Ahmed Eltawil:

I just see no need for hiding commonly used applications under another menu. I think it would be better if we displayed the commonly used applications on the homescreen itself, but at the same time we don't want to clutter the homescreen. The sliding panels on the Standard edition is a great idea, but it is still not taking advantage of the device's entire screen.

The idea here is to make use of the device's entire screen as much as possible as well as reducing the number of steps required to perform a certain task.

 It's very easy to put commonly used applications on the home screen for Windows Mobile Standard.

Which part of the screen is not being taken advantage of? 

Ahmed Eltawil:

For instance, on the Professional version, implement multiple homescreens and a way to navigate through them by a finger swipe across the screen and/or button on the device. The default homescreens could be: 

• One to view the installed applications (sorted manually or by commonly used etc). Why hide the applications under Programs if you can easily display them all without the need for further more selections.
• One set for your Calendar (Appointments, tasks, notes, etc) and/or Email.
• One for your device's settings (profiles, task manager, control panel options, etc)
• One for cellular tasks and options (dialer, view/send sms, missed calls, etc)

Of course the above is just an idea and it probably has some flaws.

 That sounds like it would make for many more steps required to access all of those options.  Currently, to access commonly used programs in WM Pro, all I have to do is press the start menu hardware key, and then press the letter corresponding to the application listed there.  If I change my mind, I press the start menu key again and I'm right back to exactly what I was doing before.  That's 2 steps to access a different application no matter where I am in the interface!  It does not get easier than that.

If a "Home" button interface was implemented in the way WM Standard is, then I'd have to press the Home key and then use some type of interaction method (finger sliding/arrow key/etc.) to switch to your "installed applications" view... then possibly scroll and then select the application I want to launch, all while already removing accessibility to my current application.  Does that really sound like less steps?  It seems the recent applications would be even more hidden and difficult to access in that way, unless that listing IS the home screen, which also has major problems. Namely, I'd much rather have pertinent information on the home screen; such as the day/time, upcoming appointments, missed calls, new messages/emails, battery level, signal strength, etc.  All of those are much more important in my opinion, and easily accessible at any time by double pressing the Start menu hardware key, or single pressing the red end-call key. 

As you can see, the current method allows me to access my "Today" information in 1 or 2 steps as well as allowing me to access any commonly-used application in any part of the interface also in 2 steps.  I find it hard to believe that a user interface design that allows you to get to both of those information sets in fewer steps is possible.  

Ahmed Eltawil:

 

What's wrong with that? If you were going to use the Start menu, that means that whatever selection you make will open up another window/application and will hide whatever was open. That's why having a dedicated "Home" button on the device that hides/minimizes what ever is on display to show the homescreen is an advantage. This is a cleaner and simple approach that is also easy on the eyes, in my opinion.

I consider not being able to see your current application and your application list at the same time to be a disadvantage in the same way that having a programs listing take up the entire screen on my Desktop PC would be a disadvantage. It would be a waste of space.

Of course the ideal, would be a more customizable interface, which can already be done with 3rd party programs. 

 In another thread, Doug-Iowa suggests that WM7 should be not be a jump from WM6 but rather a step,

"...I do have a problem changing the look so much that we have to relearn our icons and such as was done with Vista. I am for keeping it simple for sure..."

This seems to be a trend in the discussion whereby some poeple are looking for that all new revolutionary interface while others are looking to keep this similar and for there to more feature enhancments.

I, personally, fall in the first group - The Jumpers.

I have used devices from Windows CE 2000 all the way through to WinMo 6 Pro and the only real changes in the visuals have been the header and footer backgrounds (I'm counting the softkeys as a feature advancement).

 

The move from Windows NT and 2000 to Windows XP brought around predominantly visual enhancements, which was great, but the masses were really looking for the 'new thing' in computing. Vista is n evolutionary leap in terms of visuals. Yes the compatability issue is a gripe, but those visuals are stunning.

WinMo device hardware is far more powerful than when it began and is certainly going to be capable of a visually and interactively rich GUI. TouchFlo 1, 2 and 3D have shown us that. If this experience can be spread throughout the entire interface, we could expect to see more main stream mobile consumers moving from Series 60 devices into WinMo.  And we have seen that this is Microsoft's aim. They are doing this across the Microsoft product rang; Vista, Office 2007, the spy shots of WM7...

      

I feel that I giant leap forward is just what Microsoft need to stay in the game.

I'm all for a giant leap, if it actually is better.  At the moment, I'm afraid that a giant leap in the UI design will actually reduce the functionality (given the leaked screen shots). 

