Long Zheng at I Started Something is reporting that new builds of WinMo 6.5 have begun to filter out of Redmond and into the modding community, with build numbers 23XXX and higher. The savants at XDA have dubbed them Windows Mobile 6.5.1 and looking at the screenshots from Patrick/OSNN.net, it seems clear to me that they show a great improvement over the released version of 6.5, at least in terms of the GUI. Perhaps Steve Ballmer’s recent public criticism of WinMo is having an effect on the Windows Mobile Team, or they are just better able to finish the build without the time pressure of an impending release.

As you can see from the shots above, more of the old skool PocketPC/Windows 3.1 GUI has been jettisoned. The buttons are larger, the old style radio buttons are replaced, icons have all been updated and the Start and OK buttons have been moved down to the lower left and right, which frees up the upper bar for more icons and just generally makes more sense in terms of usability. Also, selecting an icon on the top bar is no longer quite so frustrating, as apparently a proper tray with larger versions of the icons on the row drops down when you touch the top bar.

There are also supposed to be numerous other usability improvements and bug fixes throughout the build.

So, like what you see? Feeling lucky? Then check out XDA-developers forums to see if there’s a 6.5.1 ROM for your phone available. As always, the risk is yours to take, don’t blame me if you brick your baby…but if you DO flash your ROM, come back and comment and tell us how it went, and how you like Windows Mobile 6.5.1

Zealot (468 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).