/dev/mobile

In my previous post I mentioned that I would be discussing the naming nomenclature changes which have occurred within the current releases of Microsoft’s embedded products. Not a lot of details have been given for the reasoning behind the name changes, so the following is based upon my educated guesses.

Windows Embedded

The operating system previously referred to as Windows CE is now correctly refered to as Windows Embedded CE.

I believe this change is designed to further align the names of the various embedded operating systems Microsoft now develops. You will notice that they now all include the word “embedded” within their product names:

• Windows Embedded CE – (WinCE)
• Windows XP Embedded – (XPe)
• Windows Embedded for Point Of Sale – (WEPOS)

Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile is a platform which has over a decade of history in the market place. During this timeframe there has been numerious name changes and the recently released Windows Mobile 6 release was no exception.

Back in April 2000 the first Pocket PC operating system was released, and was named Pocket PC 2000. In October 2001 an improved version was released with the name Pocket PC 2002.

The Pocket PC operating system was designed to operate on “traditional” style touch screen enabled PDA devices. Somewhere within the Pocket PC 2002 timeframe Microsoft also developed the first operating system designed for more cellphone style devices (no touch screen, and limited keypad data entry options). This operating system was called Smartphone 2002. The operating system had great similiarity to Pocket PC 2002 but had some smartphone specific additions and limitations, mainly UI differences to cope with the user’s inability to tap on controls.

Since both the Pocket PC and Smartphone platforms were highly similiar (and shared a similiar code base), the 2002 releases were the last release to use seperate names for the two operating systems. Instead the next release was broadly labeled Windows Mobile 2003, and this was further split into three main “configurations”.

• Smartphone – cellphone style devices with numeric keypads
• Pocket PC – traditional PDA style devices with software keyboards (SIPs)
• Pocket PC Phone Edition – A Pocket PC with built in cellular radio

Although the operating systems were now technically termed “Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone” and “Windows Mobile 2003 Pocket PC” many people still used the simplier “Smartphone 2003″ and “Pocket PC 2003″ naming nomenclature (including Microsoft in various places within the respective SDKs).

Windows Mobile 2003 was then followed briefly by Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition which included some additional functionality such as native VGA resolution support. This was the last version of the operating system which included a year within the name.

The next operating system release was called Windows Mobile 5.0. This release saw a further merging of the two platforms with a larger varity of hardware keyboard styles and LCD screen sizes seen on both the Pocket PC and Smartphone platforms. The only real key differentiating factor now being that a Pocket PC has a touch screen while a Smartphone device does not (and a slightly different GUI).

Windows Mobile 6 Naming Nomenclature 

As you can see the two device families – Pocket PCs and Smartphones have been steadily converging. In fact Microsoft intends to merge both operating systems into a single customisable platform with their next release.

The Windows Mobile 6 release can be seen as a first step at doing this by changing the naming conventions to ones which are more closely aligned to this desire.

The new naming nomenclature is as follows:

• Windows Mobile 6 Professional – formerly a Pocket PC Phone edition
• Windows Mobile 6 Classic – formerly a Pocket PC
• Windows Mobile 6 Standard – formerly a Smartphone

You can see now that a “standard” device can potentially have all the features of a “professional” device except for a touch screen and (at present at least) they have a slightly different GUI look and feel.

I speculate that with the next Windows Mobile release (due in 2008) that some of the GUI differences will be removed or atleast made configurable. With this change the new naming conventions can be seen as quite logical. In particular it is reasonably easy to explain why the smartphone platform may be protrayed as being the “lesser equal” of a Pocket PC device, as given the choose between a Standard and Professional device, wouldn’t most people by instinct choose the Professional one.

One last thing worth mentioning for those with a pechant for detail is that Windows Mobile 5.0 is correctly referered as version 5.0 not version 5 (notice the lack of a minor version number). With Windows Mobile 6 on the other hand Microsoft have chosen to use a single digit version number. I assume this is because “point releases” are now more likly to be distributed as Adoption Kit Updates (AKUs) and hence reasonably invisible to end users (they are all “Windows Mobile 5.0″ devices), so essentially the version number is only changing for significant platform changes which deserve a major version number.