We've seen this before with Windows Vista and Office 2007 and the radically different user interface is one reason why people are resistant to buy those products. People on the forums and in the press were looking for something radically different, but it seems once they've got it...  it turns out they actually want something familiar that they already know how to use. That's why there's a need for 3rd party applications that bring the menus back to Office 2007. Learning the new thing can be more frustrating than enlightening, especially if features the user is accustomed to relying on are removed completely or made increasingly difficult.

I wrote about the "Design Challenges for Windows Mobile" here and I think it's very important to retain usability in both the touch screen and keyboard accessibility methods as opposed to a required combination.  For example, you can navigate Windows Mobile Pro completely using the touch screen only.  You can also navigate it using the keyboard only.  Or you can use any combination of the two.  This is awesome flexibility and allows for significant form-factor variation!  The iPhone, Blackberry, and Symbian S60 all require dedicated hardware buttons to navigate the device; there are no choices.

Some of the leaked screen shots for Windows Mobile 7 seem to be severely limiting the touch screen functionality for switching applications by removing the Start menu (just like Windows Mobile Standard).  Hopefully, those screen shots are only for the Windows Mobile Standard edition otherwise accessing your applications will definitely become more difficult.

Adam, although I acklowledge and appreciate you as a sophisticated WM expert, I need to completely disagree and I think I have very good arguments, why.

For several years I have experienced Windows Mobile devices and their users to be split between MOBILE COMPUTING (Pocket PC incl. Phone Edition, WM Pro and Classic) and SMARTPHONE (current WM standard).

First of all, due to soon to be expected very small (Pocket PC form factor) UMPC devices on the market (with also very similar functionality: phone, GPS, even mobile TV), I am convinced that the "common Pocket PC user" will more or less disappear within very few years.
Windows Mobile will be forced to focus the SmartPhone approach.

We can also see such "evolution" on the market for Pocket PC devices for quite some time: they tend to be referred to and used as ... SmartPhones, it started with Phone Edition, they got smaller form factors, they looked more and more like SmartPhones and their functionality has been promoted by marketeers (esp. of mobile phone providers) as such.

Microsoft obviously tended to favor non-touchscreen WM Standard (versus Pro) in the recent past (years), but due to iPhone and other competition, they now seem to prefer (at least no longer disregard) the touchscreen devices.
Anyway, both lines, touchscreen and non-touchscreen, will become more and more similar (besides their major distinction).

I would very much guess that the OS for both needs to melt into one (alternatively supporting touchscreen or only hardware buttons), because Microsoft will soon no longer want to maintain 2 different OS versions according to the market evolution.

My personal conclusion is:
mobile / ubiquitous computing users - be it private or enterprise - who had (would have) been using Pocket PCs in the past, will almost completely move to Windows powered small UMPC devices.
All those, who only have been looking for a functionality improved alternative to their mobile phones, will stick with Windows Mobile.

And that's also why I completely go for a "radically" new OS version (be it hopefully WM7 or later) that almost looks like an iPhone clone, but - according to rumours of expected marketing statements - will be superior to the iPhone in many ways.
To me, this would mean and require to get rid of waste of screen space for buttons, bars, etc versus full screen for current application and very intuitive user handling and experience. I'll see if Microsoft will be courageous and innovative enough to already go this way with WM7.

Anyway, I still see 2 major showstoppers (from a current WM OS version point of view):
1) a very bad memory handling through WM OS (since years) soon slowing down the device when only few apps have been opened, which urgently requires massive improvement to completely go for performance (incl. cache management, cpu use priorities, etc).
2) A dedicated and well featured graphic engine and a dedicated graphic CPU driver support within the OS, both to improve and provide enough multimedia functionality, even for mobile TV, which also will roll up the market.

Will be very interesting to see some other statements ... ;-)

If Microsoft can fit a version of Windows Vista (or Windows 7) that has all of the usability of Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro (including the Today Screen functionality, mobile phone support, instant on, touch-screen, keyboard navigation, etc.) into a device with a 2.8" screen the size of the HTC Touch Pro... then by all means, I'll buy the first one. 

Considering this latest news, I think that WIndows Mobile 7 with give us some very rich applications and the spoke for some very interactive interfaces.

WMExperts:

As Windows Mobile continues to explode (and the long drum beat of WM7 begins), it looks as if long time graphic card maker Nvidia is getting ready to debut their mobile processor designed specifically for WM devices.

You can get the full article here. 

You also got this latest news from PC World about Windows Mobile 7 being more mini-laptop-friendly, which to me means 5-8" screens that display more information at once... plus a keyboard-friendly interface.  This seems to contradict what Franz was implying above about Pocket PC users switching to Windows UMPCs and Windows Mobile 7 generally being reserved for lower-end smartphones rather than pocket computers like the HTC Kaiser and Advantage.

