Mark Arteaga

I've had the privilege of using a HTC Touch Pro device (courtesy of Bell Mobility) running Windows Mobile for the past few weeks.  You are probably thinking, "great another review of the Touch Pro and HTC's TouchFLO user interface" but I have not been using the TouchFLO user interface. 

The Touch Pro from Bell Mobility is yet to be released, but instead of using the TouchFLO home screen I have been using the 'Bell Experience' home screen. Bell has decided to create their own home screen for Windows Mobile providing what Bell calls the ‘Bell experience’.

The Bell experience completely customizes the Windows Mobile home screen and attempts to make things a lot easier to access, improve the user experience from the standard Windows Mobile home screen and delivers content right to your Windows Mobile device.  It also uses 'gestures' to slide content, scroll lists etc.

How does Bell display the content? They created what are called Bubbles, and with these Bubbles, Bell can display content selected by the user. It's a way to quickly access content important to you.  Bell has developed this new user interface to try and promote Bell's Mobile Entertainment offerings services that they offer for example LiveTV for Windows Mobile.  But they also have things like Headline News, Entertainment News, Business News and Music.  Here are some screen shots of it:

The user interface also allows you to slide from bubble to bubble using gestures (sliding your finger across the screen) giving it a nice user interface effect.  

If you are not interested in the default Bubbles you have the option to select which Bubbles to display on your home screen:

I also mentioned how things are more easily accessible.  What do I mean by that, well say for example you want to watch LiveTV such as HBO, CTV Newsnet or BNN (Business News Network).  By clicking on the Media Buttons you will get a screen with the option to watch live TV, internet radio, music or video on demand right from your Windows Mobile device.

What else makes the device a little easier to use?  Ever try to raise the volume on a Windows Mobile device?  Usually you would be presented with this

But with Bell's user interface you get this with the option to quickly put it in vibrate or silent mode.

How about accessing your applications?  There are two ways, you can click the Menu button and you are presented with your running applications, plus groups of other applications such as Games, Photos, Email etc

The second way is by clicking the favourite applications icon which presents you with this screen (which can be customized)

What else makes this device a bit easier to use?  Usually with setting up your device on Windows Mobile you are presented with the standard settings screen that comes with Windows Mobile.  (With Windows Mobile 6.1 this has been improved somewhat with a Windows Mobile Welcome Center)

The Bell experience user interface simplifies this by giving you a settings screen followed by some items in a list to modify your device settings:

In summary I think Bell has done a pretty great job in improving the user experience on Windows Mobile.  It shows how flexible Windows Mobile is as a platform and allows developers, OEMs and wireless providers such as Bell Mobility to provide a unique user experience to users.  It also allows Bell Mobility to up sell their services such as Live TV.

I've been showing the device at my Windows Mobile TechDays Canada Sessions (so far Toronto and Montreal) and will be bringing it to the rest of the cities.  This device has not yet been released so if you want to see it let me know.

I previously wrote about the new IE Mobile 6 browser which brings an improved browsing experience to Windows Mobile.  From a web developers point of view, this changes a few things also, particularly the user agent string.  With the new IE Mobile 6, the user has the option to render a 'desktop version' or a 'mobile version' of the web site.

Within your web application you will need to look at the User-Agent string sent by the browser. 

When the user is browsing using the 'Mobile Device' option you will get the following:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 8.12; MSIE Mobile 6.0)

When the user is browsing using the 'Desktop' option you will get the following User-Agent string:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

To view the User-Agent string on the device open up IE Mobile on the device and type in about:version in the address bar.  You will get the following for the 'Mobile' option (Click on the image to see it in full size):

And the following for the 'Desktop' option:

As a web developer I believe that is all you need to know. 

But what if you don't have a mobile optimised site and ignore the headers and the user never changes to 'Desktop' view?  IE Mobile 6 recognizes this and automatically renders the page appropriately.  Here is my blog (which ironically doesn't have a mobile optimised version) rendered by IE Mobile 6:

If you are interested in more technical details on IE 6 Mobile check out the Internet Explorer Mobile blog or the Internet Explorer Mobile Reference on MSDN.

Today at Tech-Ed EMEA Microsoft announced the availability of Internet Explorer Mobile 6.  What does this mean?  Well now you will get a better mobile browsing experience on Windows Mobile devices.  IE Mobile 6 features include:

• Improved fidelity (support for full fidelity desktop rendering), with rendering engine from Internet Explorer 6 on PC
• Layout fixes for mobile screen (e.g. text wrap)
• Enhanced Script and AJAX support – Jscript v5.7 from Internet Explorer 8
• Multimedia – Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 for Adobe Flash content
  • Optional royalty-free component for OEMs
• Deeper integration with search – Address bar and homepage.
• Improved user experience
  • Enhanced cursor navigation model
  • Touch and gesture support – pan support
  • Multiple zoom levels
  • Easy switching between mobile / desktop view

Why is this important?  Well previously, IE Mobile was a built separately from the desktop and focused on mobile optimised sites.  Now with the desktop IE 6 engine included with IE Mobile, Windows Mobile users will have the best of both worlds with the ability to view mobile optimised sites and the ability to view full desktop web sites right on their device..

Compared with other popular mobile browsers, I'm told IE Mobile 6 matches in comparison.  I have not verified this for myself but if someone does please let me know.

And here is a screen shot of IE Mobile running within the new Windows Mobile 6.1.4 emulator

Here is CNBC running within the emulator in 'Mobile View':

and switching to 'Desktop View' renders the desktop version:

You'll notice the menu popup which is the exact same functionality as the desktop browsing experience. 

What about video?  Here is a screen shot of Dirty Money series promo video playing in the emulator without issues.

Overall I think this is a good move from Microsoft to bring the IE 6 rendering engine over to Windows Mobile.  It allows us developers to develop applications using web standards or using .NET Compact Framework and has made browsing on your Windows Mobile device a lot faster and easier. Only drawback on this is it's not a separate download, I'm hoping this will change but we'll have to wait and see.