Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Windows Mobile 5.0

Yesterday I attended a Microsoft Developer conference about Windows Mobile 5.0. It was basically presenting what we'll be able to do when (if?) Windows Mobile 5.0, Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Compact Framework v2 are released.

The features are great. I've been developing on my Xda and it's really hard to do some things that seem so obvious. For example, it's impossible to tell if the backlight is on! WM5.0 provides lots of really useful APIs and events to detect things like this. It'll allow for much better applications for mobile devices.

The biggest feature they've missed is that you can't write managed Today screen plug ins. When you go to Pocket PC software sites, the majority of applications are... you guessed it... Today screen plug ins, so it seems amazing that they've not included this.

So if anyone's looking to get a PDA or smart phone soon, try to hang off until you can get one with Windows Mobile 5.0.

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