A new version of Windows Mobile 7 is coming, and it’s being aimed squarely at the iPhone’s throat, according to an excellent report on the Inside Microsoft Blog.
Now, there are due to be some serious changes to Windows Mobile, in light of all the innovations the iPhone’s brought to the market. So, Windows mobile 7 is touted as being touch control without needing a stylus, but on top of that, it has gesture controls. Not, however, gesture controls using gyroscopes and accelerometers in the phone. Gesture controls using the phone’s camera to recognise when it’s being moved about.
Now, you may ask why they’ve gone down that route, instead of using hardware, but when you think about it, it has two MASSIVE advantages:
1) It allows user to “distance control” the phone using gestures in mid-air, in front of the camera.
2) It allows people with phones running Windows Mobile (such as the XDA Orbit), to upgrade the operating system on their phone to run Windows Mobile 7, and get a whole slew of new features and cool stuff! (And they’re also being clever and writing the software so it will support handsets with touchscreens, or with keypads, or with BOTH, making it very versatile in terms of what phones can use it.)
It remains to be seen how well it works in the flesh, but if it’s half as nice as these screenshots (which make it looks similar to the dark blue ‘futuristicness’ of Windows Media Player 11) make it out… it’s gonna be stunning!
Let us know what you think of it! You think it looks classy? Sinister? Awesome? Daft? Leave us a comment, and have your say!
January 12th, 2008 at 11:03 am
That looks cool, I like it. I like Microsofts new dark blue themes, miles and miles better than the grey classic stuff they used to churn out on the late 90s…
When will we be able to change the operating systems on mobile phones just like we can on PCs? Choose open source stuff or upgrade / downgrade to different OS’s?