Engadget had a sneek peek at "Photon"

[Alexander Turcic]

Photon is the codename of the next-generation Windows Mobile Microsoft is working on. Ryan and Peter, these crazy guys from Engadget, were among the few invited to have a sneek peak at the current development version of Photon.

The new OS is still "years" away, but the one thing they would confirm is that they're finally going to unify the Smartphone and Pocket PC platforms, something they were supposedly going to do with Windows Mobile 5.0.

Sure a screenshot or two would have been nice, but for now we are content with the news that Microsoft hasn't given up improving its mobile operation system.

Related: Windows Mobile 2005 supports e-mail push technology / "Photon"

[TadW]

Sorry to be cynical, and I don't want to start another flaming war, but haven't we heard that before? Wasn't Windows Mobile 5.0 supposed to be "leaps" ahead? Sure Microsoft is working on it, you have to give them that, but they are taking their time and in a rather painful way for their customers.

[surur]

MS only makes the OS. What makes the platform great will be the devices the OEM's build and the software thats written to exploit its features e.g.:

DirectX support has now been added. By 2007 most devices will probably have 3D accelerators, and we will be playing 2002 desktop quality games on your WM5 PDA's

WMP10 and playforsure support is built-in. Its up to the OEM's to built a great device platform on top of this. The SDA music is a start, and the 4GB HTC Muse is another sign of whats to come.

.NET CF allows easy code portability, and this will make WM5 PDA's great for the vertical market. We should also see a lot more desktop software (like skype etc) being ported to handheld devices.

Standardization of API's (such as camera and bluetooth) will lead to the development of a lot of innovative software, such as already present on the Symbian platform.

Persistent storage finally allows for WM PDA's that only need as much care and feeding as a laptop, and we know those are sufficiently easy enough that they are wildly popular right now. The development of NAND chips that are cheap and 25 times faster will also eliminate the inherent lag due to using slower flash chips.

WM5 is finished, but the hardware and software development of the platform has hardly started.

There are still supporters of alternate platforms that contend that MS is planning to drop WM and replace it with cut-down Vista. At least this news will give them pause for thought.

Surur

[TadW]

Originally Posted by surur

WM5 is finished, but the hardware and software development of the platform has hardly started.

Good point. Perhaps Microsoft should work more closely with OEMs to help them integrate new features. Take Microsoft and Intel as an example. Usually Intel is ready to come out with the CPUs just in time whenever Microsoft releases an update for its desktop Windows OS.

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by surur

There are still supporters of alternate platforms that contend that MS is planning to drop WM and replace it with cut-down Vista. At least this news will give them pause for thought.

Nice post, surur.

Good info, and I think you hit the head on the nail with your comment about Vista. It's exactly what I was thinking when I read about Photon because I was in the camp expecting a piece of Vista to replace WM. But I guess this is an intermediate step and it's too early. For two reasons. 1) Too much work for Microsoft that fast 2) The mobile platforms are not going to be ready. I think MS plans to have essentially a desktop platform in your hand and that's what they are waiting for. Not for about 4-6 years will it be commonplace I think. So that's when they need to have a mobile version of Vista ready to go instead of WM.

[rmeister0]

Originally Posted by surur

.NET CF allows easy code portability, and this will make WM5 PDA's great for the vertical market. We should also see a lot more desktop software (like skype etc) being ported to handheld devices.

Well, not as easy as it sounds. .NET CF is a subset, and programmers still have to deal with working in a constrained hardware environment. Most programmers working at the .NET level are not accustomed to doing serious optimizations for either size or speed.

That said, the framework makes app development a heck of a lot easier than it was with the Embedded Tools sets, or on the Palm OS.

Originally Posted by surur

There are still supporters of alternate platforms that contend that MS is planning to drop WM and replace it with cut-down Vista. At least this news will give them pause for thought.

I never believed that; Vista's recommended hardware requirements describe a computer you couldn't buy just two months ago. I read a lot about the early development of Windows CE, and the early iterations were really an attempt to replicate the entire Win32 API set. Big disaster, and they learned from that failure.

What they are definitely focusing on will be distributed applications and leveraging near-ubiquitous network connectivity. That's the big .NET/Windows Live/Office Live/whatever they announce next week push. Push e-mail from an Exchange Server is just scratching the surface.