MEDC 2005: Breakout "Enterprise look at WM 5.0"
My second session of the day was delivered by the UK’s very own Jason Langrage. His title was something like ‘new Windows Mobile 5.0 features for Enterprises’ but for me it was a great overview of the new features in the OS. Here are the key points he covered:
· Persistent store means no more forced cold boot with a flat battery!
· Image update – simplify XIP updates with a recoverable background stream download manager.
· 1 tier code signing security model now on Pocket PC (much more on this later).
· OMA architecture for protected content delivery on device.
· Smartphone soft keys come to Pocket PC along with much stronger hardware keyboard support.
· Hard disk support as seen in the Samsung Smartphone, sporting a 3GB mini disk.
· Bluetooth keyboard and ‘headset’ (??) profiles in ROM. Proximity sync over Bluetooth: bring your partnered device within range and it auto sync’s just like dropping the device in a cradle.
· 3G networks and WIFi multiple APN tracking improvements.
· Active Sync 4.0 now ships as a regular MSI – no need for Admin privileges to install and can be centrally managed by SMS and other management software. All 62 existing error situations now continue with some form of recovery, but more importantly provide a log file with *useful* error messages.
· OTA (over the air) sync is now fully compressed to reduce data size.
· 2nd display support and API’s exposed.
· Word | Excel | Powerpoint Mobile: new wording for the products matches a major re-work of the existing products and the addition of PowerPoint (the most requested feature for many years now). E-Mail client has (finally!) been updated to give an experience much closer to the desktop outlook experience.
o Word Mobile: native file format maintained on the device. Support for pictures and tables. Any unsupported formatting is simply marked as such.
o Excel Mobile: chart support built in. Build charts on the Pocket PC using the simple wizard.
o PowerPoint Mobile: download the full PPT and open it on the device. Supports animations but not editing. I’ve also noticed that jpg backgrounds are shown white which is a bit nasty when the text is white as well – it might be me just not pressing the right button tho.
· New contacts viewer (programmatically displayable! – more later) includes images that get synced with desktop outlook.
· Hotmail mail transport in ROM.
· MSN Mobile portal provided for IM client (not using SIP yet).
· PIE includes a content download meter to show how long to go. Secure site / SSL indicator. Http download resume. Cut / paste / save as for images. Security zones supported (no sync with desktop as far as I can see).
· Picture editor with crop feature.
Cracking session, well presented. Thanks Jason.