Business and enterprise customers will appreciate the enhancements to security and messaging capability; Word, Excel, and PowerPoint capability added to Smartphones.
The next major version of Windows Mobile for Smartphones and Pocket PCs has been released to the device manufacturers. However, we will have to wait until later this year before we'll see any devices incorporating the new software. The enhancements in this version are primarily for business users and enterprise customers, but consumers will also find a few things they'll like.
Fig. 1: Windows Mobile 6 devices will be able to receive and display HTML-formatted e-mail.
View HTML e-mail, other Messaging updates
Many of the important updates occurred in the e-mail application, the most visible being the ability to receive and display HTML formatted e-mail (Fig. 1). Now you can see formatting such as bold text, different font sizes, color, and embedded images. This is an important feature because some e-mail programs only send messages in HTML format. When devices with older versions of Windows Mobile receive these HTML-only messages, all the receiver can see are the sender's name and subject header—there's no way to see the body of the message. Although Windows Mobile 6 fixes this, it does have one limitation. You still cannot create an HTML e-mail message on a Windows Mobile device. Interestingly, if you reply to an HTML message on a WM6 device, the formatting of the original HTML message remains. But you can't add HTML to the reply. I even tried copying sections of a message that contained HTML formatting and pasting it back into the reply, but it still appears in plain text. Perhaps an enterprising software developer will figure out a way to insert the formatting when editing a message. In the meantime, this limitation is a minor issue given that e-mail, which was formerly unreadable, can now be seen in Outlook Mobile.
Fig. 2: Devices running Windows Mobile 6 will be able to mark e-mail messages with status flags.
Other Messaging changes include the ability to mark messages with "follow-up" status flags (Fig. 2) as can be done with the desktop version of Outlook. Much of the other improvements to Outlook Mobile relate to advanced support for Exchange Server. For example, you can search your Exchange folders (without having to download the message first), set your "Out of office" status, and fetch single messages. Also new is the ability to read IRM (Information Rights Management) secured messages that do not allow forwarding or editing.
Fig. 3: Windows Mobile 6 Smartphones will have Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Mobile.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Mobile for the Smartphone
Users of WM6 Smartphones will be able to view Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments, and even edit Word and Excel documents. Given that we are starting to see Smartphones with built-in keyboards—such as the Motorola Q—this is a welcome improvement. Strangely, while you can edit existing files and copy them using "Save As," you can't create new Word or Excel documents on the Smartphone. I don't think this is too much of a disadvantage since it's simple enough to copy blank Word and Excel document files to the phone, open and modify them, and use Save As to generate your own documents. I suppose Microsoft assumed that the Smartphone is not a practical platform for creating documents, and while that's certainly true if you only have a numeric keypad available, there are of course Smartphones with QWERTY keyboards and external Bluetooth keyboards available for the devices. I'm not sure why Microsoft elected to remove "New" from the menus.
Updates to Calendar, Contacts, and other applications
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