You’ve probably not managed to miss the barrage of reports announcing the upcoming Windows Mobile 6. One in particular caught my eye which was by Loke Uei on new developer features:-
http://blogs.msdn.com/lokeuei/archive/2007/02/07/windows-mobile-6-what-s-in-it-for-developers.aspx
On the device the main highlights are the latest framework and SQL Server CE components in ROM, and two new APIs:-
The first came as a bit of a shock, after all in Windows Mobile 5.0 the number of places in the OS where Ink was used was reduced, no more Ink notes on Pocket Outlook items for example. I’ll be interested to see what this API supports.
The sound functionality will be greeted with cheers by many developers, there are many occasions when you need to simply play a wma or mp3 audio file and there isn’t anything as comfortable to use as PlaySound and yet supporting audio types other than .wav.
There are a number of improvements to the Emulator tools which are always welcome, especially in the early stages when it will be difficult to get hold of Windows Mobile 6 devices. The last item on the list entitled “Platform unification investments” is rather vague, I look forward to finding out exactly what this means for the end developer. Anything that simplifies writing code once for the multitude of Windows Mobile versions and form factors available gets my full approval!
In The Hand Ltd 