Gadgetory

hey guys it's Brandon Minnemann from pocketnow.com and in this video we're gonna show you five subtle changes that are coming in windows mobile 6.5 we know about the big things right so the new home screen the new Start menu the marketplace our app stores some people are calling it but what about the smaller things that are more subtle well we're going to go through those now so on the right here we have a windows mobile 6.1 device the sprint touch pro and on the Left we have a windows mobile 6.5 running on the HTC Touch HD this is the latest one from xda-developers and of course it's an early build so it may not be fully representative of what we will have when devices shipped but we think it's a darn close so let's go through this now I'm going to open up a file explorer on both devices so we go into the Start menu here and file explorer and likewise on this side and we're starting in the windows directory so we can see the same screen across both devices now I'm gonna do some flicks scrolling on the touch pro here and watch what happens it works but it's quite nachi and if you try to accelerate your finger you can only go so fast and it's kind of imprecise and then if you get all the way to the top which takes a long time you don't get the kind of bounce-back that you would get on the iPhone but if we go to the 6.5 ROM the flex scrolling is much more sensitive and it's much more realistic so we can flick our finger lightly or really fast to move it along quickly and it's skipping a little bit because again this is an early build but you can kind of get the sense that it moves much more naturally when you slide your finger so if we get to the top we can see that we've got some kind of we've got a bounce-back action like we have in the iPhone which makes it feel more natural and something else that I want to show you in here which is the second subtle element that's coming in 6.5 are the soft key menus so if I press menu here and then I press menu here totally different story right so on the Left we get very large soft key menus and to get to the next items downward you can actually flick your finger and kind of carousel through the options you don't actually have to tap on the up arrow or the down arrow you can quickly you know use your thumb to move the whole thing up or down we're just gonna really help with one-handed usability whereas on the HTC touch pro or the 6.1 rom you have to you know take out your stylus or you can use your fingernail to press on a certain item on the screen which doesn't always work because the items are usually pretty small or at least not as big as they are or they will be in 6.5 okay so the next thing I want to show you again it's very subtle is the new tab design so the tabs now have a little squiggly line rather than being completely flat as found on the 6.5 ROM again a very very very small change but it's it's a little visual refresh that Microsoft has put into place to help make things look fresh something else that has changed are the notifications so if I change the system time here I will get a notification and let me do likewise on this side and you'll see the difference so in 6.5 the notification is more 3d it has a shadow rounded edges kind of a gradient on the top area here it kind of looks like a Windows computer to be honest and again another subtle change but it helps to really freshen up the looks I'm going to click cancel and cancel on both and finally the last thing we're going to show you is the new screen when somebody calls you now on HTC devices you get a usually a slide to answer or slide to ignore kind of thing which is great because it prevents you from accidentally answering a call but windows mobile 6.5 or as it looks will have this natively built in so I'm gonna lock the device and I'm going to turn off the device and call my phone and so here it goes we have two sliders one will answer and one will ignore so we're gonna do ignore and again that only happens if you are if your device is locked at the moment so that's it for the tour of the subtle new visual changes coming in windows mobile 6.5 so to recap we did the new soft keys the new notifications the new scroll bars and kinetic scrolling the new squiggly tabs and also finally the new calling screen that manufacturers can choose to use if they aren't using a custom screen to to answer calls like HTC does so that's it for now for more on windows mobile 6.5 be sure to follow us on twitter at twitter.com/worldsdumbest