I have been playing with WM6.1 for a while on a non-touchscreen device and though it is considered by many to be just a minor upgrade, it is one that brings long requested features to the OS. The Windows Mobile team is listening to customers and that bodes well for future releases. The first visible improvement is the Sliding Panel homescreen. Quite frankly, I love it. It makes accessing the applications I use most very easy, requiring a few keystrokes.
Almost every task can be done right from the homescreen. Notice the right softkey changes to Compose when the Messaging slide is selected. Creating new emails or text messages is just a click away.
Using the D-pad, I can easily switch from one account to another. The more account you add to your device and it will automatically appear on the slide. By default the slide contains, Missed calls, Voice Mail and Text Messages.
The slides are not customizable and that is an issue. It would have been handy to be able to add/remove applications to and from the slides. I had to switch back to WM6 default homescreen after I installed Google Search on my device to make it appear on the homescreen.
The other slides allows you to access/view Calendar/Appointment; Windows Live (Live Search, Messenger etc); Windows Media player (only if you chose the Sliding Panel Media as the Home screen layout); My Photos slide displays all photos on your device; Settings slide offers access to Profile, Wireless Manager, Ringtone, Background image and Task Manager.
The sliding panel makes navigating the device very easy and fun. On the other hand, it would have been great to be able to customize it. In part II, we'll take a look at what's new in Messaging.
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