It hasn’t been the criticism that is most damning for the new Windows Mobile 6.5, but the rather the fact that WinMo licensees will continue to cover up the newly, supposedly finger-friendly UI, with their own custom front-ends, and vastly more functional ones at that. If they don’t have any faith in it, when why should anyone else? We take a look at the best, and worst, of some of the many faces of Windows Mobile.

HTC
HTC
The most famous example, HTC has done more than any to try and hide the regular WinMo UI beneath something a little more user friendly. With calendar, contacts, weather and web the latest version goes deeper than ever, but support for customisations is minimal.
Verdict: Not perfect, but an ever-impressive effort. ****


Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson
With Panels, Sony Ericsson gave us multiple home screens combined with widgets giving us access to our favourite web services. It looked nice, but the neat thumbnails did not contain real time data, plus it was a bit of a resource hog.
Verdict: An idea with potential but didn’t quite come off. ***

acer
Acer
Acer’s Tempo smartphones used a Flash-based home screen that gives you instant access to important data such as emails and texts. It looks good – if not wholly classy – but has so far only been seen on devices that lack the memory to run it smoothly enough.
Verdict: A different approach, but skin deep and needing too many resources. **

Toshiba
Toshiba
Stripes was Toshiba’s new home screen, seen on the TG01. Little more than an app launcher it was highly configurable but was never easy to do so, and added nothing to make WinMo more usable. Used a surprisingly large amount of memory too.
Verdict: A half-hearted attempt, best avoided. *

Samsung
Samsung
The TouchWiz is a blank canvass onto which you can add as many widgets as you want (or can fit), giving you real time updates on info. Some are more useful (and functional) than others, and the screen can get crammed, although the new Omnia II takes care of that with multple screens.
Verdict: Potentially the best Windows Mobile remedy