REVIEW: Windows Mobile 6.5 Improvements Leave Much to Be Desired

Browser Support

The Pure comes with two browsers: Internet Explorer and Opera. The browser icon you see will depend on which of the different applications/programs pages you’re on.

In this review I’m focusing on Internet Explorer because the Opera browser was apparently added by either AT&T or HTC and isn’t standard with Windows Mobile 6.5.

Microsoft Windows Marketplace for Mobile is open for application submissions. Read more here.

Internet Explorer on the Pure is a definite improvement over earlier versions, although I did have some problems with it. In general, the browser has a much nicer look. (Of course, it helps that the screen has a much higher resolution than earlier devices. The AT&T Pure screen is 480 by 800—which is as tall as a lot of laptop screens in pixels, even though the screen itself is only a couple inches high.)

To test the browser on the Pure, I went to eWEEK.com, which immediately detected I was on a mobile device and sent me to a mobile version of the site.

I wanted to see how the standard site would look, so I set Internet Explorer to identify itself as a desktop. Yet when I went to eWEEK.com after making this change, the server still saw my browser as mobile and dished out the mobile version.

Using a header utility on the Web, I was able to see that IE was identifying itself as “Windows CE (Pocket PC) Version 5.2” for the OS and “Windows Phone 6.5” for the agent.

I then went to CNN.com. The page loaded nicely, but then IE popped up an error message that said, “Adobe Flash Lite – Insufficient Memory.” I wasn’t sure what that was all about, but after I closed that message out, the page loaded quite nicely.

The device’s entire screen is devoted to the Web page, with a small icon in the lower-right corner that provides a list of options, such as zoom, when clicked. Initially, the text was tiny—almost too tiny to read—but I was able to see much of the CNN.com page, which was nice. I zoomed in just a tad and got a really nice view of the page.

However, although Internet Explorer is certainly improved, it often froze up while downloading common Web pages, even though I was on a high-speed Wi-Fi data connection. I couldn’t click the Stop button to halt download, and the Menu button in the lower-right did nothing. All I could do was sit and wait.

Next: Familiar Features >>