In what appears as another nod towards confirming how Windows Mobile 7 will look like when it is released next year, Microsoft has posted the Office Mobile 7 UI concept that we reported on a few weeks back on their main Office website as a screen shot of Office Mobile 2010. The image can be found on this page, although we are unsure how much longer it will be up. Huge tip of the hat to Stephen Chapman who originally reported this on his site, MSFTKitchen.com.

This is yet another confirmation that this will indeed be the layout of Windows Mobile 7 when it is released. Only time will tell as we get closer to the scheduled release.

Below is how it looks on their site.

Office Mobile 2010 Beta has appeared in the Microsoft Marketplace. It has a timebomb that will expire on April 5, 2010. It will uninstall any previous versions of Office Mobile as well, however, it does state that if Office Mobile came pre-installed on your device that it will not be affected.

Its features include:

• View and edit your Microsoft® Office® documents with confidence.
• Stay connected to work from anywhere with SharePoint Workspace Mobile.
• Stay connected to work from anywhere with SharePoint Workspace Mobile.
• Use PowerPoint Mobile as a presentation aid.

Download it from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile here.

Thanks forum user butler360 for the tip!

Microsoft has finally released an official client to support WM6.0 and WM6.1. You can get it by going here. You can also get it by pointing your mobile browser to mp.windowsphone.com.

Source: Windows Phone Expert

UPDATE 11/13/09 8:30am CST: As of this morning, the mobile Marketplace client is pushing out an update. If you go into Marketplace, you’ll be prompted to install an update before you can use it. After installing it, everything looks the same. The older “hacked” version that allows you to install to a storage card probably no longer works unless someone updates it. The new version is 1.1.1109.0000 with no changelog that we can see.

UPDATE 11/12/09 4:00pm CST: It appears as though Chainfire from XDA has cracked the new “advanced copy protection” today. As he said, this actually took him a couple of hours compared to the 5 minutes it took him last time. You can read his thread here. He said he will not release the “hack” either.

Phase II of the Windows Mobile Marketplace has just hit the public, giving you the ability to buy apps from your desktop (with its new desktop browser version) and install them to your phone later.

In addition, Microsoft has updated the anti-piracy measures it had (or didn’t have) in place, which was cracked within a few hours of the Marketplace release.  You can read more about their new measures here.  The end-user won’t really see any differences, but the developers are sure to like this new protection for their paid apps.

Microsoft also announced that they will be releasing a client for WM6 and WM6.1 later this month.

Source: GSMArena

The rumor mills are still going around that Windows Mobile 7 will hit manufacturers in Q1 2010 and will be ready for an official launch in Q3 2010, according to Taiwanese ZDNet.

Hopefully once it hits ODM’s we’ll start seeing leaks like we have with WM6.5.  Of course, if this is also true, then what exactly are these “WM6.5.1″ leaks we’ve seen if WM7 is supposed to be a completely new core, according to Microsoft?

Only time will tell!

Source: ZDNet via the::unwired

We’ve all known about the Windows Mobile DST update that’s been around since WM5, but apparently its still required, even for WM6.5 devices. It was updated August 2009 and is a cumulative rollup that includes all the changes released in earlier updates.

“Your phone stores the predefined DST dates in a table in its memory. Changes in DST causes the following problems for Windows phones in the affected time zones if the update is not applied:
*The phone will have outdated DST rules and will not honor the new DST transition time. The clock will read one hour off actual time during the new DST period.
*Calendar items will be displayed one hour off actual time during the new DST period.”

Download it from MS here.

It appears as though this update is only for specific countries, and the US and Canada aren’t listed. To see the list, go to the above link and scroll down to the table called “Changes in the Windows phone DST update”.

Tired of Voice Command? Now you can try Microsoft’s new app called TellMe thanks to our forum member pixelwix. He was at a Sprint store and saw the Intrepid sitting next to the Hero and noticed it had the TellMe app on it. He copied the installer file over to his TP2 and decided to share it with the rest of us.

Some are reporting that it won’t install on their custom ROMs, and some say the touchscreen features don’t work either. Try it at your own risk, but be sure to report your findings!

His original thread in our forums can be found here. Great job pixelwix! Hopefully we can get it working on all devices soon!

While we’ve heard rumors of Zune integration coming to Windows Mobile, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has confirmed it, stating that it will be coming in the next version of Windows. There’s no confirmation as to exactly what features will be included, but this could be what it takes for WinMo to catch up to the iPhone and Android.

The next question is whether we have to wait until WM7 of if we’ll see it in the WM6.5.1 (community branded title) branch. While WM6.5 has been released, Microsoft is clearly working on an upgrade to it already, as seen in our community and XDA with the newest leaked WM6.5 builds with more finger-friendly features. Only time will tell.

Source: Endgadget via IntoMobile

The guys over at WMExperts have gotten their hands on what appears to be a mockup of WM7. WM6.5 is on the top with the WM7 images on the bottom.

If this is real, it looks as though Microsoft is finally making progress on making WM more finger-friendly and making some cosmetic changes to the GUI instead of just making everything large and ugly (like some of the leaked WM6.5 have looked).

Source: WMExperts via  PocketNow