This question came up at the local .NET User Group meeting held last night. 

The relationship between the Windows Mobile and Windows CE operating systems is one which is not well understood by some ISV developers and the recent naming nomenclature changes have not helped.

So to answer the question “Is Windows Mobile 6 powered by Windows Embedded CE 6.0?” I will first have to explain the difference between these two products.

Windows Embedded CE is an operating system designed by Microsoft that targets a wide range of embedded hardware devices – set top boxes, wireless routers, robots and PDAs etc. Unlike the Windows XP or Vista operating systems which are quite fixed in their feature sets, Windows Embedded CE is heavily customisable by the OEM who choices to “install” it. By using a product called Platform Builder an OEM can pick and match which features of the operating system should be built into their device (from a catalog of 1000’s of components). In many cases if a feature doesn’t operate exactly how an OEM desires they have the option within Platform Builder to alter it’s behaviour and/or to replace the component completely with a custom one. This is quite a different process from the process you go through to install a copy of Windows XP on a desktop PC.

On the other hand Windows Mobile is a platform designed by Microsoft for smartphones and PDAs. A big part of this platform is a specialised operating system designed for use on smart devices (PDAs). Windows Mobile devices at their core are running the Windows Embedded CE operating system. In very simplistic terms someone within Microsoft has gone through the Platform Builder IDE and configured all the options until they came up with an operating system that all Windows Mobile devices will be based upon. Some parts of Windows Embedded CE have been replaced completely (for example the GUI shell which looks like Windows 95 complete with the desktop by default), and other components have been added (for example the Connection Manager APIs).

So in summary Windows Mobile devices run a variant of the Windows Embedded CE operating system. So it would make sense that Windows Mobile 6 would at it’s core have the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 operating system, right? Well if you answered yes to this question you would be wrong….

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 was released officially on the 1st of November 2006. It included a vast range of changes and additions, but the most talked about within the Windows Mobile space at least was the redesigned kernel which removes some long standing limitations. Rather than a 32 process limit, there is now support for up to 32,768 processes (in theory at least) and instead of a 32MB virtual address space, applications now have access to a 2GB address space.

Windows Mobile 6 on the other hand was announced on Feburary 12th 2007 at 3GSM World Congress 2007 with devices shipping slightly later.

So within Microsoft both developement efforts were going on internally at the same time. The Windows Mobile team decided that it was too risky to use the new version of Windows Embedded CE as the basis of what became Windows Mobile 6.0 so stuck with their current version and made a few alterations to it (in some cases back porting changes from Windows Embedded CE 6.0).

So a Windows Mobile 6 device is actually running the core Windows CE 5.02 operating system, not the latest 6.0 release. Windows CE 5.02 is a slight variant of the Windows CE 5.01 release shipped with Windows Mobile 5.0 devices.

So we will have to wait until the next version of Windows Mobile (code named Photon and due for release in 2008) to get a Windows Mobile device which is powered by the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 operating system.

Some may have noticed that I have referred to Windows CE 6.0 as “Windows Embedded CE 6.0″ through out this blog entry. Windows CE and Windows Mobile have gone through minor naming nomenclature changes with the recently released versions to help further align related products. This will be the topic of my next posting.

In order to use the “Designed For Windows Mobile” logo in your marketing material your application must be submitted and pass a battery of tests perscribed by Microsoft.

The newly revised handbooks that cover applications for the new “Designed For Windows Mobile 6″ logo(s) are now available for download.

• Designed for Windows Mobile 6 Professional Software Application handbook
• Designed for Windows Mobile 6 Standard Software Application handbook

On an initial flick through the handbooks there doesn’t appear to be many significant changes. However Microsoft has got more perscriptive in some areas such as deployment options for MFC based applications (which must be statically linked for logo certification).

If you’re starting out in Windows Mobile development these handbooks are a great guide for creating applications which have a native look and feel to them.

 I encourage every developer to strive (where possible) to make their applications as compatible with the “Designed For Windows Mobile” certification requirements as possible. Your users will have an easier time utilising your application and will already be familiar with it’s basic operation. It’s also easier to pass the tests some time down the track if your application has been designed within them in mind from it’s inception.