My guess is that the leaked screenshots we saw were only for the small smartphone/standard edition type devices. I should think the larger more-functional devices might implement a more Windows-like user interface which would provide a lower learning curve and more efficient multitasking.

Technically, a specifically configured version of Windows Mobile 7 Pro, running at 640x480 could be useable on a 2.8" device.

I have taken a few 640x480 UMPC screenshots and viewing them on my 2.8", there are only a few 16x16 icons that would not be useable. So set a minimum icon size of 64x64 and make a few buttons larger, here and there, and you could realistically have a useable Windows Desktop OS.

Windows Mobile 7 is still being written, so incorporating these modifications is wholey viable.

We may see a real difference between the 7 Standard and the 7 Professional devices. 

 There are quite a few devices out now running wm6 that have 640x480 on a 2.8 screen,  they work great. Event developing apps for them seem to scale fine. 

 

The only caveat I've run into with these pixel dimensions is when remote controlling the devices with something like SOTI,   the display on the desktop will be 640x480, which is way too large.

 

I'm running a QVGA device through MyMobiler which has the option to zoom out to 50%.

MyMobiler works well with VGA device, so you zooming out to give an effective onscreen size of 240x320 should work well.

 A recently released video from Microsoft includes a shot of a HTC Touch Dual device running the version of Windows Mobile 7 for which the images released back in January this year.

The Touch Dual is of course a touchscreen device which suggests that either WM7 Standard will include touchscreen, or that the video clip was simply a mock-up with no actual bearing on the final releases of WM7.

Biomehanika:

A recently released video from Microsoft includes a shot of a HTC Touch Dual device running the version of Windows Mobile 7 for which the images released back in January this year.

I would love to see this video. Do you have a link that you can provide?

Personally I have seen other posts online with mockups of WM7 but they didn't look like they were official or even came from Microsoft. But if this video came from Microsoft, then it will be worth looking into.

 From this article, it looks as though Microsoft are looking into how the music experience can be evolved in Windows Mobile 7.

 

IMO there are a couple of things that i'd like to see from WM7 that will endear it to users who have fallen in love with other OS'. I'm an ex-blackberry user/ex Palm user,  who opted to try WM6 just because. While the OS GUI is obviously completely different, there are a few aspects of WM6 that drive me nuts.

 - closing out applications: I hate that I have to use the task manager so much. Is it too much to ask that once I navigate away from an application that it closes out? The current set up of having applications run in the back ground is a drain on battery life, and seems somewhat bizarre considering Windows computing OS don't follow this logic, but Mac computing OS' do, bizarre. Maybe the OS requires this interface to support 3rd party aps (one of the strongest features of the WM platform (and my personal favorite).

- Improve battery life. While many might say this is a device driven aspect, the truth is the OS has a significant affect on the amount of battery life a device can provide. I have to charge my device daily and I'd love to know that if I go out of town and forget my charger, I'm going to be able to go 36 hours without losing my lifeline to the world.

- Menus: It seems there are 95 ways to get to the same app and place within the WM6 OS. Is it just me or are there way too many drill down menus. It could take me 5 clicks to get to deep menus. The aspects of the Comm manager can be changed in other menus as well, however is doesn't seem that logical. Personally, I think RIMs set up is a bit better, but WM could easily match or outpace it with a little creativity.

 - LED notification - awesome feature that should be stolen from RIM. I have loaded the 3rd party app onto my WM device which now does that for me, but that should be standard IMO.

 my.02.

Not sure what version or what device you're using at the moment but for me all of your points have already been addressed by most .

 - Closing out applications - There's a setting for the X to be set to close on most devices.

- Improve battery life - Don't use 3G. All the WM6 devices I've used will go 48 hours if you set to GPRS only.

- Menus - Does it matter that there are 95 ways to do different things? The fact you can hit comm manager and instantly turn stuff on and off as a shortcut is a good thing in my opinion.

- LED notification - The new HTC Diamond has all sorts fancy LED notification settings, but what don't you like about the current LED notifications for incoming and missed comms?

 

This is my first post here, and the thread is a very interesting and well articulated one. For me personally I think WM6.1 has evolved quite nicely since 2003 (that really was a cut down PC OS). I've used Palm, BB, and the Iphone and all have their good points and bad points. In my opinion the current iteration of WM is not the most friendly OS, but arguably the WM platform offers the most functionality. I think it'll be difficult to simply the UI to Iphone level while retainging the functionality. For music and surfing the Iphone is great, but have you tried using it for 100+ emails a day? Likewise have you tried listening to music over bluetooth headphones on a BB? The WM devices are in my opinion the only true convergence devices out there and they are not perfect. They are definitely getting better though.

 I for one look forward to WM7, and definitely hope it isn't a full different UI. Just a bit better will do for me thank you.