Old Hardware Emulated : Windows Mobile 6.1

Windows Mobile 6 was a very interesting release, even though not so much in the technical manner. WinMobile 6 was powered by the Windows CE 5 operating system, geared towards PDA's and smartphones. Stability was further improved. The user interface was largely the same, but with a Windows Vista-ish theme applied to it now. 

The home screen for Windows Mobile 6.1. The Today program had been installed, providing the Lunar phase illustration next to the LED clock.

Using VMware Player 16, my XP VM had two cores allocated to it, along with 3GB's of RAM. The device emulator still wasn't the fastest in the world. This is due to the emulated ARM processor. Code translation would always be a bottleneck. However, this was to be expected, thus, so surprises here. With two cores though, performance of the emulated PDA was significantly improved. Thus, I could actually achieve video playback within Windows Media Player without too much skipping. My sample video was encoded using the WMV Version 7 codec using the 600 KB-bitrate at a resolution of 320 by 200 pixels. 

The ROM image using by the device emulator had Pocket Office installed, and they functioned as expected.  The bundled applets that were a part of previous releases are still there, retaining there previous look-and-feel from its predecessor. 

Microsoft Pocket PowerPoint

Microsoft Pocket Word

Microsoft Pocket Excel and OneNote

The Windows Mobile 6 Device emulator allowed the installation of programs onto the emulated SD card now (redirected to a shared folder). Windows Mobile 6 was released on February 2007, with its updated successor, WinMobile 6.1, released on April 2008. This was actually the release that was used with the device emulator. 

There was actually a decent number of programs that have been archived for WinMobile that was tested on the emulator. Unfortunately, I couldn't get screenshots as there was nothing to show for it. The device emulator can access the Internet using the Virtual PC network driver. Yet, the Internet had changed so much since 2007 that the network standards that CE conformed to back in the day just won't work now. The transition from HTTP to HTTPS practically made the CE browsers incapable of browsing the web. Even with a working connection, the HTTP-supported sites won't load either. That meant testing both IE and Opera was out of the question. Many applications had there URL's hard-coded into the program itself. The servers that the applications request simply don't exist anymore. Yahoo Go, with was Yahoo's maps service, doesn't work as Yahoo discontinued that service, along with the servers that operated it. It was a similar story with IMDB Mobile, Windows Live Mobile, and Messenger. Those servers have been discontinued as well.

The reason why this has to be highlighted is that many of these later portable OS's made heavy use of online services that were very prevalent back in the day. Yet, since most of those services have been discontinued, it's impossible to test Internet-based applications now. This is also a problem for the bundled applications that were a part of early Android. Many of those applications reference services or servers that simply don't exist now, or have been updated to the point of making the older applications obsolete. It's a issue for those who want to test older mobile systems on newer platforms. 

Games

While the Internet-based applications couldn't be shown due to the technical issues mentioned earlier, the games though can be shown in all of there glory. They were many games on the platform. As one could also probably notice, most of the games released on WinMobile were published by HandMark, which specialized in CE-ports of games. There portfolio included many classic arcade ports of games licensed from Atari, along with major titles like Tomb Raider. I couldn't install Tomb Raider as the setup program complained about the emulated device not being compatible with it. 

Despite that, many of the HandMark games were installed, like Tetris, Monopoly, and Links. The evolution of mobile games continued. Most of what defined WinMobile though was the simple puzzle games like Gems, Soduko, and Bubble Breaker. Solitaire classic is also there for those who want there 52 card action on the go. 


Windows Mobile In An Evolving World

The reason why I find this release so interesting was that release 6.x was the currently shipping version of WinMobile when Apple released the iPhone. Thus, one could see a direct comparison between the two environments. One has to remember that the smartphone realm of 2007 was completely different than today in 2021. Most people did not have smartphones. The flip-phone was the most common form-factor at the time. Most smartphones from that time also conformed to a similar form-factor. Text-messages were entered using the numeric keypad and cycling through the set characters until the wanted one was found. Wars was fought in less time than it took to enter a text-message. 

Most of those who had a flip-phone also had a PDA next to them. Smartphones were still a expensive proposition in 2007. Thus, for those on the go, it made much more sense to have a standard flip-phone, along with that PDA for content consumption. PDA's were very affordable and accessible by this time. However, a revolution was about to start.

Expectations are ever changing. When people saw what the iPhone was capable of, expectations changed yet again. This wasn't the first time such a shift happened. In the middle 90's, the Apple Newton tried to be all things to all people, and thus, couldn't do anything worthwhile for those that invested in the device. For those that purchased the handheld that had a asking price that was as high as a complete 486 system, but without the same features, buyers remorse quickly set in. When the original Palm Pilots entered the market, the handheld marketed itself simply as an appointment keeper and nothing else. Yet, with a reasonable price along with general availability of the development kit, the applications quickly flooded in. One could play SimCity or view there pictures one minutes, get there emails the next, and then quickly check the current headlines or there stock quotes the minutes after that. People quickly realized that the Palm Pilots were much more capable than anything that existed before it. Expectations were established for the time being.

On the PC realm, Napster had taken the internet by storm. Many PC users quickly built massive music collections on there computers. Yet, nobody never truly expected their PDA's to play music. The processing power wasn't there, along with video playback. Thus the expectations for the PDA to accomplish these task wasn't there. At least not until the Compaq IPAQ was released. When people saw that a handheld that could play MP3's smoothly, along with video, expectations changed again. People now expected that handheld to be a media player now. Those who couldn't adjust to the new reality were left behind. 

Now, with the release of the iPhone, the expectations were being redefined yet again. People now expected social media on there handhelds, along with Google Maps, and many mobile-based applications. PDA users wanted the full web on there handhelds now, and not a scaled back version of it either. These users also wanted smooth animations and slick icons now, along with a very well-defined user interface. The PDA never truly died. It simply involved into the smartphone that we all know of today.

On one hand, one couldn't fault Microsoft for being caught off-guard. While they were rumblings, nobody knew until the product shipped. Now that the iPhone as out though, how would Microsoft respond?

Windows Mobile (Wikipedia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile#Windows_Mobile_6

Windows Mobile 6.1 (Wikipedia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile_6.1

Windows Mobile SDKs (collection) (archive.org)

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