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Media Center UI On Windows Mobile?
By Nathan Weinberg
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-03-05
Engadget has a very interesting video showing off Samsung's Ultra Messaging device, featuring a Windows Mobile UI unlike anything we've ever seen.
You have to watch the video to understand, but the phone features a decidedly Windows Media Center-like user interface, with the entire main interface putting quick access to information from the main screen, with navigation done by using nothing more than a directional pad, in a rich, visual way.
No idea if this is something Samsung has worked out, a third-party shell, or a preview of where the next version of Windows Mobile (Photon) is heading, but it does bring some great new ideas to the table.
The iPhone is built on a simple and great concept, that everything can be done with gestures, not buttons, making heavy use of drag scrolling and a rich UI, but the iPhone's main screen is an anachronistic mess, just a few rows of colorful icons, reminiscint of an old version of Palm OS.
Windows Mobile's home screen is a solid differentiating factor even before the iPhone launches, and Windows Media Center features a UI Apple will probably spend the next several years catching up to, so combining the two is only natural.
Keeping the concept that the home screen should be active, not static, and also turning into something that grows and is more interactive and fluid is just the next evolution. An MCE-like UI on Windows Mobile looks great in this video, and would look even better on my phone.
For fun, take a look at this video of an iPhone-like UI runnning on Windows Mobile (well, mostly the "lock" slider screen and the icon home screen, as well as the gesture scrolling):
Apple's lawyers made YouTube take down the first version of this video, so if this embed stops working in the future, just search YouTube for "windows mobile iphone".
(via Gizmodo)
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About the Author:
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
Visit the InsideGoogle blog.
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