multitude of free third party apps to access all of these services, I would like to control what software I have included on any new phone I get, there is only one third party social media app I’m interested in, and I want a phone with as little service provider customisation as I can get!

Some how, the idea that a phone OS would work flawlessly, seems to be secondary to picking up on what’s hot online, is this actually what mobile device marketing has come to?

Seriously, crack me a comment below, if you think differently!

Can I just say, some people have way too much time on their hands. I remember the hubbub associated with the news that someone had ported Windows to a Nokia device, Why oh why though if you were an Apple user, more importantly an iPhone user, Would you want to run Windows 95 on an iPhone.

Why anyone would want to actually run Windows 95 on any thing is still perplexing, As you can see from the video though, it is mainly emulator dependent on the Mac, and does not seem to run that well on the actual iPhone.

I suppose we have to accept that hackers are going to take advantage of our little pocket computers, and innovate with them. The iPhone has been well protected, but as more people get their hands on the SDK, we  may see more WhatThe’s like this. Now I’m a sceptic, the emulator action on the mac looks OK, but the iPhone seems to be showing a single graphic. Hmmm! *scratches head*

The original source for the video, is a site called GooDiPhone, some great comments to be had there, I found this on the UberReview though!

Even though it seems a bit left of field, this is another example of the power of the generation of mobile devices we are using now. Think about the last generation, they were just able to keep up with your first computer, Commodore 64! If your handheld is now running Windows 95, you’ll be running Vista on it by the end of the year.

Good or Bad, it’s a sign of things to come!

Recently we’ve been hearing about a horde of new Android devices, waiting to cross the alps, and conquer the modern world. Just like Hannibal. I haven’t had the chance to to check out any Android devices, Advertising though fascinates me, and this promo video, sent in by long time reader Knaak, not in English, is beautiful. You don’t have to understand what’s being said, or for that matter read, It’s a really smooth Ad

Samsung are rolling out their latest, first, Android phone, it looks good, and it takes the pressure off of HTC

Above all I’m fascinated by the great animation, …. Go Figure?

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Most of us think of visual search, as Google image search, but visual search can be so much more. SearchMe is an search application that I’ve not come across before, because it’s only just become available in Beta for WinMo. In short, it’s a search engine for your mobile phone that selects website’s for results to your search terms. So if I search for”just another mobile monday” the visual results are filtered for the site, Cool.

Now it’s a Beta, optimised for WinMo Pro 6, and it’s finger friendly, you can swipe to view more search results, but as yet it doesn’t support DPad navigation. It’s a big miss to not include keypad navigation of any kind. On the Tilt, the directional keys on the QWERTY keyboard don’t let you navigate through the app either.

Then again SearchMe does provide a rather random search, it also brought up sites that had linked to JAMM as well. That’s landscape mode pictured above, testing the Tilt’s keyboard for functionality.

The app is somehow disjointed, the key pad works for typing, but not for navigation.

Program options are really simple, and self explanatory, very hard to go wrong here. Probably the best feature of SearchMe is it’s ability to collect tags and categories from web sites, and provide you with an internal filter for those.

SearchMe is a different, and novel, mobile search engine, that works. Rather well! I found it surprising, and refreshing, I liked a different approach to a search engine. This is actually the first specialised mobile search engine application that I have tried, or become aware of. What I don’t like at the moment, it doesn’t recognise my default browser, and opens MIE [Mobile Internet Explorer] if I click on a search result page. This is really looking like a great add on for your WinMo device, some things need a bit of work, but I Like it!

SearchMe is available for other phone OS’s, and is now in Beta for Windows Mobile Professional

SearchMe Mobile Home Page