The buzz at the minute is about Windows Mobile 6.5, since it’s only a few weeks until it gets released into the wild (well, properly, anyway, the beta’s been about for ages), but let us never forget that version 6.5 ain’t the really big future news for Microsoft; WinMo 7 is waiting in the wings, ready to become the top-end, ultimate (that is, until version 8 gets made) version of their OS in the fullness of time.
Intriguingly, according to UX Evangelist, we may already have some inkling of what the final features will be.
Yes, that blog has done some serious detective work (genuinely, my hat is off to you, dude), to find out what we can expect. Only, the research was done using a bit more lateral thinking than just asking, “What does Windows Mobile 7 do?”
Nope, what he’s done is scour round LinkedIn, and found profiles of people who’ve been involved in the development of WinMo 7, to find out what they say they’ve been working on. Info straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Suffice to say, his hard work has dug up some rather intriguing titbits.
First up, you’re looking at quite a broad selection of chipsets that WinMo 7 will be able to run on, including Qualcomm chips (ten billion quid says that includes Snapdragon processors) and Tegra chips (mmm, Tegra). One of the other key points is that it looks as though Windows Live integration will be rather tight within WinMo 7, and I expect to see Hotmail, Live Messenger and other Live apps as core parts of the new OS. Oh, and if they can work in a link to Xbox Live (which has been rumoured in the past), that could get rather interesting.
There’s something else interesting in there, as well, something called MEMS, or Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, if one is to be long-winded. That means onboard accelerometers and compass, and that means a veeeeeeeeeery high probability of some high-end mapping options, only I’d imagine they will link them to Bing Maps, or Live Earth, if you still call it that, rather than Google Maps (this is Microsoft, after all).
It’s a shame that none of the profiles on LinkedIn give us an inkling of what the interface might be like, but at least now we know a bit more about the guts of the new version of their OS.
So, next step, beta version. ‘Cos I wanna see what the next generation of WinMo will actually look like…
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