Windows Mobile 7 Details Emerge

Microsoft's mobile operating system, dubbed Windows Mobile, is getting ready to bring a brand-new experience to users around the world. The first step it this direction will be made with the release of Windows Mobile 6.5, which should land on the market this fall, yet the real changes are expected to surface along with the next iteration of the OS, Windows Mobile 7, due sometime in April next year.

While there is still a long way to go until the upcoming WM 7 becomes available on mobile phones, some interesting details on what it might include have already emerged, thanks to the guys over at pocketnow. It seems that some technical documents on the platform have been grabbed, and thus the features that it will come with exposed.

For starters, we should mention that Windows Mobile 7 is expected to come around with SmartSearch, “a user interface that puts the application into a touch screen-enabled dialing mode and invokes a context-sensitive search based on the Association Engine. Applications can bring SmartSearch to the foreground, selecting which page to display (for example, the Contacts page), and optionally add a contextual data set to the selected page during the Smartsearch session.”

Another feature that the upcoming OS should include is connected to the camera APIs. Some of the goodies WM 7 should bring in this area would be overlays, video capture, EXIF, and more. These new features are reportedly coming with a platform that is not just a visual upgrade from the previous versions, but a total upgrade, where all levels of the OS have been affected.

Other details on the upcoming Windows Mobile 7 also include an upgraded Office Mobile with support for SharePoint, multi-touch support, an Association Engine, a brand-new menu system, built-in XML, Pocket Outlook Object Model (POOM) supports multiple folders and handles Mail and note items, the ability to set task scheduling, no more support for Smart Cards, and no suspend/resume power model either. In addition, it seems that the SDK has also been changed, and developers will be those to benefit from this change the most.