WinMo Wrap — the Week in Windows Mobile
The week marches on and today being Saturday means it is time to recap the recent happenings in the world of Windows Mobile. This week saw the first benchmarks published for the upcoming HTC Leo phone, and they were impressive. The Leo is the first phone to use a Snapdragon processor running at 1 GHz, and the performance demonstrated is nothing short of outstanding. The Leo did everything at least three times faster than comparable WinMo phones, and had a staggering 1800 percent performance boost in one area of the testing. The Leo has a beautiful huge screen, and with the Snapdragon looks to easily be the fastest phone on the planet. I can’t wait to see this baby get released into the real world.
Windows Mobile 6.5 is slated to roll out next week, and devices are expected to start releasing immediately. One of the most interesting devices that appeared this week running WM 6.5 is a 7-inch Internet tablet from C-motech. The Mangrove is also running a Snapdragon processor, and the pics that surfaced show an interesting implentation of WM 6.5.
Acer has been making moves to ramp up their smartphone game, but this week they dashed the hopes of those hoping for more WinMo devices. The company stated they are shifting their focus to the Android platform, following the lead of Motorola and Palm. Acer will still make WinMo phones, just not exclusively. The news is not all bleak, as analysts are forecasting that WinMo will regain its position as the second most prevalent smartphone by 2012.
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Sounds like a good phone and definitely will see what the pricing is before I seriously considering it. The Toshiba TG01 was the first snapdragon 1Ghz phone, not the Leo
You are correct. I thought the TG01 had a slightly slower Snapdragon but it is indeed a 1 GHz too. Man, that is fast, isn’t it?
Is it known which carrier will get the Leo?
The only confirmed carriers are O2 and T-Mobile although rumour has it that Orange will pick it up as well.
I’m playing with a WM6.5+ build on my Touch Pro, and I think it’s a huge shame Microsoft missed the ship date or whatever for the task bar changes — making the bottom bar bigger, the top bar smaller, and moving “start” and “ok/close” down below. It seriously made Windows Mobile enjoyable again for me.
Still thinking it’s too little, too late, but who knows? Microsoft’s pulled bigger rabbits out of their… hats.
Thankfully, the Leo seems to have ended the stagnation in Windows Mobile hardware once and for all-the stagnation which started as powerhouse PDAs like the Dell Axim X50v/X51v, HP iPAQ hx4700, Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX 720 and N560, Acer N311, and many others fell out of favor compared to smaller, weaker, and yet more expensive smartphones.
It’s about time.
I first jumped aboard back in the 90′s with a Casio Cassiopeia E105 pda. Amazing colour graphics, 133MHz Mips processor, stereo sound, and played a mean Galaga clone! Since then I’ve stuck with WinMo through many devices until jumping to the iPhone recently.
If you look back at that Casio, and compare it with WinMo 6, things hadn’t really moved on much! Hardware has also stagnated over the past few years. I think now, however, we’re finally seeing things move again and that can only be a good thing, whatever your mobile OS of choice.